Hotels & Creditors

Largest hotel in the world is Chicago's Stevens which is in receivership. Second largest is Brooklyn's St. George, with 2,632 rooms and seven miles of corridors. St. George pays no interest on its bonds. Bondholders' committees have repeatedly tried to get a re-accounting, new management and some money on their investment. Last week a petition was filed in Brooklyn Federal Court to reorganize the hotel's operating company under the new Bankruptcy Reorganization Act. "The said debtor corporation," read the petition, "is insolvent and for 18 months has been unable to meet its debts as they mature. . . ." Assets were listed by the petitioners at '$5,000,000, liabilities at $8,750,000 including bond interest. Last year Hotel St. George's net income was $22,691 against a deficit of $1,077,000 the year before.

Manhattan's new Waldorf-Astoria claims to be the world's tallest hotel (42 floors). Fortnight ago its operating company stalled off creditors by voluntarily petitioning the Federal Court for permission to reorganize under the Bankruptcy Act, listing current liabilities of $5,412,119, current assets of $551,567. To the New York Realty & Terminal Co., which owns its land and building, the Waldorf-Astoria owed $3,385,000 in back rent. Suave, dogmatic President Lucius Boomer immediately cut his own salary from $60,000 to $36,000. The salary of his famed maitre d'hotel Oscar Tschirky ("Oscar of the Waldorf") was reduced from $30,000 to $20,726.

In Chicago only six of the 20 major hotels have avoided receivership or bankruptcy since Depression. Among the other 14 are the hotels operated by the Hotel Sherman Co. (the quiet Ambassador East, the gay Ambassador West, the sporty Sherman, the Fort Dearborn where railroad men like to stay), and the roomy, rambling Hotel Drake which has been operated since 1932 by its architect, Benjamin H. Marshall. Fortnight ago the president of Hotel Sherman Co., Ernest Lessing ("Ernie") Byfield, Chicago's best-known hotelkeeper, followed his four hotels into receivership, filed a personal petition in bankruptcy in Federal Court. Last week Architect-Manager Marshall of the Drake did likewise. Hotelman Byfield still had his beauteous second wife, four children, salaries as hotel manager under the receivership and as president of a solvent subsidiary, College Inn Food Products Co. Hotelman Marshall had his gay pink house on Lake Michigan, his ship-cabin tap room, a handsome table that sinks through the floor and a Ming bed that holds seven people comfortably.

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