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John D. Rockefeller Jr.

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John D. Rockefeller Jr.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. cph.3a03736.jpg
Rockefeller in 1920
Born
John Davison Rockefeller Jr.

(1874-01-29)January 29, 1874[1]
DiedMay 11, 1960(1960-05-11) (aged 86)[1]
Alma materBrown University (BA)
Occupation(s)Financier, Philanthropist
Spouse(s)
(m. 1901; died 1948)

(m. 1951)
ChildrenAbigail, John III, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop, and David
Parent(s)John Davison Rockefeller Sr.
Laura Celestia Spelman
RelativesRockefeller family
AwardsPublic Welfare Medal (1943)

John Davison Rockefeller Jr. (January 29, 1874 – May 11, 1960) was an American financier and philanthropist, and the only son of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller.

He was involved in the development of the vast office complex in Midtown Manhattan known as Rockefeller Center, making him one of the largest real estate holders in the city. Towards the end of his life, he was famous for his philanthropy, donating over $500 million to a wide variety of different causes, including educational establishments. Among his projects was the reconstruction of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. He was widely blamed for having orchestrated the Ludlow Massacre and other offenses during the Colorado Coalfield War.[2][3]

Rockefeller was the father of six children: Abby, John III, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop, and David.

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Standard Oil

Standard Oil

Standard Oil Company, Inc., was an American oil production, transportation, refining, and marketing company that operated from 1870 to 1911. At its height, Standard Oil was the largest petroleum company in the world, and its success made its co-founder and chairman, John D. Rockefeller, among the wealthiest Americans of all time and among the richest people in modern history. Its history as one of the world's first and largest multinational corporations ended in 1911, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was an illegal monopoly.

John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller

John Davison Rockefeller Sr. was an American business magnate and philanthropist. He has been widely considered the wealthiest American of all time and the richest person in modern history. Rockefeller was born into a large family in Upstate New York that moved several times before eventually settling in Cleveland. He became an assistant bookkeeper at age 16 and went into several business partnerships beginning at age 20, concentrating his business on oil refining. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870. He ran it until 1897 and remained its largest shareholder.

Midtown Manhattan

Midtown Manhattan

Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan and serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project, the headquarters of the United Nations, Grand Central Terminal, and Rockefeller Center, as well as several prominent tourist destinations including Broadway, Times Square, and Koreatown. Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere.

Rockefeller Center

Rockefeller Center

Rockefeller Center is a large complex consisting of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres (89,000 m2) between 48th Street and 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 14 original Art Deco buildings, commissioned by the Rockefeller family, span the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue, split by a large sunken square and a private street called Rockefeller Plaza. Later additions include 75 Rockefeller Plaza across 51st Street at the north end of Rockefeller Plaza, and four International Style buildings on the west side of Sixth Avenue.

Colonial Williamsburg

Colonial Williamsburg

Colonial Williamsburg is a living-history museum and private foundation presenting a part of the historic district in the city of Williamsburg, Virginia. Its 301-acre (122 ha) historic area includes several hundred restored or recreated buildings from the 18th century, when the city was the capital of the Colony of Virginia; 17th-century, 19th-century, and Colonial Revival structures; and more recent reconstructions. The historic area includes three main thoroughfares and their connecting side streets that attempt to suggest the atmosphere and the circumstances of 18th-century Americans. Costumed employees work and dress as people did in the era, sometimes using colonial grammar and diction.

Ludlow Massacre

Ludlow Massacre

The Ludlow Massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War. Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard and private guards employed by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) attacked a tent colony of roughly 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Approximately 21 people, including miners' wives and children, were killed. John D. Rockefeller Jr., a part-owner of CF&I who had recently appeared before a United States congressional hearing on the strikes, was widely blamed for having orchestrated the massacre.

Colorado Coalfield War

Colorado Coalfield War

The Colorado Coalfield War was a major labor uprising in the Southern and Central Colorado Front Range between September 1913 and December 1914. Striking began in late summer 1913, organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) after years of deadly working conditions and low pay. The strike was marred by targeted and indiscriminate attacks from both strikers and individuals hired by CF&I to defend its property. Fighting was focused in the southern coal-mining counties of Las Animas and Huerfano, where the Colorado and Southern railroad passed through Trinidad and Walsenburg. It followed the 1912 Northern Colorado Coalfield Strikes.

Abby Rockefeller Mauzé

Abby Rockefeller Mauzé

Abigail Aldrich Rockefeller was an American philanthropist and the daughter of American financier John D. Rockefeller Jr. and a granddaughter of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller.

