Aby Rosen | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | |
Education | Wolfgang Goethe University |
Occupation | Real estate investor/developer |
Spouses | Elizabeth Mina Wechsler (m. 1991;div. 2004)Samantha Boardman (m. 2005) |
Children | 4 |
Aby Rosen (born May 16, 1960) is a German and American real estate tycoon living in New York City. He co-founded RFR Holding, which owns a portfolio of 93 properties valued over $15.5 billion in cities including New York, Miami, Las Vegas, and Tel Aviv. Highlights include the Seagram Building, W South Beach, The Jaffa Tel Aviv, Gramercy Park Hotel, Paramount Hotel, and Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, among other properties. Rosen is also a member of, a founding investor in, and the landlord of the CORE Club in New York. [1]
Rosen is a noted collector of modern and contemporary art, owning more than 800 postwar pieces, including 100-plus works by Andy Warhol. His collection includes pieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Damien Hirst, Richard Prince and Jeff Koons. [2]
Rosen was born in Frankfurt, West Germany, in 1960, the son of Jewish Holocaust survivors. [3] His mother, Anni, spent World War II hiding in a Belgian farmhouse, while his father, Isak, was held in concentration camps in Germany and occupied Poland. [3] After the war, Anni became a painter and Isak a real estate developer. [3] Rosen attended local schools before going to Goethe University Frankfurt, where he graduated with a business degree. His parents moved to Israel by the 1990s, living in Tel Aviv.
In 1987, Rosen moved to New York City. He apprenticed at a real estate brokerage firm selling properties to German investors. [3]
In 1991, he founded the partnership RFR Holding LLC with his childhood friend Michael Fuchs, also a son of Holocaust survivors. The real estate market was in a downturn at the time, but they had access to capital, initially using properties they owned in Germany as collateral. Later they leveraged their access to German investors. Their strategy was to purchase large, vacant office buildings in need of an upgrade and hire architects to refurbish them to high standards. [3] In the 15 years after RFR Holding was established in 1991, Rosen acquired a large portfolio of office buildings, including the Seagram Building, purchased for $375 million from the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association in 2000, [4] and Lever House.
In 2006, Rosen partnered with Ian Schrager, a longtime friend and co-founder of Studio 54, to transform the 123-year-old Gramercy Park Hotel with minimalist architect John Pawson. In 2014, they put the hotel on the market for $260 million, after completing a four-year, $200 million renovation. [5]
In 2006, Rosen announced plans to develop the site at 610 Lexington Avenue in NYC (directly behind the Seagram Building) into a glass hotel and condominium tower to be designed by Sir Norman Foster.
The Lever House Art Collection is a collection of works commissioned by Rosen for display at the Lever House. It is curated by Richard Marshall, an art historian and associate curator for the Whitney Museum. The Lever House Art Collection was inaugurated in 2004 featuring a work by Jorge Pardo. Other works have included Bride Fight by E.V. Day, Hulks by Jeff Koons, and Hello Kitty by Tom Sachs.
Rosen and Fuchs hold a large real estate portfolio in Germany, especially in Frankfurt. In early 2007, they bought the headquarters building of the European Central Bank. The company also owns the Swift Haus Jungfernstieg in Hamburg. This portfolio is administered by their office in Frankfurt.
Rosen has been married twice. In 1991, he married Elizabeth Mina Wechsler in a Jewish ceremony at The Pierre in Manhattan. [7] Before their separation in 2000 and divorce in 2004, they had two sons. [8]
In 2005, Rosen married Dr. Samantha Boardman, a psychiatrist and socialite. [9] Boardman is the daughter of D. Dixon Boardman, who founded the hedge fund Optima Fund Management, and Pauline Pitt, a banking heiress. [10] Boardman graduated from Harvard University and Cornell University medical school. [8] She converted to Judaism. [8] Together, they have two children. [8]
Rosen resides on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with his wife and their two children. The family summers in Southampton, New York, [8] where they have a $21.5 million home. [11]
In 2011, Rosen bought the A. Conger Goodyear House in Old Westbury, New York on Long Island for $3.4 million. [12] The house was designed and built in 1938 by Edward Durell Stone in the International Style for Anson Conger Goodyear, the first president of the Museum of Modern Art. [13] [14] Rosen completed a several-year renovation of the property. [15] He keeps many of his important pieces of art there, including The Virgin Mother, [16] a 13-ton, 33-foot-high bronze sculpture by Damien Hirst of a pregnant woman with peeled skin and an exposed fetus. [17]
Rosen is reported to own a $36 million vacation home in Saint Barthélemy. [18]
Rosen is known for his annual dinner party at the W South Beach during Art Basel. It has drawn a mix of celebrities and business leaders. [19]
Old Westbury is a village in the towns of North Hempstead and Oyster Bay in Nassau County, on the North Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 4,671 at the 2010 census.
The Seagram Building is a skyscraper at 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd Streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe along with Philip Johnson, Ely Jacques Kahn, and Robert Allan Jacobs, the high-rise tower is 515 feet (157 m) tall with 38 stories. The International Style building, completed in 1958, initially served as the headquarters of the Seagram Company, a Canadian distiller.
Lever House is a 307-foot-tall (94 m) office building at 390 Park Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Constructed from 1950 to 1952, the building was designed by Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in the International Style, a 20th-century modern architectural style. It was originally the headquarters of soap company Lever Brothers, a subsidiary of Unilever. Lever House was the second skyscraper in New York City with a glass curtain wall, after the United Nations Secretariat Building.
