Since its opening in 1907, The Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue and Central Park South in New York City has served as a permanent home, extended studio, favorite pied-à-terre, or playground of debaucherie for a myriad of artists, writers, architects, performers, and even presidents.
It served as a retreat for The Beatles on their first visit to New York City during the height of Beatlemania, its walls shielding them from thousands of crazed fans; it was previously owned by Donald Trump, and it is the backdrop for one of the most beloved book series millions of girls have grown up with for over five decades.
© Getty ImagesCreated by the architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, who also designed the Dakota on Central Park West, it boasts 282 hotel rooms alongside 181 luxury condominium residences, its most expensive selling for $65.8 million in 2023.
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© Getty ImagesIn October 2026, the 119-year-old hotel, which has had at least half a dozen owners over the years and is now operated by Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, announced it would be shutting down for four years, for a restoration of the 18-story building's landmark facade.
Ahead of its closure, which includes its famed wedding venue, revisit some of the famous faces that have graced the iconic building's hallways and the historic, occasionally wild moments it has been witness to.
Kay Thompson
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© WireImageWhen highlighting the famous people associated with The Plaza Hotel, it is impossible not to begin with Kay Thompson, who arguably introduced the famed hotel to millions of little girls with her book Eloise. Born in 1909 in St. Louis, Missouri, she was an author, singer, vocal arranger, vocal coach, composer, musician, dancer, actress, and choreographer, and lived at The Plaza while also being one of its most famous performers in the 1950s.
The beloved children's book was published in 1955, and the eponymous character, an energetic and mischievous six-year-old girl who lives at The Plaza with her nanny, is based on Thompson's own childhood imaginary alter ego, who she would occasionally perform as on stage.
Frank Lloyd Wright
© Getty ImagesFamed architect Frank Lloyd Wright — whose most notable works include Fallingwater in Pennsylvania and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in the Upper East Side — lived in The Plaza' Suite 223 (later Suite 409) while working on the contentious and years-long construction of the Guggenheim, from 1954 to 1959.
While he was known to lambast many New York City skyscrapers, he commended The Plaza for having a sense of dignity and humanness in its design, in contrast to later skyscrapers, which he described as "monstrous thing[s]."
In 2025, the 4,000-square-foot corner apartment, which he renovated to feature gold-leaf accents, peach-colored velvet, and custom furniture, was listed for a whopping $18.9 million.
F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald
© Getty ImagesThe Plaza was essentially F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Fitzgerald's playground in the 1920s following the success of the author's debut semi-autobiographical novel This Side of Paradise.
Fitzgerald immortalized the hotel in The Great Gatsby (1925), and across different essays written in and around 1931. After the Jazz Age and the United States economy came to a devastating crash, he reflected on his hedonistic, gin-soaked escapades of the era, many of which tookplace at The Plaza. "It is as dead as were the Yellow Nineties in 1902. Yet the present writer already looks back to it with nostalgia. It bore him up, flattered him and gave him more money than he had dreamed of, simply for telling people that he felt as they did, that something had to be done with all the nervous energy stored up and unexpended in the War," he wrote in Echoes of the Jazz Age.
© Getty Images"But it was not to be. Somebody had blundered and the most expensive orgy in history was over," he added of the sybaritic era.
In My Lost City, he further mourned: "From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building and, just as it had been a tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza Roof to take leave of the beautiful city, extending as far as eyes could reach, so now I went to the roof of the last and most magnificent of towers."
The Beatles
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© Getty ImagesAt the height of Beatlemania in 1964, The Beatles stayed at The Plaza ahead of their historic debut appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, booking the Presidential Suites on the 12th floor, which boasted 10 rooms.
The band held a press conference in the hotel's Baroque Room, where they received gold records for their single "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and album, "Meet The Beatles." Thousands of fans swarmed the hotel's surrounding streets, essentially barricading the four musicians. "It was like the Royal tour, this motorcade thing. But there was people lining the route, then we got to the hotel and it was madness! And they were all outside and there's barriers and horses and cops all over the place... with the four of us sitting in the car, giggling," Ringo Starr later said.
Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt
© Getty ImagesAlfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, son of Cornelius Vanderbilt II and great uncle to Anderson Cooper, was the very first registered guest at The Plaza, arriving on the morning the hotel opened on October 1, 1907. He pulled up in a horse-drawn carriage and stayed in a five-room suite.
Tommy Hilfiger
© Getty ImagesIn 2008, after The Plaza underwent a hundred-million dollar renovation and opened its apartments, Tommy Hilfiger and his wife Dee Ocleppo purchased multiple units for $25 million, combining them into a two-story duplex penthouse overlooking Central Park and Fifth Avenue.
The 12-room home includes an Eloise-inspired room handpainted by Hilary Knight, the illustrator behind the famed, aforementioned books. After initially listing the penthouse for $80 million and later lowering the price to $50 million, Hilfiger sold the residence for under $32 million in late 2019.
Marlene Dietrich
© Getty ImagesIn 1948, Marlene Dietrich took a hiatus at The Plaza, and lived in the Lady Mendl suite for a little over a year before filming Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright.
Dietrich was known to harbor a lifelong obsession with hygiene; she was notoriously particular about housekeeping and cleanliness at the hotel, and was especially exacting about the hotel's bed linens.
Truman Capote
© Getty ImagesTruman Capote held what at the time was dubbed the party of the century — his famed Black and White Ball — on November 28, 1966, in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel. It featured a masquerade theme and guests included Lauren Bacall, Sammy Davis Jr., Mia Farrow, Norman Mailer, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Vanderbilt and Andy Warhol.
Donald Trump
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© Getty ImagesDonald Trump has a varied history with the hotel. He purchased the Plaza in 1988 for roughly $407 million, and famously named his then-wife Ivana Trump its president; he joked to the press that her salary would be $1 a year plus all the dresses she could buy. He infamously made a cameo in a scene inside the hotel for Home Alone 2 in 1992, before selling it at a loss for $325 million in 1995 after taking it into bankruptcy.
In October 2026, a new report released by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee examining Trump's alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking operation included a detailed account from former Miss Switzerland Beatrice Keul alleging that the president raped her at the Plaza Hotel in November 1993.
