American Hustle | Fairmont Copley Plaza — Twenty-One Feet of Gilded Ceiling for a Victory Lap

Henry Janeway Hardenbergh built this hotel at 138 St. James Avenue in 1912, five years after he finished the Plaza in New York, and the family resemblance is unmistakable. Irving and Sydney celebrate an early score by moving through the lobby: five thousand square feet of it, a coffered gilded ceiling twenty-one feet overhead, Italian marble columns, Empire crystal chandeliers, and the hotel's back-to-back P monogram worked quietly into the detailing.

The camera never has to sell the wealth. The room does that unassisted. What sharpens the scene is who is walking through it — two broke frauds crossing the most expensive-looking interior in Boston as though the deed were in their pocket. The con, compressed into a stroll.

The lobby is open to anyone. You do not need a reservation to come in off St. James Avenue, sit down, and order a coffee. Look up before you sit; then find the monogram, doubled back on itself so it reads the same from either side. It is exactly the kind of small, unnecessary, perfectly confident flourish a forger would admire.