William Zeckendorf
Encyclopedia
William Zeckendorf, Sr. (1905 in Paris, Illinois
– September 30, 1976 in New York City
) was a prominent American real estate developer. Through his development company Webb and Knapp
– for which he began working in 1938 and which he purchased in 1949 – he developed a significant portion of the New York City urban landscape.
, was a 17 acres (68,796.6 m²) site along the East River
between 42nd Street
and 48th Street. In a now celebrated transaction in December 1946, the prominent architect Wallace Harrison
and Nelson Rockefeller
bought the site from him for $8.5 million and Nelson's father John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
subsequently donated this land for the building of the United Nations Headquarters
.
Zeckendorf also owned New York's Chrysler Building
, the venerable Hotel Astor in Times Square, purchased the Robie House
in 1958 before transferring ownership to the University of Chicago
, and built the Mile High Center in Denver, Colorado
and Place Ville Marie in Montreal, Canada.
, head of 20th Century-Fox, to purchase Fox's project to develop 176 acre (0.71224736 km²) of its historic backlot in Los Angeles, California
, into a proposed $400 million Century City. The studio had suffered a string of expensive flops, culminating in the box-office disaster Cleopatra
(1963) and was in dire need of money. The project, conceived under the direction of Edmund Herrscher, the studio's director of property development, had been announced the first week of 1958, with construction said to begin in July 1958.
However, construction did not start as promised, and rumors, later confirmed, circulated that developer Zeckendorf would take over the project by purchasing 20th's interest in the project for $53 million. The following March it was announced that construction would begin that month on the new headquarters for architect Welton Becket
, chief architect on the project That did not occur either. Zeckendorf hired New York public relations executive Tex McCrary
to lend new life and visibility to the project. McCrary, in turn contracted with Los Angeles publicist Charles A. Pomerantz, well-known in the entertainment industry, to come up with a campaign and execute it.
Pomerantz turned to a young publicist he had hired, Worley Thorne
, the only other publicist in the small firm, for suggestions. Thorne said he'd call friends in the press to assess their attitudes. Thorne learned that there was deep skepticism that the project would ever be built. 20th did not have the money, which is why they brought in Zeckendorf, but apparently Zeckendorf was unable to deliver even the $53-million purchase price, let alone $400 million. The California papers had already given a lot of publicity to Century City and, for them, any more coverage would just be re-hash in which they were not interested.
Thorne reported to Pomerantz his opinion that the only way to restore credibility to the project was to actually "begin" construction, and Pomerantz went for the plan. Thorne called Herrscher and asked if there was some small building they could demolish with a bulldozer, to begin to "break ground" for the Becket building. Herrscher said there was a tin shack that was expendable and he'd make it available, as well as the bulldozer. McCrary and Bill Zeckendorf Jr., vice-president of Webb & Knapp, also approved. Thorne said that it should be a large affair with the mayors of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica
, plus politicians and other dignitaries, invited, as well as all the Southern California
press. He and Pomerantz would find a star to "launch" the project by breaking a bottle of champagne on the shack prior to its being demolished. Later, they secured Mary Pickford
for that task. It was all purely symbolic, since construction did not actually begin, but no one stated that openly, it was dramatic, and very successful. The Los Angeles Times devoted almost three full pages to its coverage of the event.
Still lacking sufficient money, Zeckendorf was forced to make $1000 per day penalty payments to Fox. In 1960, Zeckendorf solved his problem by partnering with Alcoa
in a joint-venture relationship to finally build Century City, which by now had escalated to a $500 million project. The new owners embraced the studio's conception of Century City as "a city within a city" with the arc-shaped, 19-story Century Plaza Hotel
to be the centerpiece. This joint-venture marked an increasing interest by large corporations with land "surplus" in order to create housing communities, industrial parks and office buildings; marking the first movement from traditional industry into real estate investing
.
, where Charles Lindbergh
began his transatlantic flight, and helping to advance and develop Long Island University
. From the start of his career Zeckendorf had been able to use his dealmaking skills to acquire or build projects for which he lacked the funds, but in time the under-funding caught up with him. Architects I. M. Pei
and Le Corbusier
had worked for Zeckendorf on many of his projects.
Paris, Illinois
Paris is a city in Paris Township, Edgar County, Illinois, USA, south of Chicago, and west of Indianapolis. In 1900, 6,105 people lived in Paris, Illinois; in 1910, 7,664; and in 1940, 9,281. The population was 8,837 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Edgar County.-Geography:Paris is...
