"It has felt like 5:30 P.M. in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel for nearly 90 years now. While the city changes around it, the Algonquin just goes on and on in chronic, romantic twilight, haunted by some lost souls who ate es at a certain a long time ago. But even the Algonquin changes hands every 40 years or so. In 1987, the , a Tokyo-based hotel group that also owns , bought the Algonquin for $30 million. The sale prompted relatively little of the usual xenophobic hand-wringing. What little there was seemed to occur in the Algonquin lobby. ... Each room is stocked with recent issues of '."