whose subsidiaries included the Fuller Company and the Plaza Realty Company. To acquire sufficient funding for the redevelopment, Black and Beinecke approached barbed-wire entrepreneur John Warne Gates, who agreed to fund the project on the condition that Frederic Sterry be named the managing director of the hotel. Construction Henry J. Hardenbergh was hired as architect in 1905, initially being commissioned to expand the existing hotel by five stories. Hardenbergh had already gained some renown for designing other upscale hotels, such as the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, twenty-five blocks south, during the 1890s. Beinecke, Black, and Gates subsequently discovered that the foundation of the existing hotel could not support the additional stories, so they decided to rebuild it completely. The George A. Fuller Company was contracted to construct the new hotel. Hardenbergh designed the new hotel building while the owners waited for the existing lease to expire. His design took advantage of the fact that the site faced Grand Army Plaza and could thus be seen from many angles. The first Plaza Hotel was closed on June 11, 1905, and demolition commenced immediately upon the expiration of the lease there. The existing hotel's furnishings were auctioned immediately. The site was cleared within two months of the start of demolition. Hardenbergh filed plans for the hotel with the New York City Department of Buildings that September. By the next month, contractors were clearing the old hotel's foundation. The new hotel was to use of steel, and a group of 100 workers and seven derricks erected two stories of steelwork every six days. The Fuller Company decided to hire both union and non-union ironworkers for the hotel's construction, a decision that angered the union workers. Patrolmen were hired to protect the non-union workers, and one patrolmen was killed during a dispute with union workers. By October 1906, the facade of the new hotel was under construction. Hardenbergh and Sterry directed several firms to furnish the interior spaces. Sterry recalled that all of the interior features were custom-designed for the hotel, such as 1,650 crystal chandeliers and the largest-ever order of gold-rimmed cutlery. Much of the furniture was manufactured by the Pooley Company of Philadelphia; where the Pooley Company could not manufacture the furnishings, the Plaza's developers chartered ships to import material from Europe. Sterry himself was dispatched to Europe to purchase these materials. The developers anticipated that the hotel would cost $8.5 million to