The Pierre

Facing the south-east corner of Central Park, on Fifth Avenue at 61st Street in New York City, The Pierre opened in 1930 as a 41-storey hotel. Designed by Schultze & Weaver, the architects of the Waldorf-Astoria, it is a residential hotel as much as a transient one: most of its upper floors are privately owned cooperative apartments, and the hotel below them has been run by Taj Hotels since 2005.

History

Charles Pierre Casalasco, a restaurateur from Corsica who had made his name in Manhattan, raised the money from Wall Street backers to build a hotel that would rival the Plaza across the street. It opened in October 1930, a year after the crash, and went bankrupt in 1932. J. Paul Getty bought it in 1938 for a fraction of its cost. In 1959 it was converted into a cooperative, with the apartments sold to residents and the hotel floors retained, an arrangement that still governs the building. Residents and long-stay guests over the years have included Elizabeth Taylor and Yves Saint Laurent.

In January 1972 a gang led by Bobby Comfort and Sammy Nalo took over the lobby in the small hours, held the night staff and emptied the safe-deposit boxes of jewels valued at several million dollars, one of the largest hotel robberies on record. Four Seasons managed the hotel from 1981 until 2005, when Taj Hotels of India took over the lease and closed the hotel for a renovation that finished in 2009.

Architecture and design

Schultze & Weaver gave the building a limestone base and a tall brick shaft topped by a copper mansard roof with a lantern, in a French classical style that is restrained next to the firm's Waldorf. The ground floor holds the Rotunda, a circular room painted in 1967 by Edward Melcarth with trompe-l'oeil murals of classical figures, balustrades and sky, and the Grand Ballroom with its own stair from Fifth Avenue. The renovation of 2005 to 2009 restored the public rooms and rebuilt the guest floors without changing the exterior.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has 189 rooms and suites on the floors below the cooperative apartments. Rooms facing west look over Central Park; those on the higher floors see it over the rooftops of the Plaza and the park's south edge, with the largest suites on the top hotel floors. Few luxury hotels in New York City keep rooms of these proportions.

Dining

Perrine, the restaurant on the 61st Street side, serves French-American cooking at breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Rotunda is used for afternoon tea, and Two E, the bar and lounge off the lobby, for drinks.

Weddings and events

The Grand Ballroom is one of the historic wedding and gala rooms of New York, the setting of society weddings, charity balls and the annual dinners of the city's institutions for ninety years. The Cotillion Room, the Rotunda and a set of smaller salons serve receptions, dinners and meetings, and the Fifth Avenue entrance gives the ballroom its own arrival.

Location

The Pierre stands at 2 East 61st Street, on the corner of Fifth Avenue, opposite the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Central Park and a block north of the Plaza. The Fifth Avenue shops begin at the door, the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum are a short walk north along the park, and the Fifth Avenue-59th Street subway station is at the corner. To LaGuardia Airport it is about 15 kilometres, to John F. Kennedy International about 25.