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Too 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 he: "I thought they were just taking advantage of a fellow from out West." (They weren't; Hilton now regretfully estimates the Ritz to be worth at least $2,500,000.) Instead, for $300,000, he bought control of the Roosevelt, which bustles with salesmen and is as different from the Town House as Coney Island is from Beverly Hills. The Roosevelt deal established Hilton in New York and got him the backing he wanted from such moneybags as Atlas Corp.'s Floyd Odium. With the help of Odium, Hilton paid out $7,400,000 for New York's stately old Plaza, which was as deeply encrusted with stately tradition as it was with the grime of years. The Plaza's first guest in 1907 (at $30,000 a year) had been Alfred G. Vanderbilt, and since then the hotel's quiet, Old World atmosphere had made it a favorite of Manhattan's lorgnette & limousine set. One longtime Plaza guest was so frightened at the thought of a breezy Westerner taking over that she dashed off a letter to Hilton which began : "Dear Sir: If you touch a speck of the sacred dust of the dear old Plaza . . ."
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. The contractor jacked up the price three times, until Hilton suddenly let it be known that he was going after the Palmer House instead. Healy finally came to terms, but they were his own and gave him a clear profit of $1,500,000 for his 15-month ownership. Says Hilton in admiration of Healy's horse-trading ability: "If I had a dollar for every time I called that bricklayer an S.O.B., I wouldn't want the Stevens." Even at the $7,500,000 price, Hilton thought it a bargain.
The 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 $10,000,000. He thought that it was even a better bargain than the Stevens.