– September 30, 1976 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
) was a prominent American real estate developer. Through his development company Webb and Knapp
Webb and Knapp
Webb and Knapp was a real estate development firm, founded in 1922 by Robert C. Knapp and W. Seward Webb, along with Eliot Cross, a noted architect, who along with his brother John Walter Cross, formed the architectural partnership of Cross and Cross. William Zeckendorf joined the Firm in 1938 ...
– for which he began working in 1938 and which he purchased in 1949 – he developed a significant portion of the New York City urban landscape.
Career
Zeckendorf's most notable property acquisition, and potential development of a "dream city" to rival Rockefeller CenterRockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th and 51st streets in New York City, United States. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It was declared a National...
, was a 17 acres (68,796.6 m²) site along the East River
East River
The East River is a tidal strait in New York City. It connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates Long Island from the island of Manhattan and the Bronx on the North American mainland...
between 42nd Street
42nd Street (Manhattan)
42nd Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, known for its theaters, especially near the intersection with Broadway at Times Square. It is also the name of the region of the theater district near that intersection...
and 48th Street. In a now celebrated transaction in December 1946, the prominent architect Wallace Harrison
Wallace Harrison
Wallace Kirkman Harrison , was an American architect.-Career:Harrison started his professional career with the firm of Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray, participating in the construction of Rockefeller Center...
and Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Rockefeller
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the 41st Vice President of the United States , serving under President Gerald Ford, and the 49th Governor of New York , as well as serving the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a variety of positions...
bought the site from him for $8.5 million and Nelson's father John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
John Davison Rockefeller, Jr. was a major philanthropist and a pivotal member of the prominent Rockefeller family. He was the sole son among the five children of businessman and Standard Oil industrialist John D. Rockefeller and the father of the five famous Rockefeller brothers...
subsequently donated this land for the building of the United Nations Headquarters
United Nations headquarters
The headquarters of the United Nations is a complex in New York City. The complex has served as the official headquarters of the United Nations since its completion in 1952. It is located in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, on spacious grounds overlooking the East River...
.
Zeckendorf also owned New York's Chrysler Building
Chrysler Building
The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco style skyscraper in New York City, located on the east side of Manhattan in the Turtle Bay area at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Standing at , it was the world's tallest building for 11 months before it was surpassed by the Empire State...
, the venerable Hotel Astor in Times Square, purchased the Robie House
Robie House
The Frederick C. Robie House is a U.S. National Historic Landmark in the Chicago, Illinois neighborhood of Hyde Park at 5757 S. Woodlawn Avenue on the South Side. It was designed and built between 1908 and 1910 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and is renowned as the greatest example of his Prairie...
in 1958 before transferring ownership to the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
, and built the Mile High Center in Denver, Colorado
Denver, Colorado
The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county, located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...
and Place Ville Marie in Montreal, Canada.
Deal with Spyros Skouras
In December 1958, Zeckendorf entered into a deal with Spyros SkourasSpyros Skouras
Spyros Panagiotis Skouras was an American motion picture pioneer and movie executive who was the president of the 20th Century Fox from 1942 to 1962...
, head of 20th Century-Fox, to purchase Fox's project to develop 176 acre (0.71224736 km²) of its historic backlot in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, into a proposed $400 million Century City. The studio had suffered a string of expensive flops, culminating in the box-office disaster Cleopatra
Cleopatra (1963 film)
Cleopatra is a 1963 British-American-Swiss epic drama film directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The screenplay was adapted by Sidney Buchman, Ben Hecht, Ranald MacDougall, and Mankiewicz from a book by Carlo Maria Franzero. The film starred Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy...
(1963) and was in dire need of money. The project, conceived under the direction of Edmund Herrscher, the studio's director of property development, had been announced the first week of 1958, with construction said to begin in July 1958.
However, construction did not start as promised, and rumors, later confirmed, circulated that developer Zeckendorf would take over the project by purchasing 20th's interest in the project for $53 million. The following March it was announced that construction would begin that month on the new headquarters for architect Welton Becket
Welton Becket
Welton Becket was an architect who designed many buildings in Los Angeles, California.Becket was born in Seattle, Washington and graduated from the University of Washington program in Architecture in 1927 with a Bachelor of Architecture degree .He settled in Los Angeles in 1933 and formed a...
