CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: TECH GADGETS/ALAMY; DETROIT PUBLISHING COMPANY/GETTY IMAGES; RAMZI HAIDAR/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; DEAGOSTINI
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KATHY WILLENS/AP; JAMES GARRETT/NY DAILY NEWS ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGESThe Plaza Hotel’s Suite Life
1943
After the Plaza’s original ownership group
finds itself cash-strapped and indebted, they
sell the establishment for $7.4 million (some
$108 million today) to Conrad Hilton (above)
and Floyd Odlum, a wealthy conglomerator.
Hilton would later label his purchase
“an expensive, aristocratic old lady.”2005
Now owned by the El Ad Group, which
purchased it for $675 million in 2004, the
Plaza is shuttered for three years for a
$450 million restoration to convert part
of the building into apartments.2017
Five years after purchasing a 75%
stake in the hotel for $575 million,
Subrata Roy’s Sahara Group, which
faces a mounting financial scandal
in its native India, reportedly puts
its share of the Plaza up for sale
in August. Eloise may have yet
another new landlord soon.1959
The Plaza’s Oak Bar
features prominently
in Alfred Hitchcock’s
North by Northwest.
The hotel would later
have cameos in two
Robert Redford movies:
Barefoot in the Park
(1967) and The Way We
Were (1973, left).1988
Having changed hands several times
in the previous three decades—
including a stint in the portfolio of
Westin hotels—the Plaza is the site
of a protracted ownership battle that
ends with Donald Trump as the victor.
(“My Mona Lisa,” he calls the hotel,
which costs him roughly $400 million,
or $852 million in today’s money.)1993
After appearing as himself in the
Plaza in Home Alone 2 (1992),
Trump weds Marla Maples in the
Grand Ballroom, which was the
site of Truman Capote’s legendary
Black and White Ball in 1966.NEW YORK’S ICONIC Plaza Hotel is actually the second Plaza
Hotel to occupy the prime Central Park South location. The
first, built in the 1880s, was torn down in 1905 to create some-
thing even bigger. The new hotel took 27
months to complete, and its construction
went 50% over budget, costing some $12.5
million (roughly $400 million today). Its
investors were some of America’s rich-
est men, including Texaco founder John
“Bet a Million” Gates and real estate mogulHarry S. Black, and they filled their hotel with every imaginable
luxury—five grand staircases, ten elevators, 1,650 crystal chan-
deliers—to attract the country’s upper crust. In that respect,
they succeeded. The Plaza’s first guests: Mr.
and Mrs. Alfred Vanderbilt.
This set the tone for the Plaza Hotel’s
next 110 years. It would become a Manhat-
tan landmark, a star of film and fiction, and
a real estate trophy coveted by the world’s
wealthiest people.1995
Dire financial straits force
Trump to sell the Plaza in
1995, at a loss, to billionaire
Saudi Prince Alwaleed and
Singaporean billionaire
Kwek Leng Beng for
$325 million.1925
F. Scott Fitzgerald sets part
of The Great Gatsby at the
Plaza. Thirty years later, Kay
Thompson publishes a book for
“precocious grown-ups” about
a little girl who becomes the
hotel’s most famous resident:
Eloise. Today the Plaza has
suites inspired by both works.FORBES ASIA
LUXURY LINEAGEBY ABRAM BROWNDECEMBER 2017 FORBES ASIA | 23