John D. Rockefeller III

John D. Rockefeller III

John Davison Rockefeller III was an American philanthropist. Rockefeller was the eldest son and second child of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller as well as a grandson of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. He was engaged in a wide range of philanthropic projects, many of which his family had launched, as well as supporting organizations related to East Asian affairs. Rockefeller was also a major supporter of the Population Council, and the committee that created the Lincoln Center in Manhattan.

Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, sometimes referred to by his nickname Rocky, was an American businessman and politician who served as the 41st vice president of the United States from 1974 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford. A member of the Republican Party and wealthy Rockefeller family, he previously served as the 49th governor of New York from 1959 to 1973. Rockefeller also served as assistant secretary of State for American Republic Affairs for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (1944–1945) as well as under secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) under Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1954. A son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller as well as a grandson of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller, he was a noted art collector and served as administrator of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, New York City.

Laurance Rockefeller

Laurance Rockefeller

Laurance Spelman Rockefeller was an American businessman, financier, philanthropist, and conservationist. Rockefeller was the third son and fourth child of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. As a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, he provided venture capital for Intel, Apple Computer and many other successful start-ups. Rockefeller was known for his involvement in wilderness preservation, ecology and the protection of wildlife. His crusade was the establishing of a conservation ethic, and he was declared America's leading conservationist by Lady Bird Johnson.

David Rockefeller

David Rockefeller

David Rockefeller was an American investment banker who served as chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan Corporation. He was the oldest living member of the third generation of the Rockefeller family, and family patriarch from 2004 until his death in 2017. Rockefeller was the fifth son and youngest child of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and a grandson of John D. Rockefeller and Laura Spelman Rockefeller.

Early life

Rockefeller was the fifth and last child of Standard Oil co-founder John Davison Rockefeller Sr. and schoolteacher Laura Celestia "Cettie" Spelman. His four older sisters were Elizabeth (Bessie), Alice (who died an infant), Alta, and Edith. Living in his father's mansion at 4 West 54th Street, he attended Park Avenue Baptist Church at 64th Street (now Central Presbyterian Church) and the Browning School, a tutorial establishment set up for him and other children of associates of the family; it was located in a brownstone owned by the Rockefellers, on West 55th Street. His father John Sr. and uncle William A. Rockefeller Jr. co-founded Standard Oil together.

Initially, he had intended to go to Yale University but was encouraged by William Rainey Harper, president of the University of Chicago, among others, to enter the Baptist-oriented Brown University instead. Nicknamed "Johnny Rock" by his roommates, he joined both the Glee and the Mandolin clubs, taught a Bible class, and was elected junior class president. Scrupulously careful with money, he stood out as different from other rich men's sons.[4]

In 1897, he graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts, after taking nearly a dozen courses in the social sciences, including a study of Karl Marx's Das Kapital. He joined the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

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John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller

John Davison Rockefeller Sr. was an American business magnate and philanthropist. He has been widely considered the wealthiest American of all time and the richest person in modern history. Rockefeller was born into a large family in Upstate New York that moved several times before eventually settling in Cleveland. He became an assistant bookkeeper at age 16 and went into several business partnerships beginning at age 20, concentrating his business on oil refining. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870. He ran it until 1897 and remained its largest shareholder.

Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong

Elizabeth Rockefeller Strong

Elizabeth "Bessie" Rockefeller was the eldest child of Standard Oil co-founder John Davison Rockefeller (1839–1937) and school teacher Laura Celestia "Cettie" Spelman (1839–1915).

Alta Rockefeller Prentice

Alta Rockefeller Prentice

Alta Rockefeller Prentice was an American philanthropist and socialite, daughter of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller.

Edith Rockefeller McCormick

Edith Rockefeller McCormick

Edith Rockefeller McCormick was an American socialite, daughter of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller.

54th Street (Manhattan)

54th Street (Manhattan)

54th Street is a two-mile-long, one-way street traveling west to east across Midtown Manhattan.

Browning School

Browning School

The Browning School is an independent school for boys in New York City. It was founded in 1888 by John A. Browning. It offers instruction in grades kindergarten through 12th grade. The school is a member of the New York Interschool consortium.

Brownstone

Brownstone

Brownstone is a brown Triassic–Jurassic sandstone that was historically a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States and Canada to refer to a townhouse clad in this or any other aesthetically similar material.

55th Street (Manhattan)

55th Street (Manhattan)

55th Street is a two-mile-long, one-way street traveling east to west across Midtown Manhattan.

Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. One of nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution, Brown was the first college in the United States to codify in its charter that admission and instruction of students was to be equal regardless of their religious affiliation.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the four-volume Das Kapital (1867–1883). Marx's political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic, and political history. His name has been used as an adjective, a noun, and a school of social theory.

Das Kapital

Das Kapital

Das Kapital, also known as Capital: A Critique of Political Economy or sometimes simply Capital, is a foundational theoretical text in materialist philosophy, critique of political economy and politics by Karl Marx. Marx aimed to reveal the economic patterns underpinning the capitalist mode of production in contrast to classical political economists such as Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. While Marx did not live to publish the planned second, third and fourth parts, the second and third volumes were completed from his notes and published after his death by his colleague Friedrich Engels; the fourth volume was completed and published after Engels's death by Marxist philosopher Karl Kautsky. Das Kapital is the most cited book published before 1950 in the social sciences.

Alpha Delta Phi

Alpha Delta Phi

Alpha Delta Phi (ΑΔΦ), commonly known as Alpha Delt, ADPhi, A-Delt, or ADP, is a North American Greek-letter social college fraternity. Alpha Delta Phi was originally founded as a literary society by Samuel Eells in 1832 at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Its more than 50,000 alumni include former presidents and senators of the United States, and justices of the Supreme Court.

Business career

John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1920
John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1920

After graduation from Brown, Rockefeller joined his father's business in October 1897, setting up operations in the newly formed family office at 26 Broadway where he became a director of Standard Oil. He later also became a director at J. P. Morgan's U.S. Steel company, which had been formed in 1901. Junior resigned from both companies in 1910 in an attempt to "purify" his ongoing philanthropy from commercial and financial interests after the Hearst media empire unearthed a bribery scandal involving John Dustin Archbold (the successor to Senior as head of Standard Oil) and two prominent members of Congress.[5]

In September 1913, the United Mine Workers of America declared a strike against the Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) company in what would become the Colorado Coalfield War. Junior owned a controlling interest in CF&I (40% of its stock) and sat on the board as an absentee director.[6] In April 1914, after a long period of industrial unrest, the Ludlow Massacre occurred at a tent camp occupied by striking miners. At least 20 men, women, and children died in the slaughter. This was followed by nine days of violence between miners and the Colorado National Guard. Although he did not order the attack that began this unrest, there are accounts to suggest Junior was mostly to blame for the violence, with the awful working conditions, death ratio, and no paid dead work which included securing unstable ceilings, workers were forced into working in unsafe conditions just to make ends meet. In January 1915, Junior was called to testify before the Commission on Industrial Relations. Many critics blamed Rockefeller for ordering the massacre.[7] Margaret Sanger wrote an attack piece in her magazine The Woman Rebel, declaring, "But remember Ludlow! Remember the men and women and children who were sacrificed in order that John D. Rockefeller Jr., might continue his noble career of charity and philanthropy as a supporter of the Christian faith."[8][9]

He was at the time being advised by William Lyon Mackenzie King and the pioneer public relations expert, Ivy Lee. Lee warned that the Rockefellers were losing public support and developed a strategy that Junior followed to repair it. It was necessary for Junior to overcome his shyness, go personally to Colorado to meet with the miners and their families, inspect the conditions of the homes and the factories, attend social events, and especially to listen closely to the grievances. This was novel advice and attracted widespread media attention, which opened the way to resolve the conflict, and present a more humanized version of the Rockefellers.[10] Mackenzie King said Rockefeller's testimony was the turning point in Junior's life, restoring the reputation of the family name; it also heralded a new era of industrial relations in the country.[11]

Time cover, 19 Jan 1925
Time cover, 19 Jan 1925

During the Great Depression, he was involved in the financing, development, and construction of the Rockefeller Center, a vast office complex in midtown Manhattan, and as a result, became one of the largest real estate holders in New York City. He was influential in attracting leading blue-chip corporations as tenants in the complex, including GE and its then affiliates RCA, NBC and RKO, as well as Standard Oil of New Jersey (now ExxonMobil), Associated Press, Time Inc, and branches of Chase National Bank (now JP Morgan Chase).

The family office, of which he was in charge, shifted from 26 Broadway to the 56th floor of the landmark 30 Rockefeller Plaza upon its completion in 1933. The office formally became "Rockefeller Family and Associates" (and informally, "Room 5600").

