The building realized Marshall Field’s dream of a single wholesale center for the entire nation and consolidated 13 different warehouses. It was purchased in 1945 or 1946, depending on the source, by the Kennedy family through Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc., and managed by Sargent Shriver. Kennedy's purchase price was reported to be either $12.5 or $13 million, and it is said that his initial capital was $1 million, though records say his original mortgage was $12.5 million, this was roughly half of what it had cost to construct the complex twenty years earlier. The building's sale was brokered by a good friend of Marshall Field and Joseph Kennedy, E. Stanley Klein. Klein at that time was a partner of Field and together they started Fieldcrest Mills.