At The Plaza

The Plaza Lighted for the Hudson-Fulton Celebration

A glorious burst of civic pride, the Hudson-Fulton Celebration captivated New Yorkers over a two-week period, which began on September 25, 1909. Although the festivities ostensibly honored two significant marine events—Henry Hudson’s discovery of the Hudson River in 1609 and Robert Fulton’s steamboat trip up the river in 1807—they really seemed an excuse to let off some patriotic steam.

The city pulled out all the stops. Innumerable dinners, elaborate parades, special art exhibits, and nightly fireworks thrilled the populace. An armada of eight hundred vessels from around the world conducted maneuvers in the harbor. Wilbur Wright brought his aeroplane to New York and made the first flight over Manhattan, from Governors Island to Grant’s Tomb and back again. But most stirring for the general public was the illumination of the city, turning New York into Coney Island. (Electric light was still enough of a novelty at the time to be wondrous.) Bridges, public monuments, and many private buildings joined together to create a “City of Light.”

The Plaza was among them, and its illumination was dazzling, even if some of the lights in the photographs shown here appear to be courtesy of a retoucher. The hotel itself was the center of much activity: It was host to the official representatives of the Netherlands (whose gift to the city was a full-size replica of Hudson’s ship, the Half Moon), and it had its own reviewing stand for parade watchers, constructed on the hotel’s northeast corner.

Here, the northern facade illuminated in a photograph by Jessie Tarbox Beals, the first female photojounalist. Beals’s picture is the only record of The Plaza bearing a sign with its name in electric lights (along the roofline).