In 1921, Junior received about 10% of the shares of the Equitable Trust Company from his father, making him the bank's largest shareholder. Subsequently, in 1930, Equitable merged with Chase National Bank, making Chase the largest bank in the world at the time. Although his stockholding was reduced to about 4% following this merger, he was still the largest shareholder in what became known as "the Rockefeller bank". As late as the 1960s, the family still retained about 1% of the bank's shares, by which time his son David had become the bank's president.[12]

In the late 1920s, Rockefeller founded the Dunbar National Bank in Harlem. The financial institution was located within the Paul Laurence Dunbar Apartments at 2824 Eighth Avenue near 150th Street, servicing a primarily African-American clientele. It was unique among New York City financial institutions in that it employed African Americans as tellers, clerks and bookkeepers as well as in key management positions. However, the bank folded after only a few years of operation.[13][14][15]

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Family office

Family office

A family office is a privately held company that handles investment management and wealth management for a wealthy family, generally one with at least $50-$100 million in investable assets, with the goal being to effectively grow and transfer wealth across generations. The company's financial capital is the family's own wealth. Family offices also may handle tasks such as managing household staff, making travel arrangements, property management, day-to-day accounting and payroll activities, management of legal affairs, family management services, family governance, financial and investor education, coordination of philanthropy and private foundations, and succession planning. A family office can cost over $1 million a year to operate, so the family's net worth usually exceeds $50-$100 million in investable assets. Some family offices accept investments from people who are not members of the owning family. Some firms that cater to multiple clients offer personality psychology services for family members to support better alignment and communications among members of the family.

26 Broadway

26 Broadway

26 Broadway, also known as the Standard Oil Building or Socony–Vacuum Building, is an office building adjacent to Bowling Green in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The 31-story, 520-foot-tall (160 m) structure was designed in the Renaissance Revival style by Thomas Hastings of Carrère and Hastings, in conjunction with Shreve, Lamb & Blake. It was built as the headquarters of Standard Oil, once one of the largest oil companies in the United States.

J. P. Morgan

J. P. Morgan

John Pierpont Morgan Sr. was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known as J.P. Morgan and Co., he was the driving force behind the wave of industrial consolidation in the United States spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

John Dustin Archbold

John Dustin Archbold

John Dustin Archbold was an American businessman and one of the United States' earliest oil refiners. His small oil company was bought out by John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. Archbold rose rapidly at Standard Oil, handling many of the complex secret negotiations over the years. By 1882, he was Rockefeller's closest associate, and typically acted as the company's primary spokesman. Rockefeller, after 1896, left business matters to Archbold while he pursued his philanthropy; as vice president, Archbold effectively ran Standard Oil until his death in 1916. Inspired by Rockefeller's policies, Archbold's main goals were stabilization, efficiency, and minimizing waste in refining and distributing petroleum products. When the company was broken up by the Supreme Court in 1911 into 34 smaller operations, Archbold became president of the largest one, Standard Oil of New Jersey.

Colorado Fuel and Iron

Colorado Fuel and Iron

The Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) was a large steel conglomerate founded by the merger of previous business interests in 1892. By 1903 it was mainly owned and controlled by John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould's financial heirs. While it came to control many plants throughout the country, its main plant was a steel mill on the south side of Pueblo, Colorado and was the city's main industry for most of its history. From 1901 to 1912, Colorado Fuel and Iron was one of the Dow Jones Industrials. The steel-market crash of 1982 led to the decline of the company. After going through several bankruptcies, the company was acquired by Oregon Steel Mills in 1993, and changed its name to Rocky Mountain Steel Mills. In January 2007, Rocky Mountain Steel Mills, along with the rest of Oregon Steel's holdings, were acquired by EVRAZ Group, a Russian steel corporation, for $2.3 billion.

Colorado Coalfield War

Colorado Coalfield War

The Colorado Coalfield War was a major labor uprising in the Southern and Central Colorado Front Range between September 1913 and December 1914. Striking began in late summer 1913, organized by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) after years of deadly working conditions and low pay. The strike was marred by targeted and indiscriminate attacks from both strikers and individuals hired by CF&I to defend its property. Fighting was focused in the southern coal-mining counties of Las Animas and Huerfano, where the Colorado and Southern railroad passed through Trinidad and Walsenburg. It followed the 1912 Northern Colorado Coalfield Strikes.

Controlling interest

Controlling interest

A controlling interest is an ownership interest in a corporation with enough voting stock shares to prevail in any stockholders' motion. A majority of voting shares is always a controlling interest. When a party holds less than the majority of the voting shares, other present circumstances can be considered to determine whether that party is still considered to hold a controlling ownership interest.

