Word: biggest
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Died. Frank Chambless Rand, 73, onetime president (1916-30) and board chairman (since 1930) of International Shoe Co., biggest in the U.S. (it makes more than 11% of all U.S. shoes); in St. Louis...
World's Biggest. It was by equally shrewd deals that Connie Hilton had become the world's biggest hotelman. His 13 hotels in the U.S., Mexico and Puerto Rico-ranging from a small hotel in Lubbock, Texas to Manhattan's famed Waldorf-Astoria-have an estimated worth of $125 million and a replacement value of $175 million. He employs 11,250 people, and likes to boast that in his 12,500 rooms he "could sleep in a different bed every night for 40 years...
White Elephant. In Chicago, Hilton ran into tradition of another kind. For years the $30 million Stevens, world's biggest (3,000 rooms) hotel, had stood like a half-filled honeycomb as a monument to the folly of its builders. The Army used it as a barracks at the beginning of the war, and in 1943 Chicago Contractor Stephen Healy bought the white elephant and caught Hilton's eye by making it pay in the war boom that was suddenly filling all hotels. But when Hilton began to bargain for the Stevens, he met his match in Healy...
...that he also wanted the dignified old Palmer House, which was as dear to the hearts of Chicago's Gold Coast as the Plaza was to New Yorkers. To get it lock, stock and history, Hilton teamed up with Builder Henry Crown (TIME, Nov. 28) and signed the biggest check of his career-$7,500,000-as a down payment. For a total of $19,385,000 he picked up a hotel that had cost $25,800,000 to build on land worth $10,000,000. He thought that it was even a better bargain than the Stevens...
Finally, the American National Insurance Co. of Galveston, Hilton's biggest creditor, took over his hotels. But Hilton still kept a foot in the door; American National gave him an $18,000-a-year job running their hotels. Gradually he raised enough cash to get back five of his nine hotels. By 1939 things were going so well that he built the Albuquerque Hilton and was on the move again...