Savoy Plaza Hotel 1930s

Built in 1928 for the developer Harry Black, the twenty-nine-story Savoy-Plaza was a late, tepid design by McKim, Mead & White. But it was grand, and helped define the space of Grand Army Plaza, arguably New York’s most successful public square, ringed by the Squibb Building, Bergdorf-Goodman, the Metropolitan Club, and the Plaza, Pierre and Sherry Netherland Hotels—which were all generally white or beige. The W. P. A. Guide to New York City of 1939 praised the “extraordinary unity” of the surrounding buildings.   Sixty-somethings and tiki-tiki aficionados know it as the original location of Trader Vic’s, purveyor of Fogcutters, Po-Po, Cho-Cho, and other exotic foods, with outriggers, spears, grass roofs, and other Polynesian decoration overhead. Alas, the 1960s saw the ascent of Hilton-tacky in hotel design, and the thick walls, elegant spaces, and solid materials of the 1920’s hotels seemed drastically old-fashioned. Thus, when an investment group came down the pike in 1964, the