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How top executives live (Fortune, 1955)
It's Fortune so, as you might expect, it's a bit fawning in it its admiration for these "job creators" of 1955, but fascinating nonetheless.
The executive's home today is likely to be unpretentious and relatively small--perhaps seven rooms and two and a half baths. (Servants are hard to come by and many a vice president's wife gets along with part-time help. So many have done so for so long, in fact, that they no longer complain much about it.) The executive who feels, as apparently Robert R. Young does, that to be completely happy he needs a forty-room "cottage" in Newport and a thirty-one-room oceanside villa in Palm Beach is a rare bird these days. The fact that Young paid only $38,000 for his Newport place, Fairholme, which cost Philadelphia banker John R. Drexel nearly a quarter of a million dollars to build in 1905, demonstrates the decline in the market for such outsize mansions.
As executives' homes have dwindled in size, so have their parties. Frederick J. Thibold, catering manager at Sherry's in New York, can remember dances for 2,000 with a "sumptuous supper" twenty-five years ago. A big dance today is one for 400, and at some of these, Thibold confides in a whisper, Sherry's has served hot dogs and hamburgers. Today's executive entertains at his country club, or at small dinner parties at home. The New York executive who entertains at smart restaurants, where a dinner party for six may cost $125, usually does so on an expense account.
The large yacht has also foundered in the sea of progressive taxation. In 1930, Fred Fisher (Bodies), Walter Briggs, and Alfred P. Sloan cruised around in vessels 235 feet long; J. P. Morgan had just built his fourth Corsair (343 feet). Today, seventy-five feet is considered a lot of yacht. One of the biggest yachts launched in the past five years is the ninety-six-foot Rhonda III, built and owned by Ingalls Shipbuilding Corp., of Birmingham, Alabama. The Rhonda III cost half a million dollars to build, and the annual bill for keeping a crew aboard her, stocking her, and fueling her runs to around $130,000. As Chairman Robert I. Ingalls Jr. says, only corporations today can own even so comparatively modest a craft. The specifications of the boat that interests the great majority of seagoing executives today are "forty feet, four people, $40,000." In this tidy vessel the businessman of 1955 is quite happily sea-borne.
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As executives' homes have dwindled in size, so have their parties. Frederick J. Thibold, catering manager at Sherry's in New York, can remember dances for 2,000 with a "sumptuous supper" twenty-five years ago. A big dance today is one for 400, and at some of these, Thibold confides in a whisper, Sherry's has served hot dogs and hamburgers. Today's executive entertains at his country club, or at small dinner parties at home. The New York executive who entertains at smart restaurants, where a dinner party for six may cost $125, usually does so on an expense account.
The large yacht has also foundered in the sea of progressive taxation. In 1930, Fred Fisher (Bodies), Walter Briggs, and Alfred P. Sloan cruised around in vessels 235 feet long; J. P. Morgan had just built his fourth Corsair (343 feet). Today, seventy-five feet is considered a lot of yacht. One of the biggest yachts launched in the past five years is the ninety-six-foot Rhonda III, built and owned by Ingalls Shipbuilding Corp., of Birmingham, Alabama. The Rhonda III cost half a million dollars to build, and the annual bill for keeping a crew aboard her, stocking her, and fueling her runs to around $130,000. As Chairman Robert I. Ingalls Jr. says, only corporations today can own even so comparatively modest a craft. The specifications of the boat that interests the great majority of seagoing executives today are "forty feet, four people, $40,000." In this tidy vessel the businessman of 1955 is quite happily sea-borne.
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Full article (~5,700 words): http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/05/06/classic-top-500-executives
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How top executives live (Fortune, 1955) (Original Post)
salvorhardin
Jul 2012
OP
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)1. "Richard Rich, head of Rich's department store"
eppur_se_muova
(36,269 posts)2. Well, those trends have reversed ...
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013TRQD6/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb
How about a 400' yacht ? A 30,000 sq ft house ?
How about a 400' yacht ? A 30,000 sq ft house ?
salvorhardin
(9,995 posts)5. Funny how the executives of today more closely resemble the execs of 1925
Twenty-five years have altered the executive way of life noticeably; in 1930 the average businessman had been buffeted by the economic storms but he had not yet been battered by the income tax. The executive still led a life ornamented by expensive adjuncts that other men could not begin to afford, a life attended by a formality that other men did not have time for. In Boston, which set the highest tone if not the fastest pace, the archetype of the high-salaried executive of 1930 arrived at his office in his chauffeur-driven Pierce-Arrow, uncompromisingly attired in dark suit and detachable stiff collar. For weekend lounging white flannels were de rigueur.
It's also interesting that the article is looking at the "approximately 30,000 executives, with incomes of $50,000 or more." $50,000 in 1955 would be about $428,000 today (http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm).
eppur_se_muova
(36,269 posts)7. .
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-18982192
Octopus, a luxury yacht owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is well equipped, with two helipads, a recording studio and even a submarine.
Octopus, a luxury yacht owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is well equipped, with two helipads, a recording studio and even a submarine.
pepperbear
(5,648 posts)3. they're not saying that execs can't get by, they're just
saying that the yachts and houses have gotten smaller.
salvorhardin
(9,995 posts)4. Who said anything about the execs not getting by?
And you do realize the article is from 1955? The article is talking about the yachts and houses of top paid executives in 1955 having gotten smaller than what they were in 1925.
pepperbear
(5,648 posts)6. uhm that's just what I said...and yes I realize the article is from 1955
may I ask, why did you just regurgitate my post in opposition?