REAL ESTATE: Empire Buyer

Ever since Chicago’s Colonel Henry Crown joined a syndicate to buy control of the Empire State Building from the John J. Raskob estate (TIME, Jan. 7, 1952), he has, in his own words, “sort of crawled up” the world’s tallest structure. At the start he had a 25% stock interest. Then one evening he had a talk in his suite atop Manhattan’s Waldorf-Astoria with Railroader Robert R. Young, who had 19%.

Said Young: “Henry, you’ve got 25 and I’ve got 19. Doesn’t it make sense for one of us to have 44?” Crown agreed, and suggested a price of $45 a share (v. $30 paid by both), gave Young the choice of buying Crown’s holding or selling his own. Young decided to sell.

Crown, a sometime partner of Hotelman Conrad Hilton as well as Chicago’s biggest materials supplier, then bought an additional 21% from lesser investors, for a total of 65%. But in spite of his stock control. Crown felt honor-bound to re tain the building management installed by Real Estate Promoter Roger L. Stevens, who quarterbacked the original buying syndicate. This arrangement nettled him, however, and last week he took up Stevens and his colleagues on an offer to sell out at about $50 a share—provided that they could deliver almost all the outstanding stock by Oct. 4. When and if Crown gets control of the building’s management, he will be able to make all the changes and improvements he wants.