Ludlow Massacre

Ludlow Massacre

The Ludlow Massacre was a mass killing perpetrated by anti-striker militia during the Colorado Coalfield War. Soldiers from the Colorado National Guard and private guards employed by Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I) attacked a tent colony of roughly 1,200 striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colorado, on April 20, 1914. Approximately 21 people, including miners' wives and children, were killed. John D. Rockefeller Jr., a part-owner of CF&I who had recently appeared before a United States congressional hearing on the strikes, was widely blamed for having orchestrated the massacre.

Colorado Army National Guard

Colorado Army National Guard

The Colorado Army National Guard is a component of the United States Army, United States National Guard, and Colorado National Guard. Nationwide, the Army National Guard comprises approximately one half of the US Army's available combat forces and approximately one third of its support organization. National coordination of various state National Guard units is maintained through the National Guard Bureau.

Commission on Industrial Relations

Commission on Industrial Relations

The Commission on Industrial Relations was a commission created by the U.S. Congress on August 23, 1912, to scrutinize US labor law. The commission studied work conditions throughout the industrial United States between 1913 and 1915. The final report of the Commission, published in eleven volumes in 1916, contain tens of thousands of pages of testimony from a wide range of witnesses, including Clarence Darrow, Louis Brandeis, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, Theodore Schroeder, William "Big Bill" Haywood, scores of ordinary workers, and the titans of capitalism, including Daniel Guggenheim, George Walbridge Perkins, Sr., Henry Ford, and Andrew Carnegie.

Ivy Lee

Ivy Lee

Ivy Ledbetter Lee was an American publicity expert and a founder of modern public relations. Lee is best known for his public relations work with the Rockefeller Family.

Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression (1929–1939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagion began around September and led to the Wall Street stock market crash of October 24. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century.

Philanthropy and social causes

In a celebrated letter to Nicholas Murray Butler in June 1932, subsequently printed on the front page of The New York Times, Rockefeller, a lifelong teetotaler, argued against the continuation of the Eighteenth Amendment on the principal grounds of an increase in disrespect for the law. This letter became an important event in pushing the nation to repeal Prohibition.[16]

Rockefeller was known for his philanthropy, giving over $537 million[17] to myriad causes over his lifetime[18] compared to $240 million to his own family.[19] He created the Sealantic Fund in 1938 to channel gifts to his favorite causes; previously his main philanthropic organization had been the Davison Fund. He had become the Rockefeller Foundation's inaugural president in May 1913 and proceeded to dramatically expand the scope of this institution, founded by his father. Later he would become involved in other organizations set up by Senior: Rockefeller University and the International Education Board.

In the social sciences, he founded the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial in 1918, which was subsequently folded into the Rockefeller Foundation in 1929.[20] A committed internationalist, he financially supported programs of the League of Nations and crucially funded the formation and ongoing expenses of the Council on Foreign Relations and its initial headquarters building in New York in 1921.[21]

He established the Bureau of Social Hygiene in 1913, a major initiative that investigated such social issues as prostitution and venereal disease, as well as studies in police administration and support for birth control clinics and research. In 1924, at the instigation of his wife, he provided crucial funding for Margaret Sanger–who had previously been a personal opponent to him due to his treatment of workers–in her work on birth control and involvement in population issues.[22] He donated $5000 to her American Birth Control League in 1924 and a second time in 1925.[23]

John D. Rockefeller Jr., financier
John D. Rockefeller Jr., financier

In the arts, he gave extensive property he owned on West 54th Street in Manhattan for the site of the Museum of Modern Art, which had been co-founded by his wife in 1929.

In 1925, he purchased the George Grey Barnard collection of medieval art and cloister fragments for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also purchased land north of the original site, now Fort Tryon Park, for a new building, The Cloisters.[24][25]

In November 1926, Rockefeller came to the College of William and Mary for the dedication of an auditorium built-in memory of the organizers of Phi Beta Kappa, the honorary scholastic fraternity founded in Williamsburg in 1776. Rockefeller was a member of the society and had helped pay for the auditorium. He had visited Williamsburg the previous March, when the Reverend Dr. W. A. R. Goodwin escorted him—along with his wife Abby, and their sons, David, Laurance, and Winthrop—on a quick tour of the city. The upshot of his visit was that he approved the plans already developed by Goodwin and launched the massive historical restoration of Colonial Williamsburg on November 22, 1927. Amongst many other buildings restored through his largesse was The College of William & Mary's Wren Building and the Episcopalian Bruton Parish Church.[26]

In 1940, Rockefeller hosted Bill Wilson, one of the original founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, and others at a dinner to tell their stories. "News of this got out on the world wires; inquiries poured in again and many people went to the bookstores to get the book, Alcoholics Anonymous." Rockefeller offered to pay for the publication of the book, but in keeping with AA traditions of being self-supporting, AA rejected the money.[27]

