The Pierre Resort: 95 Years of Luxurious, Scandal and Superstar

The Early Days: A Playground for Manhattan’s Elite

When The Pierre Resort opened on October 1, 1930, casting its 714-room shadow over Central Park, it immediately grew to become the playground for Manhattan’s elite. Merely 4 months later, E.B. White’s Ballad of the Resort Pierre was revealed within the New Yorker, describing it as dwelling to “The little band that nothing daunts/this 12 months’s hottest debutantes.” This was true. Potential debutantes had began reserving the ballroom for his or her November entrances in June, months earlier than the luxurious resort opened. 

Inside a 12 months, the movie and stage star Ina Claire was sinking right into a membership chair on the resort as she mentioned with journalists whether or not she can be divorcing John Gilbert. (She claimed she wouldn’t. She would.) In 1932, Coco Chanel known as The Pierre dwelling throughout her first go to to New York. And that very same 12 months, the famed “Tobacco King” Arthur Mower refused to go away his Pierre mattress for his stepdaughter’s early morning marriage ceremony . 

Little surprise nobody wished to go away. Each inch of the 41-story resort provided an virtually otherworldly spectacle. The 60-by-100-foot ballroom the place these debutantes waltzed was paneled in mirrors flanked by rose marble columns imported from French quarries. The chandeliers above sparkled with traces of ruby crystals from the room that will turn into recognized for the “swankest presentation balls” given for town’s “spoiled darlings.” Attendees would possibly make their technique to the Grill Room, which was embellished to resemble an “undersea backyard.” Wall panels and ceiling murals replicated ocean foliage, and the carpet was woven with photos of seashells and sea urchins. Within the upstairs eating room, paneled in hand-carved French walnut, interspersed with gold brocade hangings, Auguste Escoffier, the daddy of French cooking, ready the resort’s first meal.

From Waiter to Hotelier: The Story of Charles Pierre

However The Pierre didn’t start in these gilded rooms. It started in a kitchen, with a Corsican waiter named Charles Pierre Casalasco, who discovered the commerce from his father. When Louis Sherry dined on the Savoy Resort in London in 1903, the American restaurateur famous a younger waiter watching him with keen consideration. Casalasco was “awed by this former waiter who had turn into proprietor of a sensible eating room in New York.” Sherry was so impressed with the waiter’s want to be taught extra in regards to the hospitality enterprise that, when he returned to New York, he made Casalasco his assistant. There, the waiter rapidly dropped his surname in favor of being recognized merely as Charles Pierre. At the moment, it was virtually a forgone conclusion that New York’s debutantes had been launched at Sherry’s ballroom. Charles Pierre, tasked with organizing these splendid occasions, grew to become “the favourite of the youthful set, married matrons and the dowagers.” 

When Charles Pierre opened his personal Park Avenue restaurant in 1920, his devoted group adopted him. In 1930, their social set husbands, like Walter Chrysler, Edward Hutton, and C.Ok.G. Billings, helped finance his dream, The Pierre Resort, which apparently price a staggering $15 million to construct. On reflection, an excessive amount of could have been spent on these underwater-themed murals. By 1932, in the course of the Nice Melancholy, a petition of chapter was filed—however Charles Pierre was stored on as managing director to run the resort. 

Disciplined and educated with a European aptitude, Charles Pierre ran the resort with aplomb.

The Return of the ‘Excessive-Class Resort’

When the repeal of Prohibition got here in 1933, he rejoiced. No resort man was extra excited by the prospect of liquor coming again on the menu once more. He declared that Prohibition had destroyed American appreciation for wine—and actually any liquor that didn’t come from a bath. Now, a “new era should be taught once more the best way to drink.” He supposed to outfit The Pierre with a beautiful cellar to show them. He deliberate gala celebrations. Individuals may now collect for cocktails at his newly opened supper membership, the Corinthian Room. He promised, “The following few years will see the rejuvenation of the high-class resort.” 

He was right. However sadly, Charles Pierre would by no means see the heights to which his resort would climb. He handed away in 1934 on the age of 55 from appendicitis. He was too weak from an stomach an infection to be saved by medication flown in from Florida in what was described as a “13-hour airplane race towards demise.”  

However his legacy lived on in The Pierre Resort.

Celebrities like Joan Crawford and Claudette Colbert would flock there, in addition to youthful disciples. By 1938, following her father’s demise, the 13-year-old heiress Lucetta Cotton Thomas was spending $1,416 a month (roughly $32,000 immediately) to reside on the resort. Eloise at The Plaza had nothing on her. By that point, the resort belonged to oilman John Paul Getty, who quipped that it was his “solely above-ground asset.” 

In 1944, the resort—and the room costs—had been the topic of scandal. It was discovered that munitions producer Murray Garsson had housed and paid the resort payments for key personnel within the military’s Chemical Warfare Service in what was generally known as “Operation Pierre.” In 1942, the decorator Samuel Marx had redone the resort’s eating room in pink, white and blue, and commissioned murals of early American life for the Grill Room, so it was definitely a patriotic wartime decide. Nonetheless, officers knew that, when touring to New York Metropolis, that they had a $6 day by day stipend. As even younger Lucetta Cotton Thomas may have informed them, rooms on the Pierre price considerably extra. Garsson could have obtained $78 million in authorities contracts, however was imprisoned for bribery in 1949. Nonetheless, nobody on the trials stated that they didn’t like staying at The Pierre.   

