The
Widows of the Plaza Hotel
Before
Eloise became known as the luxury hotel’s most famous guest, a host of wealthy
dowagers held court there.
By Julie
Satow
June 7, 2019
The Plaza
Hotel’s best known resident may be a fictional 6-year-old named Eloise, but
from the moment the imposing French chateau-style structure opened in 1907
until well into the 1980s, it was known for a series of real-life wealthy
dowagers who made it their home.
There was a
Russian princess who kept a lion in her bathtub; a Southern belle credited with
inventing the cocktail party; a recluse who called for her chauffeur and car at
10 a.m. every day, although she hadn’t left her room in years; and a fastidious
older woman who spent her days patrolling the Plaza’s perimeter, clearing
sidewalks of cigarette butts by stabbing them with her umbrella tip.
They were an
eccentric bunch: single, mostly older and all wealthy. From Vilma
Lwoff-Parlaghy, the Russian princess who moved into the largest suite at the
Plaza in 1909, to Fannie Lowenstein, who became Donald J. Trump’s most
difficult tenant when he owned the hotel in the late 1980s, these dowagers
lived extravagantly, surrounded by their dogs, diamonds and private nurses.
Over the decades, they became known as the “39 widows of the Plaza,” and while
the origin of the phrase remains murky, as there were more than 39 of them over
time, the name stuck.
When
Princess Vilma, or Her Serene Highness, as she preferred to be called, moved
into the Plaza, 90 percent of the hotel’s guests lived there full-time. At the
turn of the last century, in fact, the words “hotel” and “apartment” were often
used interchangeably.
Since then,
those terms have become quite distinct. Although recently their meanings have
again begun to overlap, as high-end condominiums become increasingly like
hotels, advertising hotel-like amenities and perks like private lounges,
state-of-the-art gyms and luxury catering services. At 432 Park Avenue, for
instance, a concierge will secure a celebrity guest for a birthday party or
house-train a pet, while at 30 Park Place, in TriBeCa, residents have access to
a clairvoyant or a crystal healer, depending on their needs.
But in many
ways, the modern version of hotel or luxury condo living is very different from
the one that Princess Vilma knew. Today’s high-end buildings have sleek and
modern — but often cookie-cutter — finishes intended to have wide appeal. When
the Plaza opened, its builders spared no expense to ensure that the hotel was
unique, buying Baccarat glassware in France, spending lavishly on Irish linen
and Swiss embroidery, and acquiring 4,000 pieces of flat silver for today’s
equivalent of $8 million, to use in the hotel’s restaurants.
And while
many current buyers of high-end condominiums choose to keep their identities
hidden behind shell companies, the opposite was true in the past, when the
legends of the widows grew and became closely identified with the hotel itself.
Many of the women (and a few men) were tourist attractions in their own right,
with visitors flocking to the hotel as much to glimpse a quirky widow as to see
the Pulitzer Fountain or to have a drink in the Oak Room.
[ Read Tina
Brown’s review of Julie Satow’s book “The Plaza.” ]
The Plaza
staff grew accustomed to the widows’ peculiarities. One hotel manager began
walking outside to get from one end of the building to the other, to avoid
passing through the lobby, where persnickety widows would invariably be
positioned on the divans, ready to greet him with a barrage of complaints.
The
concierges also created a secret signal — a repeated tugging of the ear — to
indicate that they needed widow assistance, preferably in the form of an
interruption from a fellow staff member. But while the widows were a constant
thorn in the side of many, they were also the financial backbone of the hotel.
During the Great Depression, when the Plaza was desperate for paying guests, it
was the wealthy widows, with their regular stream of rental income, that helped
keep the hotel afloat.
Among the
most steadfast was Clara Bell Walsh, a broad-shouldered horsewoman who claimed
to have arrived when the hotel opened in 1907 and who remained until her death
a half-century later. “Clara Bell Walsh is almost entirely known for her
residence in the Plaza, as though one’s address were a dominant personal
characteristic,” wrote Lucius Beebe, a syndicated columnist for The New York
Herald Tribune, who often chronicled her activities.
Mrs. Walsh
was the only child of one of Kentucky’s wealthiest families; her grandfather
Henry Bell had been an associate of the multimillionaire merchant A.T. Stewart.
As well known for her entertaining skills as for her riding ability, she was
credited in the press for holding the first society cocktail party. One
notorious soiree featured a kindergarten theme: Guests, dressed as poor little
rich girls and sailor boys, had to navigate an obstacle course to reach the
bar, where drinks were served in baby bottles.
At the
Plaza, Mrs. Walsh held court in her suite, swathed in ermine wraps, her nails
painted to match the color of her dress. Her guests, who included theater stars
and singers, sat on brocade Edwardian sofas, among tables crammed with Chinese
lamps and tiny animal figurines. As drinks flowed, Mrs. Walsh’s food
consumption — or lack thereof — was a source of constant speculation. “Clara
Bell Walsh would like to live on a diet of Kentucky products but finds a lack
of necessary vitamins in ham and bourbon exclusively,” Mr. Beebe quipped.
