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William Zeckendorf
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Zeckendorf, Sr. was one of America's master builders and real estate developers. Through his development company of Webb and Knapp (for which he began working in 1938 and which he purchased in 1949), he developed much of the New York City urban landscape.
His most notable property acquisition, and potential development of a "dream city" to rival Rockefeller Center, was a seventeen-acre 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, and built the Mile High Center in Denver, Colorado.
Before his company's spectacular bankruptcy in 1965, he became the embodiment of glamorous real-estate dealmaking which included developing Roosevelt Airfield (where Charles Lindbergh began his transatlantic flight), and helped to advance and develop Long Island University. Architects I. M. Pei and Le Corbusier worked for Zeckendorf's many projects.
- Zeckendorf: An Autobiography of William Zeckendorf, New York: Plaza Press, 1987.
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