Fifties Glamour and The Birdcage Bar

By the Fifties, the resort had reached new heights of glamour. Chief among the many novelties was The Birdcage, a plexiglass bar suspended above the rotunda. It was splashily marketed as “a rendezvous for cocktails.” Charles Pierre, who as soon as prophesied that folks would flock to his resort for drinks, would have been happy.  

Within the coming years, the resort wouldn’t solely be dwelling to town’s toniest residents, however Hollywood royalty. Joan Blondell famous that, when her canine “gave start to seven puppies, the supervisor of the Pierre resort assisted the vet in supply.” Audrey Hepburn stayed there all through the filming of that quintessential New York film, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Throughout these years, she was feted on the resort with a gala hosted by Countess Alexandra Tolstoy. The assembly would encourage one among her future roles in Conflict and Peace.  

The truth that in 1958 the resort grew to become a co-op, the place friends may purchase residences, solely added to its enchantment. Particularly as these condominium homeowners included Aristotle Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor, the considered visiting New York from Center America could have been thrilling by itself. The considered operating into Elizabeth Taylor within the foyer of the resort you had been staying at was virtually overwhelming.

Jewel Heists and Vogue Royalty

By 1967, the resort underwent a change additionally match for royalty. The brand new proprietor, Peter Dowling, commissioned Edward Melcarth to color the rotunda’s iconic trompe l’oeil mural. Impressed by Seventeenth-century palaces, Melcarth claimed that he wished to “make individuals really feel very particular and necessary once they stroll into this room. The figures are heroic in scale as a result of I wish to rehumanize man as a person. We’re not digits on a pc card.” The individuals within the mural, accordingly, weren’t confined to the previous. The portray options columns and Greek gods in recline, alongside “a hippie boy and mini-skirted lady” meant to depict a contemporary Adam and Eve. Relatively to her shock, Melcarth’s mural additionally boasted an outline of former First Woman Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. (Kennedy requested to be faraway from the image. Melcarth accommodated by partially disguising her, however a discerning customer can nonetheless spot her picture.)

Guests would get a much less agreeable thrill when burglars broke into the resort on January 2, 1972. On that day, 4 reportedly well-dressed gunmen pulled as much as the resort in a limousine. They handcuffed quite a lot of staff and friends. After, they proceeded to wash out 47 protected deposit containers containing roughly $3 million in jewels, earlier than departing, once more, in a limousine. The lads had been arrested inside every week, and the jewels recovered, although police recalled it as being one among “the largest and slickest resort robberies ever.”

The flurry of reportage across the jewel theft solely elevated the resort’s attract to the trendy set. In 1970, the designer Karl Lagerfeld, a habitué of the resort, would say, “I found New York from The Pierre . . . Distances within the metropolis had been measured solely by how far they had been from The Pierre.” He didn’t should go far to see his associates. Givency, Yves Saint Laurent and Valentino had been all regulars—Valentino even purchased St. Laurent’s Pierre condominium in 2007. 

Pat Nixon, to not be outdone by Jackie, had designers carry their creations to her whereas staying in a collection on the resort. In 1975, Betty Ford went to see the primary Chanel Vogue present within the nation, held, predictably, on the resort Coco herself had beloved. By 1976, Jackie Kennedy was on the premises as soon as extra, this time with Valentino for his present benefiting the Particular Olympics. Tv Dynasty star Joan Collins showcased her hats on the resort in 1985, with Andy Warhol in attendance. The hats had been beautiful, however did immediate a reporter to surprise, “When, moreover for lunch on the Pierre, would somebody put on a big straw hat?” This appeared as a lot an inducement for a lot of to lunch at The Pierre because it was for them to cast off hats.

The Pierre on the Silver Display

By the Nineties, the resort once more discovered itself linked to Hollywood, though this time in entrance of the scenes. Al Pacino twirled in The Pierre ballroom for the famed tango scene in 1995’s Scent of a Girl. The penthouse served because the Anthony Hopkins character’s dwelling in 1998’s Meet Joe Black. And, following the $100 million renovation The Pierre underwent in 2013, it was featured within the heist film Ocean’s 8. Contemplating its legacy, there may definitely be no extra becoming resort for a movie a couple of group of well-dressed feminine jewel thieves. 

Right this moment, the resort is celebrating 95 years, an admirable accomplishment in a metropolis the place new institutions appear to pop up nightly. Maybe a part of its success has to do with the respect its homeowners have proven in the direction of its storied legacy. Proper now, the restaurant gives a tribute to Auguste Escoffier, and the mural, lovingly repainted in 2016, ensures that the rotunda is taken into account one of the vital romantic rooms in New York. The small print and homeowners could have modified, however The Pierre stays as glamorous and beloved because it was by these long-ago debutantes and Charles Pierre Casalasco himself.