Party of the Century: The Fabulous Story of Truman Capote and His Black and White Ball by Deborah Davis

Author:Deborah Davis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: Illustrated, Non-Fiction, Popular Culture, United States, History
ISBN: 9780470893579
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2005-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

Evie and Truman got along famously and were looking forward to collaborating on a look for the ball. The Grand Ballroom at the Plaza Hotel was their stage. Truman said that he selected the Plaza because “it’s the only beautiful ballroom left in the United States.” But his longtime friend Phyllis Cerf believed that his motivation was more complicated than simply wanting the room for its beauty. Hosting his party at the Plaza, with its history, traditions, and atmosphere of prosperity and power, represented something to Truman. Just as F. Scott Fitzgerald used the Plaza to signify status in novels such as The Great Gatsby, Truman’s choice of the Plaza would mean that he had arrived.

The Plaza Hotel had been casting its spell on visitors ever since it opened its doors in 1890. The eight-story, four-hundred-room, Italian Renaissance edifice had been erected on the site of a skating pond located at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. The hotel was beautifully appointed with marble and mahogany and featured works of art and expensive furnishings. As the city around it grew, the Plaza started to seem small. In 1902, real estate developers decided to take full advantage of the building’s magnificent site by demolishing the old hotel and erecting a brand-new one that would be larger and even more impressive.

The new Plaza Hotel was designed by the architect Henry Hardenbergh, whose previous works included the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue and the Dakota apartment building on Central Park West. Hardenbergh paid homage to majestic buildings in Europe when he conceived the massive hotel as a French château, complete with turrets, gables, dormers, and a mansard roof to give it character. The inside of the hotel was equally European in atmosphere. One hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Irish linen was ordered from Belfast for the Plaza’s luxurious bedding. The curtains were of a special design imported from Switzerland. The delicate stemware was crafted by Baccarat. And the china was custom-made and lavishly encrusted with gold. There were 1,650 crystal chandeliers throughout the hotel, several of them hanging over valuable Aubusson rugs.

When the Plaza opened in October of 1907, it was the tallest building in the neighborhood, a virtual skyscraper at eighteen stories. There were eight hundred bedrooms, five hundred baths, and lavish private suites with as many as seventeen rooms. Advertisements boasted that the Plaza was “the world’s most luxurious hotel,” and millionaires such as Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt and Jay Gould secured rooms on a permanent basis, preferring the lavish, full-service hotel to a private residence. In fact, ninety percent of the hotel was reserved for people who lived there all the time, while a small fraction of the remaining rooms were held for transient hotel guests.

Because of its reputation for being splendid and accommodating, the Plaza was a popular destination for celebrities visiting New York City. The tenor Enrico Caruso inaugurated the tradition by checking into the hotel soon after it opened and living there during his annual season at the Metropolitan Opera.

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