Ernest Henderson

Early years

The origins of Sheraton Hotels date to 1933, when Harvard classmates Ernest Henderson and Robert Moore purchased the Continental Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1937, Henderson and Moore purchased the Standard Investing Corporation and the International Equities Corporation, combining them into the Standard Equities Corporation, the company through which they would run their hotels. Also in 1937, they purchased their second hotel, and the first as part of the new company, the Stonehaven Hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts, a converted apartment building. Sheraton dates its founding to that year and considers that property its first hotel.

The chain got its name from the third hotel the pair acquired, in Boston, in 1939. It had a large lighted sign on the roof saying "Hotel Sheraton," which was too expensive to change. Instead, Henderson and Moore decided to call all of their hotels by that name. The original name was probably a reference to furniture designer Thomas Sheraton.

Henderson and Moore purchased Boston's famed Copley Plaza Hotel in 1941, and continued expanding rapidly, buying existing properties along the East Coast from Maine to Florida.

In 1946, the Standard Equities Corporation merged with the United States Realty and Improvement Corporation, forming the Sheraton Corporation of America, which became the first hotel chain to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1947.