Leona Helmsley Stops Halfway Before Return to Lap of Luxury : Manhattan hotel she stayed at can claim no ‘Queen Standing Guard.’ But she added touches.

Well before her quiet checkout from Le Marquis Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, the furor had faded.

The owner of the Kin Yip Restaurant across 31st Street no longer was interviewed by reporters from as far away as Paris. Next door to Kin Yip, the big green-and-black welcoming sign was gone from the front window of the Empire Hardware & Electric Co.

When Leona Helmsley left Le Marquis, which served as her halfway house after federal prison, she returned to the lap of luxury. What remains are memories of her presence and two plastic trees--chained down beside the front door--that were purchased by management to honor her arrival.

But she has not severed her ties completely. Twice a week, Helmsley, 73, the wife of real estate magnate Harry Helmsley, still must return to the halfway house for counseling sessions on how to re-establish roots in the community.

Clearly, it was Dickensian irony for Helmsley, the ultimate perfectionist, who would blanch and shout if a pillowcase was torn or a light bulb was out in the hotels she managed, to have to spend a month at Le Marquis--a hotel whose name, permanent residents say, promises a grandeur no longer found in its rooms, lobby or hallways.

Not that Helmsley, whom New York tabloids attacked as the “Queen of Mean” before her conviction on income tax evasion, wasn’t a polite guest.

“Everyone says she’s very nice,” said a local merchant who sells food to a steady stream of halfway house inmates.

An elderly man, a permanent resident of the hotel, who declined to give his name, volunteered that he had actually stopped and chatted with Helmsley for a brief moment in the lobby.

“I said, ‘good morning,’ and she said ‘good morning’ back,” the resident said. “She was with one of her bodyguards.”

Some residents wondered whether Helmsley hadn’t learned, out of practicality, to erect a pleasant facade during her 30-month sentence. In prison, she worked in the clothing department mending inmates’ uniforms.

At Le Marquis, her ninth-floor room, best described as browbeaten Bauhaus, was a Spartan chamber with a government-standard metal-frame bed, fire-retardant sheets, a dresser and some folding chairs. Because of concern that other parolees might pester Helmsley, a guard was stationed in the hallway.

In addition to residing in decor common to the 248 other federal halfway houses throughout the nation, Helmsley and the other parolees (clients is the preferred term) at the hotel had to adhere to strict rules and a curfew, and to sign in and out. There were regular checks for drugs and alcohol and mandatory group meetings to attend.

The woman whose reputation as an arbiter of impeccable taste, whose hotel ads once proclaimed “The Queen Stands Guard,” suffered the indignity of having her room and bathroom, like all of the others, inspected for neatness.

That is not to say grandeur didn’t once reside at the hotel. Before it became a halfway house, President Theodore Roosevelt slept at Le Marquis. Some tenants remember the bygone days--when the hotel catered to writers and artists, when there was a regular restaurant and bar.

But grandeur took a hike. Permanent residents also remember the days before the federal prison system took over several floors, when Le Marquis was a drug-ridden welfare hotel. Elevators were used as garbage dumps, mail chutes were stuffed with trash, fire extinguishers were emptied by children who also rode skateboards and bicycles in the hallways--sometimes at 2 o’clock in the morning.

Those days are gone but lesser tensions remain. Many permanent residents, whose apartments are rent controlled, fear the hotel’s management secretly wants to push them out so more rooms can be rented to the federal prison system at higher rates.

And there still are complaints about what happened on Oct. 27, when Helmsley arrived. Hordes of reporters camped out on the street. Security guards ordered the hotel’s windows shut.

But as the days passed, Helmsley’s presence became almost routine.

One permanent resident said he even went to the hotel’s management and suggested that Helmsley be hired as a decorative consultant.

“She was very methodical about the towels matching,” he said.

After about a month at Le Marquis, officials allowed Helmsley to move back to her luxurious apartment in Manhattan’s Park Lane Hotel. Inmates not posing a threat to society who can support themselves can be allowed to serve the last 10% of their sentences at home.

There are still restrictions on travel and on the time that she must be in her own apartment. She also must attend group meetings at Le Marquis twice a week. For the next three years, she must do community service.

But at least her towels are perfectly folded and matched.