The Hotel: A Week in the Life of the Plaza - Hardcover

Considered "the world's most luxurious hotel" when it opened in Manhattan in 1907, the French Renaissance-style Plaza reserved 90% of its rooms for permanent tenants. (Today there are only four such residents--all elderly widows.) Rooms then cost from $2.50 to $4; now, the bottom rate is $175 and the Vanderbilt Suite is $4000 a night. Famous performers and writers and many foreign monarchs have stayed at the Plaza; every U.S. president since Theodore Roosevelt has spent time there. Centering on a typical week in spring 1988, this engaging volume, by New York Times reporter Kleinfield (coauthor of Lee Iacocca's Talking Straight ) amusingly describes the work and attitudes of some of the 1300 staff members, 80% of whom are multilingual, speaking a total of 35 languages. He records their anecdotes about pocket-picking, thefts, burglaries and suicides, about suspicious persons, con artists, escort girls, lobby sitters, "fifty-fours" (prostitutes) and drunken businessmen who frequent the Plaza. He discusses the hotel's finances, renovations, policies, management and the challenges that arise day or night. And he observes the visits of various VIPs and of the king and queen of Sweden, in whose honor a banquet is given. Reading the book is at least as enjoyable--and certainly less expensive--than staying at the Plaza.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The author, who is perhaps best known for co-authoring Talking Straight with Lee Iacocca ( LJ 9/1/88), here takes us on a guided tour of one of the most distinctive social phenomena of our time--the luxury hotel. Kleinfield describes with detail some of the personal loyalties, conflicts, skirmishes, and sacrifices that bubble away beneath that great containing vessel of luxury--the Plaza in New York City. From the laundry room, through the kitchens, to the dining rooms, to the suites, we are led in turn and given the inside view. We meet the managers, the chambermaids, the doormen, some of the guests, and the new owner, Donald Trump. This book is as close to getting inside the Plaza as most people will come, so it should have a certain fascination.
- A.J. Anderson, Graduate Sch. of Library & Information Science, Simmons Coll., Boston
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.