The Boston Museum of Fine Arts occupied this site in Copley Square until 1909, when the museum relocated a mile down the street to Huntington Avenue, its collection hauled over by dozens of horse-drawn carts. Architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, already known for designing New York’s Plaza Hotel and Washington’s Willard, took over the vacated lot and built a limestone and buff-brick Renaissance Revival hotel atop 8,000 wooden pilings driven 70 feet into the former wetland.
When the Copley Plaza opened August 8, 1912, rooms had been booked solid sixteen months in advance, and Boston mayor John F. Fitzgerald, grandfather of a future president, presided over the formal opening reception for more than a thousand guests. Painter John Singer Sargent is said to have watched from a corner table as artisans painted the Oval Room’s sky mural, eventually climbing the scaffolding himself to add an angel that remained hidden there until a 1940s renovation painted over it. The hotel became the first in Boston to be fully air-conditioned and among the first anywhere to accept credit cards.