This thoroughly researched, extensively documented romp ... spins an intriguing tale, smoothly integrating more than 100 years’ worth of social, economic, and cultural facts and minutiae. [Satow] deftly navigates through topics such as architecture, menus, labor disputes, parties, balls, civil unrest, jewel heists, suicides, city politics, high-end financial maneuvering, and lots and lots of great celebrity gossip ... the narrative never flags ... Readers will happily soak up period details and take notes on how the stalwart staff dealt with class snobbery, prohibition and gangsters, wartime privations, the turbulent 1960s, wealthy dowagers, blushing debutantes, persistent groupies, omnipresent prostitutes, and brawling Indian billionaires. This is social history at its best: thoughtful, engaging, and lots of fun.

A great hotel is a theater of dreams, and Julie Satow, a journalist who covers New York real estate, digs deep into the forces that took the Plaza from a living center of aspiring social connection tied to the fortunes of American high society to its present status in an atomized era of pitiless transactional globalism ... At its humming height, Satow tells us in one of her dazzling fact riffs, the Plaza employed a staff of 1,500, “including 50 each of chambermaids, housemaids and bell boys; plus 200 waiters, 75 laundresses and 25 porters ... Satow, of course, offers a pungent chapter on the Plaza’s most popular literary avatar, Eloise, and her creator, the volatile diva Kay Thompson ... It’s galling to have to admit that Trump is the owner who leaps most vividly from the pages of this entertaining history, just as he does from cable TV ... The other great character in this teeming cast is not a billionaire but a union leader. Peter Ward represented the 35,000 bellmen, doormen, banquet waiters and maids who made up the powerful New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council. By the time he enters the story, we’re thirsting to hear more about the downstairs life of the Plaza. I wish Satow had dwelt more on the lives of that pyramid of toiling housemaids, laundresses, bellhops and waiters who kept the Titanic afloat. Just as the flashy museums and universities of the United Arab Emirates are built on the backs of abused migrant workers, the Plaza’s luxury was underpinned by many decades of exploitation.

Through personal interviews, first-person accounts, and established histories, Satow provides an energetic timeline that embraces the chaos of history ... The details are dramatic — whether charming or staggering — and though the game of investor hot-potato gets complicated, there are plenty of colorful asides that ground the story in particulars ... The Plaza reads like the biography of a distant relative as much as the history of a landmark building; the hotel feels alive to anyone who loves it. It's a wild and sometimes vicious life, but so affectionately told that you might come out of the chaos still wanting to visit the old place, after all.

In this debut, journalist Satow brings it all to light, combing through newspaper articles to regale readers with stories not only of the rich and famous but also those of the union workers who built and run the hotel, the exotic pets that have lived there with their owners, the prostitutes and bomb threats in the 1970s, and the string of international scandals that have befallen recent owners ... Well researched and documented yet fun to read, this work provides both a front- and back-of-the-house look into a grand dame of New York architecture. Highly recommended for history or hospitality aficionados.

... a vibrant history of the construction, décor, egos, glamour, deals and dirty secrets that comprise the many-storied Plaza Hotel ... With a thirst for detail, a historian’s balanced viewpoint, deft descriptions of the Plaza’s Trump era, and a retrospective personal exploration of its enchantments, Satow’s debut book should please even the most avid fan of this remarkable environment.

Satow has done her research and provides a glimpse into the Gilded Age of a great hotel ... Even the ventilation system is fascinating ... For all the stories of the outrageous and ludicrous rich denizens Satow also does not neglect the economics of the hotel business, which saw its ups and downs, including disputes with the unions. However, she only glosses over that aspect ... one might hope for some insights into the internal workings, management, and business economics of running the grand dame of New York hotels. But, no, more celebrities enter the story ... Some 300 pages of The Plaza are devoted to owners, the rich, and the celebrities. If an employee gets interviewed it is only to report on the aforementioned rich. One never gets the sense of what the daily grind of running a grand hotel is like, of what it involves ... no secrets here, just what you can find by scrolling through lots of newspaper articles ... And although we are promised at the beginning of the book some Thorsten Veblen-like insights into the meaning of conspicuous consumption it is not delivered. Rather it’s a story—not of a hotel per se—but of rich developers and businessmen playing out capitalism’s natural course with a supporting staff of quirky dowagers, actresses, and other poseurs all coincidentally located in a hotel.

... fascinating ... With an eye for the vivid and revealing detail, Satow zips through the Plaza’s first century ... While Satow does highlight several moments of overt racism at the hotel, she tends to treat these as isolated incidents, rather than as evidence of the systemic exclusion that underpins the Plaza's 'exclusivity.' To that end, the history might have been enriched with more attention to the voices of staff below the managerial level — the maids, bellhops and busboys who keep the hotel running and guard its most intimate secrets. The prostitutes who appear in the story, strolling the bar and public spaces in the 1980s and 1990s, would have been better treated as real people with stories of their own, rather than as problems for management and symbols of excess or tawdriness ... demonstrates that New York institutions are not invincible but will depend for their survival on knowledge, imagination and resistance to the whims of billionaires.

...[a] lively and entertaining portrait ... Ms. Satow’s book draws the reader in from the start. Its cast of characters includes bellboys, chefs, managers, hotel owners and lawyers. She goes into obsessive detail about the staff, which, when the Plaza first opened, numbered 1,500 workers, including two men who dusted the chandeliers and another whose job was to stamp the hallway ashtrays with the Plaza logo ... Ms. Satow has written a superb history of how a once-magnificent property became its own Potemkin village, a grand luxury hotel on the outside, a hollow shell within.

A lively tale ... [Satow] interviewed hundreds of people, from bellmen and managers to lawyers and chefs, to give her story a rich, personal touch (she was married in the hotel’s grand Terrace Room) and an entertaining, novelistic flair ... An infectiously fun read.