17 State Street is a 42-story office building along State Street and Battery Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Completed in 1988, it was designed by Roy Gee for Emery Roth and Sons for developers William Kaufman Organization and JMB Realty. The building is shaped like a quarter round, with a curved glass facade facing New York Harbor. At ground level, large aluminum columns surround a lobby and elevator hall. Next to the lobby was a public exhibition space called "New York Unearthed", which was operated by the South Street Seaport Museum from 1990 to 2005. The building has a total floor area of 525,000 sq ft (48,800 m2); each story was designed for small tenants.
The Paramount Hotel is a hotel in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States. Designed by architect Thomas W. Lamb, the hotel is at 235 West 46th Street, between Eighth Avenue and Broadway. The Paramount Hotel is owned by RFR Realty and contains 597 rooms. The hotel building, designed in a Renaissance style, is a New York City designated landmark.
Gramercy Pictures was an American film production label. It was founded on May 20, 1992 as a joint venture between PolyGram Filmed Entertainment and Universal Pictures. Gramercy was the distributor of PolyGram films in the United States and Canada and also served as Universal's art-house division. After Seagram's buyout of PolyGram, Gramercy along with October Films and Interscope Communications were merged by Barry Diller to form USA Films in 1999. On May 20, 2015, Focus Features revived the name as a label for action, horror and sci-fi genre films; the label was shut down after the release of Ratchet & Clank on April 29, 2016.
1 New York Place was a supertall skyscraper proposed in 2002 that would have risen 1,050 feet tall and had ninety floors, but the project was canceled. It was supposed to be located in New York City’s Financial District in Lower Manhattan. It would have taken up an entire block on Broadway where Fulton Street and John Street meet.
Gramercy Park Hotel was a luxury hotel located at 2 Lexington Avenue, in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, adjacent to the park of the same name. It was known for its rich history.
Selene is a residential skyscraper at the southwest corner of 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 64-story tower, completed in 2019, was designed by Norman Foster. At 711 feet (217 m) tall, it is the 64th tallest building in New York.
Thor Equities is a real estate development, leasing and management firm, with headquarters in New York City, London and Mexico City. Thor Equities owns property in the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia, India and Latin America, including London's historic Burlington Arcade and the Palmer House Hilton. In New York City, Thor owns retail, office and residential properties on Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue as well as in SoHo, Flatiron, the Meatpacking District, and Brooklyn including Coney Island. Thor also has investments in major U.S. cities including San Francisco's Union Square; Georgetown in Washington, D.C.; Robertson Boulevard in West Hollywood; Collins Avenue; Lincoln Road; Wynwood and the Design District in Miami. Thor offers investment vehicles for institutional investors through its Thor Urban Property Funds. Thor Equities also has several subsidiary companies including retail advisory and tenant representation firm Thor Retail Advisors.
Church Missions House is a historic building at Park Avenue South and East 22nd Street in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Part of an area once known as "Charity Row", the building was designed by Robert W. Gibson and Edward J. Neville Stent, with a steel structure and medieval-inspired facade. The design was inspired by the town halls of Haarlem and medieval Amsterdam. Church Missions House is so named because it was the headquarters of the Episcopal Church's Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society for much of the 20th century.
The A. Conger Goodyear House is an NRHP listed historic home located at Old Westbury in Nassau County, New York.
René Benko is an Austrian real estate, media and retail investor and founder of the Signa Holding. The company is considered Austria's largest privately held real estate conglomerate. Benko is one of the richest Austrians. Numerous controversies have surrounded Benko’s professional career.
The Karstadt München Bahnhofplatz is a department store of the Karstadt Warenhaus GmbH located in Maxvorstadt, Munich. The store will close on June 30, 2023.
Anson Conger Goodyear was an American manufacturer, businessman, author, and philanthropist and member of the Goodyear family. He is best known as one of the founding members and first president of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Signa Holding GmbH is Austria’s largest privately owned real estate company. Signa Holding GmbH announced insolvency proceedings at the end of November 2023. The company will apply for self-administration restructuring proceedings at the commercial court Vienna.
Le Tricorne is a painted stage curtain created in 1919 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. It was made for the Ballets Russes homonymous production, with choreography by Léonide Massine to music by Manuel de Falla, and depicts figures overlooking a bullring and sizes about 19 by 20 feet . In 1957 the artcraft was purchased from an independent dealer for US$50,000 by Phyllis Lambert, the daughter of Samuel Bronfman, the founder and chairman of the Seagram Company Ltd..
980 Madison Avenue is a building located at Madison Avenue and East 76th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It served as the headquarters of Parke-Bernet Galleries from its opening on November 10, 1949, to its sale in 1987. In 2006, TheNew York Times wrote that the building had functioned as "the Grand Central Terminal of the art world." The building is part of the Upper East Side Historic District.
275 Madison Avenue is a 43-story office building in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is along the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and 40th Street, near Grand Central Terminal. The building, constructed from 1930 to 1931, was designed by Kenneth Franzheim in a mixture of the Art Deco and International styles.
520 Fifth Avenue is a mixed-use supertall building under construction in New York City. The building occupies the former site of three structures. Rabina is developing the building, and architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox designed the structure and serves as architect of record. The interior design is by Charles & Co.