Through negotiations by his son Nelson, in 1946 he bought for $8.5 million—from the major New York real estate developer William Zeckendorf—the land along the East River in Manhattan which he later donated for the United Nations headquarters. This was after he had vetoed the family estate at Pocantico as a prospective site for the headquarters (see Kykuit).[28] Another UN connection was his early financial support for its predecessor, the League of Nations; this included a gift to endow a major library for the League in Geneva which today still remains a resource for the UN.[29]

A confirmed ecumenicist, over the years he gave substantial sums to Protestant and Baptist institutions, ranging from the Interchurch World Movement, the Federal Council of Churches, the Union Theological Seminary, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York's Riverside Church, and the World Council of Churches. He was also instrumental in the development of the research that led to Robert and Helen Lynd's famous Middletown studies work that was conducted in the city of Muncie, Indiana, that arose out of the financially supported Institute of Social and Religious Research.

As a follow on to his involvement in the Ludlow Massacre, Rockefeller was a major initiator with his close friend and advisor William Lyon Mackenzie King in the nascent industrial relations movement; along with major chief executives of the time, he incorporated Industrial Relations Counselors (IRC) in 1926, a consulting firm whose main goal was to establish industrial relations as a recognized academic discipline at Princeton University and other institutions. It succeeded through the support of prominent corporate chieftains of the time, such as Owen D. Young and Gerard Swope of General Electric.[30]

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Nicholas Murray Butler

Nicholas Murray Butler

Nicholas Murray Butler was an American philosopher, diplomat, and educator. Butler was president of Columbia University, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the deceased James S. Sherman's replacement as William Howard Taft’s running mate in the 1912 United States presidential election. He became so well known and respected that The New York Times printed his Christmas greeting to the nation every year.

Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution established the prohibition of alcohol in the United States. The amendment was proposed by Congress on December 18, 1917, and was ratified by the requisite number of states on January 16, 1919. The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, 1933—it is the only amendment to be repealed.

Prohibition in the United States

Prohibition in the United States

In the United States from 1920 to 1933, a nationwide constitutional law prohibited the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The alcohol industry was curtailed by a succession of state legislatures, and finally ended nationwide under the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on January 16, 1919. Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 5, 1933.

Philanthropy

Philanthropy

Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material gain; and with government endeavors, which are public initiatives for public good, notably focusing on provision of public services. A person who practices philanthropy is a philanthropist.

League of Nations

League of Nations

The League of Nations was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. The main organization ceased operations on 20 April 1946 but many of its components were relocated into the new United Nations.

Council on Foreign Relations

Council on Foreign Relations

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Founded in 1921, it is an independent and nonpartisan nonprofit organization. CFR is based in New York City, with an additional office in Massachusetts. Its membership has included senior politicians, numerous secretaries of state, CIA directors, bankers, lawyers, professors, corporate directors and CEOs, and senior media figures.

Birth control

Birth control

Birth control, also known as contraception, anticonception, and fertility control, is the use of methods or devices to prevent unintended pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth control only became available in the 20th century. Planning, making available, and using human birth control is called family planning. Some cultures limit or discourage access to birth control because they consider it to be morally, religiously, or politically undesirable.

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Higgins Sanger, also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

George Grey Barnard

George Grey Barnard

George Grey Barnard, often written George Gray Barnard, was an American sculptor who trained in Paris. He is especially noted for his heroic sized Struggle of the Two Natures in Man at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, his twin sculpture groups at the Pennsylvania State Capitol, and his Lincoln statue in Cincinnati, Ohio. His major works are largely symbolical in character. His personal collection of medieval architectural fragments became a core part of The Cloisters in New York City.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. In 2022 it welcomed 3,208,832 visitors, ranking it eighth in the list of Most visited art museums in the world, and the second-most visited art museum in the United States. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is by area one of the world's largest art museums. The first portion of the approximately 2-million-square-foot (190,000 m2) building was built in 1880. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from medieval Europe.

Fort Tryon Park

Fort Tryon Park

Fort Tryon Park is a public park located in the Hudson Heights and Inwood neighborhoods of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The 67-acre (27 ha) park is situated on a ridge in Upper Manhattan, close to the Hudson River to the west. It extends mostly from 192nd Street in the south to Riverside Drive in the north, and from Broadway in the east to the Henry Hudson Parkway in the west. The main entrance to the park is at Margaret Corbin Circle, at the intersection of Fort Washington Avenue and Cabrini Boulevard.

