Our family has enjoyed a few relationships to the hotel
industry, one direct and two peripheral. They produced some interesting
anecdotes.
My father’s biggest client when he was a partner at the
public-accounting firm of Katz, Wagner & Company was Pick Hotels. As a side
note, despite his probably having the second highest GPA of all accounting
majors in the Class of 1938 at the University of Illinois – Thomas A. Murphy,
who would become chairman and CEO of General Motors, likely had a higher one –
he could not be hired by a then Big 8 firm because they didn’t employ Jews.
Pick Hotels’ 45 properties included the Congress in Chicago, Lee House in
Washington, D.C., Fort Shelby in Detroit, Mark Twain in St. Louis, Nicollet in
Minneapolis, Fort Hayes in Columbus and Belmont Plaza in New York City.
The Lee House, Washington, D.C.
Dad’s auditing work frequently took him to Columbus, so much
so that the firm wanted him to start an office there (he declined). While
working at the Fort Hayes (not named for the Ohio State football coach) in the
1950s, he often found OSU football players on the hotel’s payroll but only saw
them dining on free meals. It galled this U of I grad when his alma mater was
sanctioned for penny-ante cash payment for transportation home while Woody Hayes
sanctimoniously boasted about his clean program.
Hotel Fort Hayes, Columbus, Ohio
Dad and Mom, Washington D.C., Oct. 1947
The Belmont Plaza, New York City
One of dad’s first cousins, Rosalie Wolfson, married a hotel
magnate, Nathan Goldstein. With Arnold Kirkeby (his mansion was the Clampetts’
home in “The Beverly Hillbillies”), they owned such prestigious properties as
the Blackstone and Drake in Chicago; Sherry-Netherland,
Hampshire House and Gotham in New York City; Warwick in New York and
Philadelphia, Kenilworth in Bal Harbour, Florida; Beverly Wilshire in Beverly
Hills; and Nacional de Cuba in Havana. My parents were married in the
Blackstone in September 1946, and our rehearsal dinner was held at the Warwick
in New York in 1973. Family stays also included the Lee House, Gotham (now the
Peninsula) and Warwick. Goldstein also owned The Regency in New York, the
originator of the “power breakfast” in the 1970s. I had my version of the power
lunch with Rosalie in 1988 (http://brulelaker.blogspot.com/2011/12/power-lunches.html).
Husband and Wife, The Blackstone Hotel, Sept. 3, 1946
The Kenilworth, Bal Harbour, Florida
I am related to
Pritzkers going back three and four generations (they married quicker and thus
there’s an additional generation between mine and
Thomas-Penny-Jim/Jennifer-J.B’s). My great-grandmother Chaia Schwartzman, wife
of Abraham Nachman, and Sophia Schwartzman, wife of Jacob Pritzker, were
sisters. Upon the birth of my brother and me, my parents received either a
telegram or letter (the story varies on who tells it) from Abe Pritzker stating
that he’d gone back 100 years and found we and his grandchildren were the only
sets of twins. I don’t know for sure who the others were (that’s another
story). Unfortunately, in the zeal of housekeeping, my mother tossed out the
correspondence.
Jacob and Sophia Pritzker
Good read! Nathan was my Grandpa, so cool to read about him
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