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 Paderewski. The Master. Born in 1860, he was nothing less than a genius. A renaissance man, pianist, composer and the first Prime Minister of a free Poland, he was a man of world-wide fame and respect. On his death on June 29, 1941, he was given the honor of burial in Arlington National Cemetery by decree of President Roosevelt. Decades later, he fulfilled his wish of being buried in a free Poland.
Friend to Presidents, the charismatic Paderewski began as a penniless boy who wanted to play the piano. As a result of his father's banishment to Siberia for his remarks about Russian rule, Paderewski found himself, at age seventeen, touring Russia in the dead of winter performing his first concert tour.
Ultimately, his concerts in Vienna, Berlin, Paris and London caught the attention of the Steinways, who brought him to New York in 1891, where he gave his first United States performance at the brand new Carnegie Hall.
 At the turn of the century, Ignacy Jan Paderewski's name was a household word in the United States and, to many Americans, their only association with Poland. For the next 50 years he gave over 1,500 concerts in the U.S., appearing in every state and drawing the largest crowds in history, at a time when the solo recital was still in its infancy.
He traveled throughout the country in his private railroad car carrying his own Steinway piano. Entire towns would wait for his train's arrival and after the performance would refuse to go home until Maestro Paderewski had played encore after encore. Paderewski, one of the last "Romantic" pianists after Chopin and Liszt, excelled in the art of producing varied tones, never before dreamt of in a piano.
 Paderewski never forgot America's generosity to a then-stateless artist. In 1917, Paderewski, the proud Polish patriot, utilized his name recognition and reputation to advocate for his country's freedom. He traveled the world preaching Poland's right to independence and self-determination. In the United States, President Woodrow Wilson became Paderewski's political ally and Poland's defender.
Paderewski's official memorandum on Poland, delivered to the President, resulted in Point Thirteen of President Woodrow Wilson's Proclamation, which insured a new, united, independent, and autonomous Poland after World War I. In 1919, the Versailles Peace Treaty recognizing Poland's independence was signed by Ignacy Jan Paderewski as the reborn nation's first Prime Minister. For the next two decades, he was active on the international political stage.
In September 1939, after 20 years of independence and peaceful growth, Poland was invaded by Hitler and Stalin, marking the beginning of World War II. The 79-year old Maestro Paderewski became President of the exiled Polish National Council in London. Although in ill health, he returned to the United States—where he would remain until the end—to lobby for the causes of his homeland and to raise funds for the Polish Army. He donated all of his concert proceeds towards Poland's war efforts and mobilized millions of Polish-Americans to join him. He was always welcome at the White House and often conferred with President Roosevelt.
 The Great Patriot died on June 29, 1941 in New York at the Buckingham Hotel. He was 81 years old. He lay in state at the Hotel, and it is said that the lines of people coming to view his body extended across 57th Street and down 5th Avenue.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered Paderewski's body buried at Arlington National Cemetery until it could be returned to a free Poland. Over 50 years later, after the downfall of communism in Poland, the Great Pole's body was returned to his homeland in 1992 for a state funeral and burial at Warsaw's St. John's Cathedral. His heart, however, both literally and figuratively, remained in his beloved United States, entombed at the Shrine of the Black Madonna in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
Paderewski was the man whom President Franklin Delano Roosevelt described as a "modern immortal." Pianist and composer, orator, patriot and statesman, Ignacy Jan Paderewski became a legend during his lifetime. His heritage of artistic genius and devotion to human causes lives on, both in Poland and in the United States.
The relationship between Paderewski, Steinway, and Carnegie Hall made the Buckingham Hotel the obvious choice for his visits: Steinway Hall was next door and Carnegie Hall just across the street. It offered Paderewski spacious accommodations, "peace and quiet" and delicious food, according to both his notes and those who traveled with him.
He and his entourage took an entire floor at the Buckingham. Upon his death in 1941, the furnishings from Paderewski's suite at the Buckingham, along with many of his personal effects, were donated to the Polish Museum of America in Chicago where his Buckingham suite has been faithfully recreated down to Buckingham Hotel china and silver, the desk from which he made his famous NBC broadcast, and the great man's remaining cigarettes.
In the tradition of Paderewski's establishment of the Paderewski Fund to support the development of musical composition by assisting needy musicians, the Buckingham Hotel has established The Buckingham Prize for the Expression of Music Through Art, a juried art competition (in co-sponsorship with the New York Studio School and the Art Students League), awarding monetary prizes for paintings which best visualize music in all its forms. The great soprano Regina Resnik, long married to painter Arbit Blatas and herself a stage designer and film auteur, is serving as one of the judges. The first Buckingham Prize winners were announced in the Fall of 2003.
Much of this biography is courtesy of the Polish National Alliance.
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