New York

The History

New York raised its luxury vertically. The original Waldorf-Astoria opened on Fifth Avenue in 1893 — two Astor family palaces joined by a marble corridor known as Peacock Alley — and the city discovered that a hotel could be its most important room.

The Plaza followed in 1907, a French Renaissance château facing Central Park, and the Jazz Age filled its ballrooms with Gatsby's generation. When the original Waldorf made way for the Empire State Building, it re-opened on Park Avenue in 1931 as an Art Deco tower; The Carlyle and The Pierre completed the uptown constellation.

Ever since, Manhattan's hotel lobbies have doubled as the city's living room — the Bloody Mary perfected at the St. Regis King Cole Bar, Truman Capote's Black and White Ball at the Plaza, a century of deals struck over power breakfasts. In New York, history doesn't visit the hotels; it checks in.