, chief architect on the project That did not occur either. Zeckendorf hired New York public relations executive Tex McCrary
Tex McCrary
John Reagan McCrary , better known as Tex McCrary, was an American journalist and public relations specialist who invented the talk show genre for television and radio, and appeared on radio and TV with his wife, Jinx Falkenburg.Born in Calvert, Texas, McCrary graduated from the Phillips Exeter...
to lend new life and visibility to the project. McCrary, in turn contracted with Los Angeles publicist Charles A. Pomerantz, well-known in the entertainment industry, to come up with a campaign and execute it.
Pomerantz turned to a young publicist he had hired, Worley Thorne
Worley Thorne
Worley Thorne is an American television screenwriter and executive script consultant. Thorne's work encompasses hourlong TV drama, and feature film scripts, in a wide variety of genres, including science fiction, fantasy, detective and mystery, legal, soap opera, medical, animal fiction and family...
, the only other publicist in the small firm, for suggestions. Thorne said he'd call friends in the press to assess their attitudes. Thorne learned that there was deep skepticism that the project would ever be built. 20th did not have the money, which is why they brought in Zeckendorf, but apparently Zeckendorf was unable to deliver even the $53-million purchase price, let alone $400 million. The California papers had already given a lot of publicity to Century City and, for them, any more coverage would just be re-hash in which they were not interested.
Thorne reported to Pomerantz his opinion that the only way to restore credibility to the project was to actually "begin" construction, and Pomerantz went for the plan. Thorne called Herrscher and asked if there was some small building they could demolish with a bulldozer, to begin to "break ground" for the Becket building. Herrscher said there was a tin shack that was expendable and he'd make it available, as well as the bulldozer. McCrary and Bill Zeckendorf Jr., vice-president of Webb & Knapp, also approved. Thorne said that it should be a large affair with the mayors of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica
Santa Mônica
Santa Mônica is a town and municipality in the state of Paraná in the Southern Region of Brazil.-References:...
, plus politicians and other dignitaries, invited, as well as all the Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
press. He and Pomerantz would find a star to "launch" the project by breaking a bottle of champagne on the shack prior to its being demolished. Later, they secured Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
for that task. It was all purely symbolic, since construction did not actually begin, but no one stated that openly, it was dramatic, and very successful. The Los Angeles Times devoted almost three full pages to its coverage of the event.
Still lacking sufficient money, Zeckendorf was forced to make $1000 per day penalty payments to Fox. In 1960, Zeckendorf solved his problem by partnering with Alcoa
Alcoa
Alcoa Inc. is the world's third largest producer of aluminum, behind Rio Tinto Alcan and Rusal. From its operational headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Alcoa conducts operations in 31 countries...
in a joint-venture relationship to finally build Century City, which by now had escalated to a $500 million project. The new owners embraced the studio's conception of Century City as "a city within a city" with the arc-shaped, 19-story Century Plaza Hotel
Century Plaza Hotel
The Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles is a landmark 19-story luxury hotel forming a sweeping crescent design fronting the spectacular fountains on Avenue of the Stars adjacent to the twin Century Plaza Towers and the CAA building.- History :...
to be the centerpiece. This joint-venture marked an increasing interest by large corporations with land "surplus" in order to create housing communities, industrial parks and office buildings; marking the first movement from traditional industry into real estate investing
Real estate investing
Real estate investing involves the purchase, ownership, management, rental and/or sale of real estate for profit. Improvement of realty property as part of a real estate investment strategy is generally considered to be a sub-specialty of real estate investing called real estate development...
.
Bankruptcy
Before his company's bankruptcy in 1965, Zeckendorf became the embodiment of glamorous real-estate dealmaking, which included developing Roosevelt AirfieldRoosevelt Airfield
Roosevelt Field was originally an airfield in Garden City, Nassau County, New York.-History:Originally named the Hempstead Plains Aerodrome, it was renamed in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt's son, Quentin, who was killed in air combat during World War I...
, where Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist.Lindbergh, a 25-year-old U.S...
began his transatlantic flight, and helping to advance and develop Long Island University
Long Island University
Long Island University is a private, coeducational, nonsectarian institution of higher education in the U.S. state of New York.-History:...
. From the start of his career Zeckendorf had been able to use his dealmaking skills to acquire or build projects for which he lacked the funds, but in time the under-funding caught up with him. Architects I. M. Pei
I. M. Pei
Ieoh Ming Pei , commonly known as I. M. Pei, is a Chinese American architect, often called a master of modern architecture. Born in Canton, China and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the gardens at Suzhou...
and Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
had worked for Zeckendorf on many of his projects.