Word: hiltons
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...Hilton will pay for his investment with two-thirds of his yearly profits. The rest of what he makes, an estimated $300,000 a year, will belong to Hilton tax free...
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...
...Good. From Los Angeles, Hilton went shopping in New York. "When I saw all those people in the streets, I didn't see how you could lose money," he says. "And I had to establish myself in New York. I could borrow money from my Texas friends to buy a small hotel, but only in New York could I get the millions I wanted to swing the deals I had in mind." The first deal looked too good to Hilton. The famed Ritz Hotel was offered to him for $700,000 and he turned it down. Said...
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...
...Proud Past. By the time he had bought the Stevens, Hilton was convinced 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...