When she
wasn’t entertaining celebrities, Mrs. Walsh frequented the Persian Room, the
Plaza’s nightclub, where she was such a notable presence in the front row that
Kay Thompson, the performer who later wrote the “Eloise” books, co-opted
several of her idiosyncrasies. When Ms. Thompson’s 6-year-old alter ego had her
hair done in one book, it was at the men’s barbershop in the Plaza’s lobby,
where Mrs. Walsh had hers done. Ms. Thompson also liked to go out with two red
dots on her eyelids that would flash when she blinked, a nod to Mrs. Walsh’s
habit of attending dinner parties with fake eyes painted on her eyelids.
But while
Mrs. Walsh was undoubtedly a grande dame of the widows, she is not the best
remembered. That dubious honor is reserved for Fannie Lowenstein, the most
cantankerous of the widows, who arrived at the Plaza in 1958 as a young
divorcée and soon met a fellow hotel resident who became her second husband.
Not only did her new husband have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, but
even better, he also had one of the few rent-controlled Plaza apartments.
When her
husband died, Mrs. Lowenstein continued to live in splendor in their three-room
suite, paying just $800 a month for rooms that might have rented for more than
$1,250 a night. She couldn’t be evicted, so the Plaza staff treated her with
extreme deference, fearful of provoking one of her tantrums.
When she
arrived for dinner in the evening, a waiter would take her regular order of
asparagus soup and Hennessy cognac, while the musicians would stop whatever
they were playing and the violinist would serenade her with the theme song from
the Broadway musical “Fanny.”
Stories
about Mrs. Lowenstein are plentiful, but one of the most frequently recounted
is about the time she came down to the Palm Court during Sunday brunch and, in
a fit of pique at the management over some perceived slight, relieved herself
on the rug in front of a shocked crowd.
When Donald
J. Trump bought the Plaza in 1988, Mrs. Lowenstein was still alive, one of a
handful of widows who remained. The future 45th president of the United States
paid more than $400 million for the hotel — a record-shattering $495,000 per
hotel room — before losing it in a bankruptcy three years later. In the
beginning, Mr. Trump’s most difficult tenant seemed content. But the honeymoon
was short-lived, and it wasn’t long before the new owner had run afoul of the
demanding doyenne.
Months into
his tenure as owner, Mrs. Lowenstein began complaining of what she called
“indoor air pollution” in her rooms. She insisted that it was causing her
curtains to shrink and her Steinway grand piano to grow mold. She mounted an
assault on the ownership, repeatedly calling the city to register complaints.
Soon, inspectors were writing increasingly urgent missives to management.
At the time,
Mr. Trump was involved in a messy divorce from his first wife, Ivana, amid
rumors that he was having an affair with Marla Maples, who would become his
second wife. “Ivana and Marla have been a lot to handle,” Mr. Trump told The
National Enquirer at the time, “but my relationships with them have been smooth
as silk in comparison to my contacts with Fannie Lowenstein. When she’s done
with me, I’m soaked in sweat!”
If Mrs.
Lowenstein managed to lock horns with a future president, Princess Vilma did
not show similar gumption in her day. The future princess was a noted portrait
painter as a young woman in Berlin, where she had her own studio and did a
brisk business capturing the likenesses of a stream of European aristocracy,
most notably the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. Her relationship with him spurred
much gossip, The New York Times reported in a profile published when she was
not yet 30, noting that “sneers were cast at her work and at her personally,”
although the same article also called her “a talent decidedly above the
commonplace.”
When
Princess Vilma arrived at the Plaza in 1909, she came with a retinue that
included three French maids, a first, second and third attaché, a marshal, a
courier, a butler and a chef. But that wasn’t all. A private bodyguard —
dressed in a tall hat with a plume of feathers and a ceremonial sword — led a
menagerie that included one white, yapping dog, two guinea pigs, an ibis, a
falcon, several owls and a family of alligators. Eventually, a pet lion joined
the veritable zoo.
By then, she
had been divorced twice, most recently from a minor Russian prince, from whom
she received her title. She began advertising her portraiture services in New
York, and one of her first clients was Maj. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles. A
92-year-old veteran of the Civil War, General Sickles had lost a leg fighting
at Gettysburg. (He saved the limb and later sent it to Washington, where it was
displayed as part of a museum exhibition.)
One day soon
after Princess Vilma finished painting General Sickles’s portrait, the pair
attended the Ringling Brothers Circus at Madison Square Garden. There, she fell
in love with a baby lion, and the general promptly bought the lion for her.
Named General Sickles, in honor of his patron, the lion lived in the bathtub of
her Plaza suite until he outgrew it and the hotel’s patience. The lion was then
sent to the Bronx Zoo and after he died, Princess Vilma had him buried at a pet
cemetery in Westchester.
No one knew
where the princess’s money came from, but in 1914, when World War I broke out
in Europe, her once-abundant wealth suddenly vanished. Soon after, she was
dogged by her lawyer, banker and the stables where she boarded her horses, for
nonpayment. She fled, leaving her Plaza suite, an unpaid bill for $12,000 and
numerous belongings behind. In 1923, she died in a cramped room on East 39th
Street, surrounded by her unsold artwork and a single maid for a companion,
with a line of creditors waiting outside her door.
But while
the once glamorous Princess Vilma came to a sad end, the tales of the widows of
the Plaza, like the hotel itself, have endured.
Julie Satow
is the author of “The Plaza: The Secret Life of America’s Most Famous Hotel.”
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