Plaza Hotel

Coordinates: 40°45′53″N 73°58′28″W / 40.764712°N 73.974574°W / 40.764712; -73.974574

The Plaza Hotel, located in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan, New York City, is a landmark 20-story luxury hotel and condominium apartment building, owned by the Indian conglomerate, Sahara India Pariwar. With a height of 250 ft (76 m) and length of 400 ft (120 m) that occupies the west side of Grand Army Plaza, from which it derives its name, and extends along Central Park South in Manhattan. Fifth Avenue extends along the east side of Grand Army Plaza. The Plaza Hotel is recognized as a Historic Hotel of America by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Description

Grand Army Plaza

The hotel's main entrance at 768 Fifth Avenue faces the southern portion of Grand Army Plaza which commemorates the Union Army in the Civil War. Grand Army Plaza is in two sections, bisected by Central Park South. The section in front of the Plaza Hotel is centered by the Pulitzer Fountain, of Abundance by Karl Bitter, funded by the will of the newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer: the statue in the fountain is specifically Pomona, Roman goddess of orchards. The statue was posed for by Doris Doscher, also famous for posing for the Standing Liberty quarter. The north side of Grand Army Plaza, a corner cut out from Central Park, has Augustus Saint-Gaudens' part-gilded bronze equestrian statue of General Sherman. Scholars Gate, behind Grand Army Plaza, provided one of the two original main entrances to the carriage drives of Central Park, the other being Merchants Gate at the Grand Circle, now Columbus Circle. On the south side of the Plaza (between 57th and 58th Streets) once stood the French Renaissance château of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, designed by George B. Post; rising behind its gated front court, it was the grandest of the Fifth Avenue mansions of the Gilded Age. Bergdorf Goodman occupies its site.

Plaza Hotel, College Station

The Plaza Hotel (formerly University Tower) is a former hotel building in College Station, Texas, USA. The building contained 300 rooms and was 17 stories high. It was located at 410 South Texas Avenue, College Station, Texas 77840.

Operated as a Ramada Inn, the initial two-story hotel was opened by Joe Ferreri in 1960 at the suggestion of Texas A&M University's president at the time, James Earl Rudder. High occupancy rates lead Ramada officials to request an expansion, which came in the form of the 17-story tower built in 1980. Ferreri subsequently lost the hotel to bankruptcy in 1987. In the 1990s the property was a private dormitory, The University Towers. The building was acquired and turned into The Plaza Hotel in 2004.

The building contained a swimming pool in the atrium (in which a 12-year-old boy drowned in July, 2007.), a lounge which overlooked the atrium and pool, a ballroom, a restaurant (Maxwell's, then Remington's), and a penthouse containing a fully equipped kitchen and bar area, dining room, exterior patio, three bedrooms and a master suite with bath and jacuzzi.

Emerald Plaza (San Diego)

Emerald Plaza is the fifth tallest building in San Diego, California and is a prominent fixture in San Diego's skyline. Tied with The Pinnacle Marina Tower, it has a height of 450 ft (137 m). Located in the Columbia district of Downtown San Diego, Emerald Plaza is a 30-story building with a clustered hexagonal roof, designed by architects C.W. Kim Architects & Planners.

History & Design

Emerald Plaza finished construction in 1990. At the time of its construction, one architectural critic called it "pretentious" and "discordant" with the surrounding buildings, as well as writing the building "... looks like a futuristic experiment, which is a fine thing on the drafting board but may look peculiar along staid Broadway."

"Emerald Plaza’s hexagonal design allows for the maximum number of guestrooms and offices with views, as well as minimizes wasted space typical to rectangular buildings. Further more, this design utilizes angled window sills, which reflect ambient sunlight into the building, reducing lighting requirements. The Emerald Plaza was built in 1990 at a cost of $150,000,000. It consists of a steel frame structure with an exterior combination of granite stone panels and reflective glass set in a custom Kynar green aluminum window framing system. The structure itself is balanced on a 9-foot deep concrete block which acts like a floating device, allowing the building ebb and flow, mimicking the movement of water. This technique makes it one of the most stable structures in San Diego."

L'Enfant Plaza Hotel

The L'Enfant Plaza Hotel is a hotel located in downtown Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was designed by architect Vlastimil Koubek, and named after Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the first surveyor and designer of the street layout of the city. It was inaugurated on May 31, 1973. The hotel is listed as a Mobile 4-star and AAA 4-Diamond Luxury Hotel.

