Plaza Hotel

The Plaza Hotel is legendary.

It opened in 1907 when rooms cost $2 50 per night. Now they cost around $800. At the time it placed the largest ever single order for gold-encrusted china and boasted 1,650 crystal chandeliers.

In today’s New York it looks discretely down its nose at all these precious little lifestyle and boutique hotels, hipster upstarts serving their Stumptown coffee as if that can begin to compete with the ceiling of the Palm Court.

As a Manhattan landmark it represents the regal opulence of The Great Gatsby and not the Trumped up hubris of The Donald. It continues to be a goddess of the silver screen from its first starring role in Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North By Northwest to parts in The Way We Were, The Great Gatsby, Almost Famous, Sex & The City, and American Hustle.

Scene from 2013’s The Great Gatsby set…