expanded version of the highly popular but extremely small café located on the ground floor of the existing hotel. The basement of the Annex occupied by a huge laundry, which served the hotel and annex. Bankruptcy of the 1930s On March 31, 1928, the Mayflower Hotel's bonds were refinanced by the American Bond & Mortgage Co. (the successor to C.C. Mitchell & Co.). The Great Depression had a significant impact on the Mayflower Hotel. It lost money (as much as $760,000 over two years), and in 1929 its affairs were placed in the hands of a special committee established by American Bond & Mortgage. The hotel continued to lose money, and on May 22, 1931, holders of the hotel's original bonds secured a ruling that the hotel was bankrupt. American Bond was declared bankrupt the same day. The receivers later alleged that the hotel had lost more than $2 million since it opened, and that American Bond had issued a large amount of bonds with the hotel as security (worsening the hotel's financial status). American Bond won dismissal of the bankruptcy ruling on June 26, A second bankruptcy was declared by the court on July 28, 1931. Fraud charges were later levied against officials of American Bond & Mortgage. American Bond finally admitted the hotel was bankrupt in October 1931. Holders of the second bonds (issued with the hotel as security), however, feared that they would receive nothing if the Mayflower were foreclosed. They petitioned a court to remove the receivers and to appoint new trustees who would sell the hotel. The court agreed, and the sale began to move forward in 1933. Concerned about the sale, Senators Hamilton Fish Kean and Robert Rice Reynolds began an investigation into the bankruptcy and sale. In 1933, Kean and Reynolds won congressional approval in June 1934 for the Corporate Bankruptcy Act, which allowed the Mayflower Hotel itself to declare bankruptcy and refinance itself. With the receivers having made the hotel profitable once more, the hotel reorganized its finances in a court-approval bankruptcy proceeding on December 20, 1934. Early in World War II, the skylight in the Palm Court was covered over with a mural painting. The skylight was later flocked with pieces of velvet. Hilton In December 1946, Hilton Hotels Corporation purchased the Mayflower Hotel for $2.6 million. Some of the Mayflower's stockholders challenged the sale, arguing the price was too low.