No. 16

HOTELS No. 16

In forging his chain of 15 hotels, big, bounding Conrad N. Hilton, 62, bought such landmarks as Chicago's huge (2,700 rooms) Stevens, Manhattan's dignified old Plaza, and Los Angeles' flashy Town House. But Connie Hilton still wasn't satisfied. He wanted to own Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria.

Though the Waldorf is smaller (1,900 rooms) than the Stevens and short of the Plaza's leisurely charm, it is the greatest hotel in the world to Hilton, as to almost everyone else.

It is where the Big Four Foreign Ministers met in 1946, where the biggest conventions and the biggest testimonial dinners are held, where the biggest auto and fashion shows and debutante parties are put on, and where princes and potentates make their homes away from home. Once, so the story goes, there were so many members of reigning or deposed royalty at the hotel that a telephone operator, asked if "the king" was still there, casually replied: "Which one? We seem to have several."

The Goal. Hilton began eyeing the Waldorf in 1942 when he bought a batch of Hotel Waldorf-Astoria Corp. bonds with a face value of $500,000 for $22,500, or 4-c- on the dollar. A few years later, after the bonds had soared, he sold out at a profit of $412,000 to raise cash to buy Chicago's Palmer House. But he never forgot his goal. Last week, Connie Hilton proudly announced that he had reached it. Both he and the Waldorf's stockholders had signed the deal, and barring "a fire, an atom bomb or a nuisance suit," the Waldorf would become No. 16 in the Hilton chain this week.

Hilton thought he had picked up a bargain. For a mere $3,000,000, Hilton Hotels Corp. and half a dozen outside associates will acquire 70% of the common stock in a building which cost $26 million to build and furnish in 1931. (He also acquired $5,700,000 in bonded debt.)

Of the building fund, a Wall Street banking group raised $11 million. The New York Central put up the land and with the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad another $10 million more. (As a big New York Central stockholder, which now gets a yearly rental for the land on Park Ave., Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, grande dame of Manhattan's social world, will, in effect, be one of Connie Hilton's new landlords.)

New Campaign. Though the new hotel's fame quickly spread, it has never been a big moneymaker. In its first ten years it lost $12 million. Last year, the Waldorf managed to net $657,981 on a gross of $18.7 million. But the profit percentage is slipping. For the first eight months of 1949, the Waldorf grossed $11.8 million, netted only $344,700.

To make the Waldorf more profitable, Hilton plans no cut in its present service. But he hopes to keep occupancy at a peak by feeding it business from his hotels outside New York. And, by giving the stately pile a warmer atmosphere, he hopes it will appeal not only to potentates--but to ordinary travelers as well.

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