David Rockefeller estimated that his father lost $110 million in 20 years on his stake in Rockefeller Center, which was started in 1932 as a show of faith in the U.S. economy. David later served as chairman of Rockefeller Center Properties Inc., which held the mortgage, and worked to avert a mid-1990s financial collapse after its purchase by Japan’s Mitsubishi Estate Corp.
In January 1995, the 79-year-old Rockefeller flew to Japan to try to persuade Mitsubishi not to put the property in bankruptcy. He broke his leg walking into Mitsubishi’s offices, then stayed to plead his case before heading to the hospital for treatment. Three months later, the filing occurred anyway.
A year later, Rockefeller bought the center back in partnership with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. In 2001, the group sold it to New York developer Tishman Speyer Properties at a profit, ending seven decades of family control.
Rockefeller upheld the family’s philanthropic tradition, giving away more than $900 million during his lifetime. In 1940, he joined the board of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, established in 1901 by his grandfather, and a decade later succeeded his father as board chairman, serving for 25 years. The Institute was renamed Rockefeller University in 1965.
He endowed the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard and was chairman of the school’s board of overseers.
Inheriting a love of art from his mother, Rockefeller amassed a collection of modern and impressionist works valued at more than $500 million in the early 1990s. After his mother’s death in 1948, he took her seat on the board of the Museum of Modern Art, serving more than 16 years as chairman between 1958 and 1993.
Rockefeller remained sharp and agile into his 90s, going to the office daily at 10 a.m. and leaving at 5 p.m. He exercised at a gym twice a day before work, and sometimes drank a glass of white wine with lunch.
Leadership of the family now falls upon the generation known as “The Cousins,” the great-grandchildren of John D. Rockefeller. David Rockefeller said he was confident his six children and grandchildren would carry on the philanthropic and activist legacy of the family’s century-old fortune.
“If they will have learned the important things about life and how to lead it, that could be my greatest contribution,” Rockefeller said in a May 2007 interview. “I have reason to think that they will.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.