On October 12, 1949, The Waldorf became a Hilton hotel. The heritage of this famous property and its lustrous history, a vast “city within a city” with nearly unlimited revenue-producing possibilities was summed up in a single phrase scrawled by the ambitious hotelier Conrad Hilton across a photograph of the Waldorf=Astoria: “The Greatest of Them All.” Because it was the greatest, Hilton was determined to own it.

Since Conrad Hilton bought the Waldorf=Astoria, it has been the flagship of the Hilton family of hotels.