Subsequently, it was sold to several owners during the remainder of the 20th century, including Conrad Hilton, A.M. Sonnabend, Westin Hotels & Resorts, Donald Trump, and a partnership of City Developments Limited and Al-Waleed bin Talal.

[43][65] West of this lobby is a staircase leading up to a mezzanine-level corridor,[66][67] which has marble floors and ashlar walls and abuts the Terrace Room's balcony to the north and a foyer to the south.

[69] On floor 2 and all subsequent stories, a centrally located C-shaped corridor runs around the north, east, and south sides of the building and connects every room.

[59][47] It features oak walls and floors, a coved ceiling, frescoes of Bavarian castles, faux wine casks carved into the woodwork, and a grape-laden brass chandelier.

[43] In 1934, it was replaced by a nightclub called the Persian Room,[46][100] which had red and Persian-blue upholstery by Joseph Urban, five wall murals by Lillian Gaertner Palmedo, and a 27 ft (8.2 m) bar.

[125] The land lots making up the site of the present-day Plaza Hotel were first parceled and sold by the government of New York City in 1853, and acquired by John Anderson from 1870 to 1881.

[135][26][149] The interiors featured extensive mahogany and carved-wood furnishings; lion motifs, representing the hotel's coat of arms; and a 30-foot-tall (9.1 m) dining room with stained glass windows and gold and white decorations.

[36][152][188] The opening was attended by people such as businessman Diamond Jim Brady; actresses Lillian Russell, Billie Burke, Maxine Elliott, and Fritzi Scheff; producers David Belasco and Oscar Hammerstein I; actor John Drew Jr.; and author Mark Twain.

[107] Shortly afterward, U.S. Realty's stock price collapsed in the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, which commenced the Great Depression in the United States.

[217] The same year, the Fifth Avenue lobby received display windows and a doorway on the southern wall; and the southeastern corner of the ground floor was remodeled into the Persian Room.

[ix][219][220] At the time, the Plaza was 61 percent occupied, and many public areas were closed due to supply shortages caused by World War II.

[225] The brokerage office at the ground level's northwestern corner was turned into the Oak Bar, which opened in January 1945; and EF Hutton was relegated to the Fifth Avenue lobby's mezzanine.

[245] A second phase of renovations was announced the same year, which entailed enlarging some public rooms and replacing the ground-floor barber shop with a Trader Vic's bar.

[103] Further changes to the hotel's ownership occurred the next year, when Sol Goldman and Alexander DiLorenzo's firm, Wellington Associates, bought an option to obtain a half-interest in the underlying land from Hilton.

This included the redecoration of the Grand Ballroom,[224][249] as well as the replacement of the Edwardian Room with a restaurant called the Green Tulip,[76][196][250] whose pink, lime, and brown design by Sally Dryden[251][252] received a largely negative reception from the public.

[259][260] Following Western International's acquisition of the Plaza, it renovated the interior spaces, cleaned the exterior, and restored much of the hotel according to the original designs,[45][23] at a total cost of $200 million.

[55][279] In March 1992, as a last resort, Trump approached the Plaza's creditors, a group of seventy banks led by Citibank, who agreed to take a 49% stake in the hotel in exchange for forgiveness of $250 million in debt and an interest-rate reduction.

The deal fell through after the family of Sun Hung Kai executive Walter Kwok got trapped behind a jammed door while touring the Plaza Hotel.

[289] Trump, attempting to maintain appearances, threatened to sue the New York Post that December for reporting that the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, had made an offer for the hotel.

[312] Initially, the Plaza sought to attract foreign companies, since many American luxury brands already rented space nearby or sold goods in the neighboring Bergdorf Goodman Building.

[327] In May 2018, the Sahara Group announced it had finalized a deal with businessmen Shahal M. Khan and Kamran Hakim to buy a majority share of the hotel for $600 million.

[339] Because of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, and a corresponding downturn in tourism globally, the Plaza's hotel rooms were temporarily closed in March 2020 for an indefinite period, and several hundred employees were laid off.

[225][377] Other U.S. presidents who frequented the hotel's guestrooms or restaurants have included William Howard Taft, Harry S. Truman, and Richard Nixon,[225][378] as well as onetime owner Donald Trump.

[378] Chiang Ching-kuo, at the time the Vice Premier of the Republic of China, was shot by Taiwanese student Peter Huang in an attempted assassination at the hotel on April 24, 1970.

[363] Upon the Grand Ballroom's opening in 1921, it immediately became popular as a venue for debutante balls, including those in honor of Joan Whitney Payson and Cathleen Vanderbilt.

[105][384] The rebuilt ballroom hosted social benefits, such as a dinner honoring physicist Marie Curie in 1929,[385] and a meeting of the Girls Service League in 1935 that was attended by U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

[31] Ada Louise Huxtable wrote for The New York Times in 1971 that the Plaza Hotel was the city's "most celebrated symbol of cosmopolitan and turn-of-the-century splendor", speaking negatively only of the short-lived Green Tulip restaurant.

[149] The rebuilt Plaza was described in a 1907 Architectural Record article as having a site that was "the most unobstructed and charming which could have been selected for a large metropolitan hotel", despite being smaller than that of competitors, such as the Waldorf Astoria.

[45] The American Institute of Architects' 2007 survey List of America's Favorite Architecture ranked the Plaza Hotel among the top 150 buildings in the United States.

[414] Films shot or set in the hotel include North by Northwest (1959),[117][152][415] Barefoot in the Park (1967),[33][359][416] Funny Girl (1968),[33][152][359] Plaza Suite (1971),[33][152][359] The Way We Were (1973),[33][152] and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992).