Skyscraper Dreams: The Great Real Estate Dynasties of New York

by Tom Shachtman

"Fascinating history, showing how the city has been molded by the edifice complexes of risk-takers. The stuff of grand comedy."-Business Week

Genres: Business, New York, History, Design, Architecture

380 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1991

About the author

Since I always wanted to be a writer, I consider myself fortunate to have had my work published and produced in many forms—40 histories, novels, and books for children, plus filmed documentaries and TV dramas, poetry, plays, songs, newspaper columns, magazine articles, even a comic book.

My newest book (January 2020) is THE FOUNDING FORTUNES: HOW THE WEALTHY PAID FOR AND PROFITED FROM AMERICA’S REVOLUTION. This completes a trilogy of books on the Revolutionary Era; the earlier ones are GENTLEMEN SCIENTISTS AND REVOLUTIONARIES, and HOW THE FRENCH SAVED AMERICA.

My book ABSOLUTE ZERO AND THE CONQUEST OF COLD, about 400 years of research into low temperatures, became the basis for a two-hour documentary special for BBC and PBS. The program and my script for it won the American Institute of Physics’ science writing award for 2009. The book itself was praised by The New York Times Book Review as written “with passion and clarity,” by the Library Journal as “truly wonderful,” and by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as “an absolute delight.”

Many of my other books have also received welcome critical praise. Library Journal wrote of RUMSPRINGA: TO BE OR NOT TO BE AMISH that is provided “a near-unprecedented glimpse into the inner lives of Amish society.” The Economist called AROUND THE BLOCK “a near-classic,” The New Yorker “A grand idea, splendidly executed,” and The Washington Post Book World “thoughtful, interesting … a good and useful book.” THE INARTICULATE SOCIETY was judged as “perceptive and disturbing” by The Washington Post, and by The Wall Street Journal as “a provocative examination of the American way with words.” Business Week labeled SKYSCRAPER DREAMS “fascinating history … the stuff of grand comedy,” and The New York Times cited it for “superb reporting on the industry’s wheeling and dealing.” “Fascinating … illuminating … stunning detail,” the Chicago Tribune wrote of THE GILDED LEAF (written with Patrick Reynolds).

I’ve also written books for children, including three novels, BEACHMASTER, WAVEBENDER and DRIFTWHISTLER, now published in several languages. My non-fiction children’s books include THE PRESIDENT BUILDS A HOUSE, about the work of Habitat for Humanity and, with my wife Harriet Shelare, VIDEO POWER.

My collaborations with criminologist Robert K. Ressler, the man who coined the term serial killers and knew more about them than anyone else, include WHOEVER FIGHTS MONSTERS and I HAVE LIVED IN THE MONSTER, both multi-million-copy best-sellers overseas.

My articles have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, Smithsonian, and the Hoover Digest, as well as on the websites of The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, History News Network, and the Journal of the American Revolution. My occasional column for THE LAKEVILLE JOURNAL (CT), “The Long View,’ provides historical context to current events.

I am a lifetime member of the Writers Guild of America, a longtime member of The Authors Guild, and a former president of the board and current trustee of The Writers Room in New York City, an urban writers’ colony. I’ve also served as a trustee of the Connecticut Humanities Council, and of The Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area.

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading this book, I feel like I finally have a least a moderate grasp of the Tishmans, Tisches, Urises, Ravitches, Dursts, LeFraks, Helmselys, and, yes, Trumps, that came to manage the giant real estate fortunes that defined New York City, and that became much of America's top crust. The problem is that this book simply cannot avoid a rundown of every minor family drama and after the first generation each of these families are populated with an array of children and then cousins who are impossible to tell apart and the author makes no effort to help the reader to do so.

The basic story is well known. The old dutch plutocrats, the Beekmans, the Roosevelts, and most especially Trinity Church, owned much of the land of Manhattan they first bought off the Lenape indians for the proverbial $24 in beeds. Yet John Jacob Astor was the first to take his own fortune (from furs) and turn New York real estate into the foundation of a full-time business. By the time he died in 1848 he left a fortune limited only by the miserly 2.5% he gave to establish the Astor library. His competing descendents would found the Waldorf and Astoria hotels, later combined, and much of New York City's buildings into the mid-20th century.