Overseas philanthropy

In the 1920s, he also donated a substantial amount towards the restoration and rehabilitation of major buildings in France after World War I, such as the Reims Cathedral, the Château de Fontainebleau and the Château de Versailles, for which in 1936 he was awarded France's highest decoration, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur, which also was awarded decades later to his son David Rockefeller.

He also liberally funded the notable early excavations at Luxor in Egypt, and the American School of Classical Studies for excavation of the Agora and the reconstruction of the Stoa of Attalos, both in Athens; the American Academy in Rome; Lingnan University in China; St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo; the library of the Imperial University in Tokyo; and the Shakespeare Memorial Endowment at Stratford-on-Avon.

In addition, he provided the funding for the construction of the Palestine Archaeological Museum in East Jerusalem – the Rockefeller Museum – which today houses many antiquities and was the home of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls until they were moved to the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum.[31]

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World War I

World War I

World War I or the First World War, often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. It was fought between two coalitions, the Allies and the Central Powers. Fighting occurred throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died as a result of genocide, while the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war.

Reims Cathedral

Reims Cathedral

Notre-Dame de Reims, , is a Roman Catholic cathedral in the French city of the same name, the archiepiscopal see of the Archdiocese of Reims. The cathedral was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and was the traditional location for the coronation of the kings of France.

Luxor

Luxor

Luxor is a modern city in Upper (southern) Egypt which includes the site of the Ancient Egyptian city of Thebes.

Agora

Agora

The agora was a central public space in ancient Greek city-states. It is the best representation of a city-state's response to accommodate the social and political order of the polis. The literal meaning of the word "agora" is "gathering place" or "assembly". The agora was the center of the athletic, artistic, business, social, spiritual, and political life in the city. The Ancient Agora of Athens is the best-known example.

Lingnan University (Guangzhou)

Lingnan University (Guangzhou)

Lingnan University in Guangzhou (Canton), China, was a private university established by a group of American missionaries in 1888. At its founding it was named Canton Christian College (格致書院).

St. Luke's International Hospital

St. Luke's International Hospital

St. Luke's International Hospital (聖路加国際病院) is a general and teaching hospital located in the Tsukiji district of Chūō, Tokyo, Japan.

University of Tokyo

University of Tokyo

The University of Tokyo is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by the Japanese government.

East Jerusalem

East Jerusalem

East Jerusalem is the sector of Jerusalem that was held by Jordan during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, as opposed to the western sector of the city, West Jerusalem, which was held by Israel. Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered a part of the West Bank and, therefore, of the Palestinian territories. A number of states currently recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine, whereas other states assert that East Jerusalem "will be the capital of Palestine", while referring to East Jerusalem at present as "an occupied territory".

Dead Sea Scrolls

Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, the Dead Sea Scrolls are considered to be a keystone in the history of archaeology with great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canons, along with deuterocanonical and extra-biblical manuscripts which preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism. At the same time they cast new light on the emergence of Christianity and of Rabbinic Judaism. Most of the scrolls are held by Israel in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum, but their ownership is disputed by Jordan due to the Qumran Caves' history: following the End of the British Mandate for Palestine in 1947, Jordan occupied the area in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and Israel captured both the area and several Scrolls from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War. However, some of the scrolls are still in Jordan and are now displayed at The Jordan Museum in Amman. Ownership of the scrolls is also contested by the State of Palestine.

Israel Museum

Israel Museum

The Israel Museum is an art and archaeological museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world’s leading encyclopaedic museums. It is situated on a hill in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem, adjacent to the Bible Lands Museum, the Knesset, the Israeli Supreme Court, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Conservation

Teton Range and Snake River
Teton Range and Snake River

He had a special interest in conservation, and purchased and donated land for many American National Parks, including Grand Teton (hiding his involvement and intentions behind the Snake River Land Company), Mesa Verde National Park,[32] Acadia, Great Smoky Mountains, Yosemite, and Shenandoah. In the case of Acadia National Park, he financed and engineered an extensive Carriage Road network throughout the park. Both the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway that connects Yellowstone National Park to the Grand Teton National Park and the Rockefeller Memorial in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park were named after him. He was also active in the movement to save redwood trees, making a significant contribution to Save the Redwoods League in the 1920s to enable the purchase of what would become the Rockefeller Forest in Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

In 1951, he established Sleepy Hollow Restorations, which brought together under one administrative body the management and operation of two historic sites he had acquired: Philipsburg Manor House in North Tarrytown, now called Sleepy Hollow (acquired in 1940 and donated to the Tarrytown Historical Society), and Sunnyside, Washington Irving's home, acquired in 1945. He bought Van Cortland Manor in Croton-on-Hudson in 1953 and in 1959 donated it to Sleepy Hollow Restorations. In all, he invested more than $12 million in the acquisition and restoration of the three properties that were the core of the organization's holdings. In 1986, Sleepy Hollow Restorations became Historic Hudson Valley, which also operates the current guided tours of the Rockefeller family estate of Kykuit in Pocantico Hills.

