Charles Pierre Casalasco left his father's restaurant in Ajaccio, Corsica, where he had started as a busboy, assumed Charles Pierre as his full professional name, and began work at the Hotel Anglais in Monte Carlo.

Charles Pierre went on to study haute cuisine in Paris, and he later traveled to London where he met the American restaurateur, Louis Sherry, who offered him a position. After Pierre arrived in New York as a 25-year-old immigrant, he made his first mark as first assistant at Sherry's Restaurant and became professionally acquainted with members of the Social Register, as well as newer millionaires like J. P. Morgan and the Vanderbilts. After nine years at Sherry's, Pierre left, first for the Ritz-Carlton on Madison Avenue at 46th Street, then opening his own restaurant on 45th Street immediately west of Fifth Avenue, and finally at Pierre's on Park at 230 Park Avenue.

At the height of his success, dissatisfied with the increasing democratization of public manners, Pierre sold his restaurant and entered a joint venture with a group of Wall Street financiers, "among them Otto H. Kahn, Finley J. Shepherd (who had married Helen Gould), Edward F. Hutton, Walter P. Chrysler, and Robert Livingston Gerry, Sr. (the son of Elbridge Thomas Gerry, lawyer, philanthropist and grandson of Elbridge Gerry, the inventor of 'Gerrymandering')".

The 714-room hotel that rose 41 stories on the site of the Gerry mansion at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 61st Street allowed for unrestricted views of Central Park. It cost $15 million (approximately $200 million in 2021) to build and opened to grand fanfare in October 1930 as The Pierre. The building was designed by the New York firm of Schultze and Weaver as a skyscraper that rises in a blond-brick shaft from a limestone-fronted Louis XVI base. Its topmost floors render it an easily recognizable landmark on the New York skyline; they are modeled after Mansart's Royal Chapel at Versailles, a system of Corinthian pilasters and arch-headed windows, with octagonal ends, under a tall, slanted, copper roof that is pierced with bronze-finished bull's-eye dormers. New York society turned out to attend the gala dinner that marked the opening of The Pierre; it was prepared by Auguste Escoffier, "the father of French chefs", who served as a guest chef at The Pierre in its early years.

As markets continued to collapse during the Great Depression, The Pierre went into bankruptcy in 1932. The oilman, J. Paul Getty, bought it for about $2.5 million in 1938 (approximately $38.4 million in 2021) and subsequently sold many cooperative apartments in the building.

Beginning in 1948, New York City's ABC television and FM radio station (then called WJZ-TV Channel 7 and WJZ-FM 95.5, now WABC-TV and WPLJ) broadcast from a tower atop The Pierre, until moving to the Empire State Building a few years later.

President-elect Richard M. Nixon stayed at The Pierre for several months in 1968-69 before moving to Washington, D.C.

The Pierre was the scene of the Pierre Hotel robbery in 1972, organized by the Lucchese crime family. This robbery of $27 million would later be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest, most successful hotel robbery in history.

Today, the hotel contains 189 guest accommodations, including 49 suites, of which 11 are grand suites. Dining options in the hotel include Perrine restaurant, The Rotunda and Two E Lounge.