Sheraton Adds a Link

San Franciscans braced themselves last week for the city's first invasion by a major hotel chain, and no native regretted the change more than a shy little lady in her 705. She was Mrs. William B. Johnston, president and majority stockholder of the famed, Victorian-flavored Palace Hotel, which is being taken over by Boston's Sheraton Corp. Said Mrs. Johnston, who was born in the Palace and whose family has owned the hotel all its 79 years: "It's the trend of the times, isn't it? All the great old hotels are going into chain operations."

There was no mistaking the trend (TIME, Dec. 7 et seq.). Besides the Palace, Sheraton last week picked up Manhattan's 1,500-room McAlpin for $9,000,000, its fifth hotel purchase in two months. Now the No. 2 chain in the country, with 32 hotels with room for 24,000 guests, the Sheraton beat No. 1 Operator Conrad Hilton (with 27 hotels sleeping 30,000) to the Palace by offering Mrs. Johnston about $6,500,000, or some $2,000,000 more than Hilton.

The Palace makes a bright pendant on any hotel chain. Opened in 1875 by Mrs. Johnston's grandfather, U.S. Senator William Sharon, who made millions in the Comstock lode and never got over his miner's habit of carrying a pistol, the $5,000,000 Palace was then considered the most luxurious hotel in the world. It had 800 rooms, and the smallest was 16 ft. square. Sarah Bernhardt stayed in an eight-room, suite with her parrot and baby tiger; General Grant came as a Civil War hero, had to mumble speeches when he lost his false teeth. Kipling shuddered at the spittoons, called the hotel "a seven-storied warren of humanity." President Harding died there.*

The great San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906 destroyed the Palace (Singer Enrico Caruso fled from the hotel with a towel wrapped around his neck and clutching an autographed picture of Teddy Roosevelt), but a new 600-room, $8,000,000 Palace was quickly built. Most notable feature: the Garden Court dining room, with its domed glass ceiling, marble pillars and crystal chandeliers.

Mrs. Johnston, who has been president of the Palace Hotel Co. since 1939, says it has been a consistent moneymaker. But profits have diminished in recent years, from $227,000 net in 1948 to $66,000 last year. By giving the Palace the benefit of its advertising and guest-referral system, Sheraton thinks it can improve profits without harming its traditions.

So does Mrs. Johnston, who will stay there as a guest several months each year. But, she warned, she will leave "if there's any monkey business."

-Three months ago, the Sheraton chain bought Chicago's Blackstone Hotel, where Harding was picked as the 1920 G.O.P. presidential nominee in the famed "smoke-filled room" (408-410).

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