Pride of the Bowman-Biltmore hotel system is Manhattan's Biltmore. Pride of the United Hotels Chain is Manhattan's Roosevelt. Soon Biltmore and Roosevelt, already next-door neighbors, may be financial as well as topographical companions. For last week, widely, convincingly rumored, was a Bowman-Biltmore-United Hotel merger that would create a $50,000,000 hotel chain with more than 100 units, with over 20,000 rooms.
United Hotels Co. Twenty-five hotels owned, 38 controlled, comprise the U. S., Canadian and West Indian hotels in the United Hotels Co. system. Head of United is New York-born Frank A. Dudley, versatile organizer. He left his Niagara Falls law office to serve in the New York State Legislature. He organized the Buffalo & Niagara Falls Railway. He organized the Electric City Bank, then went to the Pacific Coast and organized the North Coast R. R. An even more famed organizer, the late great Harriman, offered him a job, but, "No," said he, "I don't care much for railroads." Back to New York State he went. He had decided that Albany had no hotel worthy of the State capital. He built the Ten Eyck. Later, his second hotel — the Onondaga, Syracuse — was built. Then came the Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, the Bancroft in Worcester, Mass., the President in Kansas City, the Prince Edward in Windsor, Canada, the Roosevelt in Manhattan and many another.
Bowman-Biltmore. Smaller than the United but considerably more metropolitan is the Bowman-Biltmore chain. Manhattan units are the Commodore, Belmont and Biltmore. Extra-Manhattan units include the Westchester Biltmore, the Sevilla of Havana, the Miami Biltmore in Florida. Head of Bowman-Biltmore is John McEntee Bowman, lover of horses, master of showmanship.
Hotelman Bowman, a product of Toronto, got his first job in a Yonkers haberdashery. After hotel-clerking for some time in the South and the Adirondacks he went to work in Durland's Riding Academy, Manhattan. When Durland's passed a rule that the riding masters had to wear uniforms, John Bowman rebelled, resigned, set up his own small academy. He had few horses and little cash but the venture was prosperous enough when he left it to take charge of wines and cigars in Gustav Bauman's oldtime Holland House. When Bauman put up the Biltmore in 1912, Bowman was its manager. When, ten months later, Bauman died, Bowman took over the hotel. After nursing the Biltmore through a creditor-threatened infancy, Bowman began his expansion and soon additional Biltmores joined the family.
From the Bowman flair for the spectacular comes many a story. Example: Two years ago a delegation of foreign hotel men visited the Commodore. Why not, thought Mr. Bowman, show them a typical U. S. spectacle? So he put up a tent in the Grand Ballroom of the Commodore, covered the floor with sawdust, secured sideshow freaks and wild animals from his circus friend John Ringling. When the delegation arrived, it walked into a genuine circus, complete even to an elephant which the Commodore's freight elevator had safely transported.