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Bernhard Beinecke (born Johann Bernhard George Beinecke; April 22, 1846 - December 20, 1932), was a meat packer, banker, American hotelier and founder of the Plaza Hotel.

EARLY LIFE

Johann Bernhard George Beinecke was born in 1846 and grew up in Elberfeld, near Wuppertal, Germany. He immigrated to New York City in 1865. Only nineteen on arrival to the United States, he shortened his name to Bernhard Beinecke.

CAREER

Upon arriving to the United States, Beinecke signed on as a wagon driver for a meat concern; within a few years he bought the company and appropriately renamed it Beinecke & Co. The company’s growth, in turn, introduced Bernhard to New York society. Beinecke spent the next fifteen years gradually expanding and cementing his company’s position in the city’s vital meat packing industry.

By the 1870s, Beinecke's business included making deliveries directly to his clients. Beinecke was making deliveries by horse-drawn wagons, needing a place to store his horses and wagons in the city, he built a three-story stable.

By the 1890s, Beinecke had acquired rival meat firms Ottman & Company and T. C. Eastman Company, Limited. After assuming control of the rival meat firms, Beinecke & Co. became one of the largest wholesale meat concerns in New York City, and Beinecke & Co. became the operating the largest stockyard in New York City, at 59th Street and the Hudson River.

Beinecke’s client list included great shipping lines, in addition to some of New York City's major hotels. Beinecke soon realized that there was profit to be made operating hotels than there was simply supplying meat to them. This lead to Beinecke being one of the pioneers in the modern phase of the hotel business, organizing one of the first chains of hotels in this country.

In 1890, Beinecke purchased the (then-unfinished) Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue at the southeast corner of Central Park. Profits from the Plaza Hotel led Beinecke and his board to construct the Manhattan Hotel in 1896 on the northwest corner of Madison Avenue at 42nd Street. The hotel was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, who had just designed the Waldorf Astoria.

With his associates he formed the Hammond Hotel Company, which also operated the Murray Hill Hotel in New York, Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., Hygeia Hotel in Old Point Comfort, Va., and the Essex Hotel in Boston.

By 1901, Beinecke decided to demolish and rebuild the still-young Plaza Hotel. Eventually, Beinecke became associated with Harry S. Black, the president of the Fuller Construction Company, who had built the Flatiron Building (together they created the United States Realty & Improvement Company) and Fred Sterry. Together, the three men, Beinecke, Black, and Sterry, set out to make Plaza Hotel one of the most elegant hotels in the world. Construction of the 19-story building took two years at a cost of $12 million. Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, who designed Beinecke's Manhattan Hotel, also designed the Plaza Hotel. No expense was spared in building and furnishing the Plaza Hotel. Handmade Irish linen, French Baccarat-produced glassware , and carefully selected English oak panels were imported to recreate the effect of a French chateau. And the largest single order in history for gold-encrusted china was placed with L. Straus & Sons, and no less than 1,650 crystal chandeliers were purchased.

The board of the United States Realty & Improvement Company, the Plaza Operating Company’s parent entity, included such leading financiers as James Stillman (National City Bank of New York, now Citibank), John Warne Gates (affiliated with the Texas Company, now Texaco), Charles M. Schwab, and William Frederick Havemeyer. On its opening day, Alfred Vanderbilt signed the register book first; Beinecke and his family were the third. Within the first months, many of America’s elite family dynasties, from the Vanderbilts and George Gould to Benjamin Newton Duke, had taken up semi-permanent rooms in The Plaza. In only twenty-five years, Beinecke had transformed himself from a youthful immigrant into one of New York City’s most influential entrepreneurs.

Over the next decade, Beinecke expanded his hotel empire, including the Fairmont Copley-Plaza Hotel in Boston, the Savoy-Plaza Hotel in New York City, and the Hotel Nacional de Cuba in Havana, Cuba.

Under Beinecke's direction, the Plazas became the first high-end hotel chain in the United States. The hotel chain’s success also deepened the Beineckes’ relationship with the Fuller Company. The Fuller Construction Company, founded in 1882, had established itself as the United States’ foremost builder of skyscrapers. Before constructing Plaza Hotel, Fuller had already completed the New York Times building and the famous Flatiron Building.

Beinecke remainder the president of United States Realty & Improvement Company until his retirement, and continued as chairman of the board of the Plaza Hotel.

Beinecke retained an interest in Fuller Construction Company until his death, which at the time was the largest building construction company in the United States.

Personal Life
On April 12, 1875, Beinecke married Johanna Elisabeth Weigle at the German Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. They had seven children:  Bernhard Beinecke, Jr.; Johanna Beinecke; Alice Christine Louisa Beinecke; Theodora Beinecke; Edwin John Beinecke; Frederick William Beinecke and Walter C. Beinecke