Jerry Speyer
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Jerry I. Speyer (born on 23 June 1940, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is one of two founding partners of the prominent New York real estate company Tishman Speyer, the owner of the Chrysler Building and Rockefeller Center.
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[edit] Early life
According to a 1998 profile in The New York Times: "[Speyer's] mother is Swiss, and his father comes from one of the old Jewish families of Frankfurt; his father fled Germany in 1939. Speyer grew up in a cultivated and proper German-Jewish household on Riverside Drive. At Columbia University, he majored in German literature and joined Zeta Beta Tau, the right Jewish fraternity. Speyer was one of those people who were solid, and even solemn, at an age when others are still flailing and unsure of themselves" [1]. Speyer graduated from Columbia College in 1962, and Columbia University's Graduate School of Business in 1964.
[edit] Business and Social Life
Speyer began his career in 1964 as Assistant to the Vice President of Madison Square Garden.
Speyer has been President & CEO since the formation of Tishman Speyer in 1978.
Speyer is deputy chair and a member of the Executive Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; a vice chairman of the New York Presbyterian Hospital; vice chair, Board of Trustees, Rand Corporation, and chair of the Executive Committee; chairman emeritus of Columbia University; chair emeritus of the Real Estate Board of New York; and past president of the Board of Trustees of the Dalton School.
Speyer is also vice chairman of the Museum of Modern Art, and chair emeritus of the influential Partnership for New York City, founded by David Rockefeller.
Speyer sits on the board of Carnegie Hall, alongside Sanford Weill, the former chairman of Citigroup, with whom he has a close business relationship (see External Links below). His other board affiliations include Siemens AG and the Real Estate Roundtable, and have included YankeeNets, the New York Presbyterian Foundation, Inc., and the Urban Land Institute. He is a member of the Economic Club of New York, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
On 17 October 2006, Speyer signed a deal to buy Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, 12,232 apartments in 110 buildings along the East River in Manhattan, for $5.4 billion. [2]
Speyer campaigned for current New York State Governor, Elliott Spitzer. Paid for a political exhibition in Grand Central Terminal, a state owned building, and is a member of Governor Spitzer's cabinet. As a political advisor, Speyer, is immune from investigative questions in the Governor's "troopergate" scandal.
[edit] Family
Speyer is married to the socially connected Katherine G. Farley, who sits on the Executive Committee of Lincoln Center.
Farley graduated from Brown University in 1971, and continued her studies at the Masters of Architecture Program of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, graduating in 1976. She served as manager of new business development for East Asia and the Pacific for Turner International Industries, before joining Tishman Speyer in 1984.
She is a senior managing director at the Tishman Speyer, responsible for the company's real estate activities in Latin America, and for the company's expansion into other emerging markets, chairs the company’s Compensation Committee, and is a member of the Management, Investment, and Executive Committees.
She is also chairwoman of Lincoln Center's redevelopment. In addition, she is on the executive committee of the International Rescue Committee, a refugee relief and resettlement organization; is chairman emerita of Women in Need, which helps homeless women and children in New York City; is a vice president of the Brearley School, and a member of the Board and Executive Committee of the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation. Farley served on the boards of Lincoln Center Theater and the New York Philharmonic.
The couple met at Tishman Speyer. They began dating in 1988, a year after the divorce of Speyer and Lynne Tishman, whose great-grandfather Julius Tishman founded Tishman Realty and Construction Corporation, of which Tishman Speyer is a spinoff. They were married in 1991.
They have a daughter named Laura (15); he has three older children from his previous marriage, Robert, Valerie and Holly.
[edit] Fire hydrant controversy
In 1996 Speyer became involved in a controversy regarding a fire hydrant. He sought to move a hydrant 50 feet, so that it would rest in front of a town house that he has been building for himself on the Upper East Side of Manhattan on the site of two razed town houses. In New York City, it can be handy to have one at your front door, as people are not allowed to park in front of them, which makes getting out of taxis and loading the car up for trips that much easier. In the end, a new hydrant was installed on East 72d Street: The city decided to let Speyer install his very own hydrant, as long as he paid for it. And the residents of the luxury co-op next door got to keep their hydrant.[3]
The couple's home has a vast collection of contemporary art. Visitors are given a catalog of what is on the walls. Mr. Speyer bought his first piece of art 40 years ago and has not sold a single item since. His favorite artists include Frank Stella and Jeff Koons.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Tishman Speyer official site;
- Megadeal: Inside a Real Estate Coup, New York Times, December 31, 2006 Profiles Tishman Speyer and Jerry and Rob Speyer and the purchase of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan.
- New York's Cultural Power Brokers New York Times article on Jerry Speyer of Tishman Speyer Properties and his many connections to Sanford Weill of Citigroup, as well as to David Rockefeller through the Museum of Modern Art and Rockefeller Center.
