American Hustle | The Plaza Hotel — Fifth Avenue Frontage for a Mayor's First Handshake

Irving meets Carmine Polito here, and the address is doing work before either man opens his mouth. The Plaza is where American money goes to be photographed. Hardenbergh opened it in 1907 facing Grand Army Plaza at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street: marble at the base, white brick above, loggias and balustrades and balconies and arches stacked up the elevation until the building runs out of ideas at the roofline and simply keeps going.

The columned central entrance is not original. It arrived in 1921, replacing a terrace called the Champagne Porch, six Tuscan columns carrying a balcony with paired Corinthian pilasters above. The film's interiors were built on a Woburn soundstage, so what you see on screen is the outside — doormen, cars, the avenue.

Go in regardless. The Palm Court sits at the center of the ground floor: Caen stone walls, mosaic floor, marble columns with bronze capitals, all under a stained-glass ceiling that was torn out in a 1940s renovation and remade in the mid-2000s. A copy of the original, standing in the original's place, admired by everyone. The movie would approve.