The L'Enfant Plaza Hotel sits atop L'Enfant Plaza, an esplanade and plaza structure erected above a highway and a parking garage in the Southwest quadrant of the District of Colombia. The plaza and hotel were approved in 1955, but construction did not begin on the plaza (on which the hotel sits) until 1965. The plaza and esplanade were completed in 1968. The start of construction on the hotel was delayed three years, and was completed in May 1973. The construction led to a lawsuit after it was found that the foundation of an adjoining structure had encroached on the hotel's property. The hotel suffered a serious fire in 1975 that claimed the lives of two people.

L'Enfant Plaza

L'Enfant Plaza is a complex of four commercial buildings grouped around a large plaza in the Southwest section of Washington, D.C.. Immediately below the plaza and the buildings is the "La Promenade" shopping mall. The plaza is located south of Independence Avenue SW between 12th and 9th Streets SW (9th Street actually runs underneath the centers of the buildings on the easternmost side of the plaza). It was built perpendicular to L'Enfant Promenade, a north-south running street and pedestrian esplanade part of which is directly above 10th Street SW. The plaza is named for Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant, the architect and planner who first designed a street layout for the capital city. It was dedicated in 1968 after completion of the north and south buildings.

Planning

L'Enfant Plaza was part of the Southwest D.C. urban renewal project, one of the earliest urban renewal projects in the U.S., and the first such in D.C. The rapid expansion of the population of Washington, D.C., during World War II led to the extensive construction of suburban office buildings and housing tracts. But with federal agencies (which were the area's largest employers) restricted to the city center, a movement began after the war to redevelop Washington's older, more dilapidated, single-family-dwelling neighborhoods to provide high-density, modern housing for workers. In 1946, the United States Congress passed the District of Columbia Redevelopment Act, which established the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA) and provided legal authority to clear land and funds to spur redevelopment in the capital. Congress also gave the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) the authority to designate which land would be redeveloped, and how. The RLA was not funded, however, until passage of the Housing Act of 1949.

L'Enfant Plaza station

L'Enfant Plaza is a Washington Metro station in the Southwest Federal Center neighborhood of Washington, D.C., United States. The station was opened on July 1, 1977, and is operated by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). It is a transfer station, with two levels: the upper level has two side platforms and is used by the Green and Yellow Lines, while the lower level has an island platform used by the Blue, Orange, and Silver Lines. It is also where the Yellow and Green lines converge going north. The station serves five out of the system's six lines, serving the most lines out of any station in the system; only the Red Line does not serve the station.

L'Enfant Plaza is the last station in the District on the Yellow Line before crossing the Potomac into Virginia on the 14th Street Bridge.

Description

Location

The station is located in Southwest Washington, with entrances at the L'Enfant Plaza shopping mall concourse at 9th and D Streets, on D Street between 6th and 7th Streets, and at Maryland Avenue and 7th Street. It is in the center of an area crowded with federal buildings and is a transfer point allowing passengers to easily cross the Potomac between Virginia and central Washington, making it a very busy station. L'Enfant Plaza is named for the French-American planner of Washington, D.C., Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant.

Plaza Hotel (El Paso, Texas)

The Plaza Hotel, formerly the Hilton Hotel, is a landmark skyscraper located at 106 Mills Avenue in El Paso, Texas, USA.

Sheldon Hotel site

The hotel was constructed on the site of the Sheldon Hotel, which burned in 1929. The Sheldon served as the unofficial headquarters for many of the participants in the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920s) from both sides of the border.

Hilton

In fall 1929, Conrad Hilton began construction. Nineteen days later the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began, yet construction continued. On November 30, 1930, Hilton's first highrise hotel was opened. At 239 feet (73 m) it surpassed the O. T. Bassett Tower to become the tallest building in El Paso; it is still the city's third tallest building. Designed by Trost & Trost, the Plaza is an Art Deco styled 19-story steel-framed building with setbacks at the 16th and 17th floors. It is faced with brown brick and concrete and crowned with a copper-sheathed pyramid. The exterior remains largely unaltered from its original form. Elizabeth Taylor briefly lived in the penthouse of the hotel after she married Conrad’s son, Nicky Hilton.