One of New York's most recognisable hotels is to close for four years so that its exterior can be repaired.
The 119-year-old Plaza Hotel will shut its doors in January for a restoration of the 18-storey building's landmark facade, the hotel's operators, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, announced on 14 October. The New York Times reported the closure, in a story carried by The Straits Times.
The Plaza stands at the corner of Central Park South and Fifth Avenue and has been open since 1907, when a Vanderbilt scion signed the guest register on its first day. It has had at least half a dozen owners and several rounds of renovation since.
It was partly converted into condominiums in the early 2000s and now contains 282 hotel rooms and 181 condos.
The building was designed by the architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, who also designed the Dakota on Central Park West. Writing in 1982, the New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger described the hotel as "designed in a style that is generally described as French Renaissance but is essentially New York eclectic - a French chateau blown up to the size of a small skyscraper and embellished with myriad classical details".
Maintaining that elegance requires periodic upkeep, and the facade now needs substantial attention if the building's heritage detail is to be protected.
Fairmont did not disclose the cost of the work or give details of its scope. Hotel staff will be able to return at the same pay when the building reopens, and their union said it would look for other work for them in the meantime.
The arithmetic of the closure deserves attention. The Plaza will be shut for four years. The work is on the outside.
Everything that a guest pays for - the rooms, the corridors, the lifts, the restaurants, the 282 beds - is on the inside, and none of it is being restored. It will simply be unavailable while the outside is improved.
This produces an unusual distribution of benefit. The facade is the only part of the Plaza that can be experienced without a reservation. It is visible from Fifth Avenue, from Central Park South and from the park itself, free of charge, at any hour, by anyone.
For four years, therefore, the hotel will be closed to the people who pay to be inside it in order to upgrade the experience of the people who do not.
Our analysts have followed this to its conclusion. At the end of the works, the Plaza will present a restored French chateau blown up to the size of a small skyscraper to a street that has never been charged for the view, and 282 rooms of New York opulence to nobody at all.
The Department of Unnecessary Research notes that this is, on any strict reading, the hotel's most generous period in 119 years. For the first time since 1907, every visitor to the Plaza will receive exactly the same thing, and none of them will be billed for it.
The Department has one outstanding question for Fairmont, which it has put in writing. If the restored facade is the product, and the facade is free, the Department would like to know on what grounds the hotel proposes to start charging again in 2030.