Another series of surprising fortunes came out of Daniel Burnham's architecture shop in Chicago along with George Fuller's Chicago construction shop. The two combined to create the famous Flatiron Building in New York, and many of the people trained in their shops came to dominate the architecture and construction trades in Manhattan. Emery Roth trained under Burnham and then became the go-to designer for much of the high-flying buildings in the early 20th century, as did his sons in the next generation. Fuller's company (which supposedly invented the cost-plus method of contructing) trained the Starrett brothers, who became the main constructon builders for generations, soon leading the Fuller company itself and the Thompson-Starrett firm, the latter of which put up the Woolworth in 1913 and the Equitable Building in 1915, designed by Ernest Graham, another successor of Burnahm. ThEe Equitable skyscraper though soon led to the imposition of zoning rules that changed the game.

The biggest real fortunes came from a group of "Yidn" the Eastern European Jews who fled the Pale of Settlement after 1881 and came into conflict with the German "Yehudim" Jews. They stayed away from the old financial firms and came to build their own structures in the Lower East Side or in Brooklyn and gradually expanded their fortunes. The Urises and the Ravitches were rival ironmasters who took their expertise into the new steel-structured buildings. Julius Tishman put up his first tenement in 1898 and soon his five sons were moving everywhere and within 30 years their firm was the first of the new reed to go public. Unlike many of the yankee firms, even these public firms passed down to generations of children.

After a burst of some new firms that went under in the 1930s, (led by A.E. Lefcourt, Fred French, and Henry Mandel), the post-war family firms expanded with help from big government construction projects. The Tishmans supervised construction work at the World Trade Center and put their own name at 666 6th Avenue, and soon went public. HRH, the Ravitch's firm, after working with the Roth architects to build Central Park West (the Beresford and San Remo, with the towers, being the most famous in the 1920s), brought in government support for the midtown Manhattan Plaza and then much of the East River sites like Waterside, before being sold to the Starrett firm. By the 1960s the Urises had built 13 million square feet in postwar office space, including the surprising downtown success 55 Water Street, more than the cities of Boston or Phildelphia had put up in total.

The fortunes are huge, the stories are big, and the egos are humongous. I just wish there was an clearer story told about all of it.

[Austin Gaghadar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was an interesting look at the economic and social history of New York City through the lens of real estate development. This book helped to reshape my perspective on the early Jewish immigrants that came to the United States and created both a life for themselves and a lasting legacy in the form of Manhattan skyscrapers. Frankly, my respect grew immensely for those who built communities, literally and figuratively, while being shut out from the mainstream economic system. It also became apparent that this strategy is not one that can be replicated by modern immigrant groups. This book also included useful lessons on the financing and practice of real estate development, including the myriad parties to consider, and the risks and opportunities of using large amounts of leverage or public markets to fund expansion as opposed to steady and consistent compounding. Finally it was a fun exercise to see which of the buildings or blocks I was familiar with or could picture as they were described throughout the book.

There were also a couple of aspects that made this a less desirable read for me personally. The first was that the long history covered but also heavy amount of detail used about all of the different time periods. While this did create more examples from which to draw and exhibit the themes at times it was too much to keep track of. This was exacerbated by the large number of families covered and for those covered, discussions spanning multiple generations. I also was not as interested in the architectural details of the buildings and would have appreciated additional focus on the financial engineering elements of the story, such as the discussion of the way depreciation was used to create a low tax but high cash flow business. Lastly, the relevance of the book was diminished when read in 2025 instead of more contemporaneously with publication in 1991. This made it a useful way to learn about that period in history but made all of the details a lot less important.

Overall, I think this book is perfect for people who are interested in real estate, finance, history, politics and are extremely familiar with New York City. For me, it was a valuable read and I know more about the city, country and industry because of it, but it was not the most efficient or engaging way to engage with this topic.