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NEW
YORK CITY
 
THE PIERRE
795 Fifth Avenue
The Pierre, which the New Yorker magazine once described as a
“millionaires’ Elysium.”
The Pierre, at Fifth Avenue and 61st Street, has the look of a French
chateau, if a French chateau were 41 stories tall. It was opened in 1930 by
a former headwaiter named Charles Pierre Casalasco who had managed to get
the backing of such financiers as E. F. Hutton and Walter P. Chrysler.
For decades, the Pierre has been a favorite of people who had little in
common except a taste for luxury, including Audrey Hepburn, William S. Paley
and Mikhail Gorbachev.
And then there was Frank Sinatra, who was unintimidated by the hotel’s
hushed elegance. An aide would circulate among the hotel staff with a
fistful of $100 bills for tips. What’s this for? a few would say. The aide
would shrug and say, “Mr. Frank is here.”
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