He is the author of the noted life principle, among others, inscribed on a tablet facing his famed Rockefeller Center: "I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty".[33]

In 1935, Rockefeller received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award, "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York." He was awarded the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1943.[34]

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Grand Teton National Park

Grand Teton National Park

Grand Teton National Park is an American national park in northwestern Wyoming. At approximately 310,000 acres (1,300 km2), the park includes the major peaks of the 40-mile-long (64 km) Teton Range as well as most of the northern sections of the valley known as Jackson Hole. Grand Teton National Park is only 10 miles (16 km) south of Yellowstone National Park, to which it is connected by the National Park Service–managed John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway. Along with surrounding national forests, these three protected areas constitute the almost 18-million-acre (73,000-square-kilometer) Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, one of the world's largest intact mid-latitude temperate ecosystems.

Mesa Verde National Park

Mesa Verde National Park

Mesa Verde National Park is an American national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Montezuma County, Colorado. The park protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States.

Acadia National Park

Acadia National Park

Acadia National Park is an American national park located along the mid-section of the Maine coast, southwest of Bar Harbor. The park preserves about half of Mount Desert Island, part of the Isle au Haut, the tip of the Schoodic Peninsula, and portions of 16 smaller outlying islands. It protects the natural beauty of the rocky headlands, including the highest mountains along the Atlantic coast. Acadia boasts a glaciated coastal and island landscape, an abundance of habitats, a high level of biodiversity, clean air and water, and a rich cultural heritage.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Great Smoky Mountains National Park is an American national park in the southeastern United States, with parts in North Carolina and Tennessee. The park straddles the ridgeline of the Great Smoky Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, which are a division of the larger Appalachian Mountain chain. The park contains some of the highest mountains in eastern North America, including Clingmans Dome, Mount Guyot, and Mount Le Conte. The border between the two states runs northeast to southwest through the center of the park. The Appalachian Trail passes through the center of the park on its route from Georgia to Maine. With 14.1 million visitors in 2021, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the United States.

Shenandoah National Park

Shenandoah National Park

Shenandoah National Park is an American national park that encompasses part of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The park is long and narrow, with the Shenandoah River and its broad valley to the west, and the rolling hills of the Virginia Piedmont to the east. Skyline Drive is the main park road, generally traversing along the ridgeline of the mountains. Almost 40% of the park's land—79,579 acres —has been designated as wilderness areas and is protected as part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. The highest peak is Hawksbill Mountain at 4,051 feet (1,235 m).

John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway

John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway

John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway is a scenic road and protected area that connects Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. state of Wyoming. It is federally owned and managed by the National Park Service by Grand Teton National Park. It is named in remembrance of John D. Rockefeller Jr., a conservationist and philanthropist who was instrumental in the creation and enlargement of numerous national parks including Grand Teton, Virgin Islands, Acadia and the Great Smoky Mountains. This parkway carries U.S. Route 89, U.S. Route 191, and U.S. Route 287

Sequoia sempervirens

Sequoia sempervirens

Sequoia sempervirens is the sole living species of the genus Sequoia in the cypress family Cupressaceae. Common names include coast redwood, coastal redwood, and California redwood. It is an evergreen, long-lived, monoecious tree living 1,200–2,200 years or more. This species includes the tallest living trees on Earth, reaching up to 115.9 m (380.1 ft) in height and up to 8.9 m (29 ft) in diameter at breast height. These trees are also among the longest-living organisms on Earth. Before commercial logging and clearing began by the 1850s, this massive tree occurred naturally in an estimated 810,000 ha along much of coastal California and the southwestern corner of coastal Oregon within the United States.

Save the Redwoods League

Save the Redwoods League

Save the Redwoods League is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect and restore coast redwood and giant sequoia trees through the preemptive purchase of development rights of notable areas with such forests.

Humboldt Redwoods State Park

Humboldt Redwoods State Park

Humboldt Redwoods State Park is a state park of California, United States, containing Rockefeller Forest, the world's largest remaining contiguous old-growth forest of coast redwoods. It is located 30 miles (48 km) south of Eureka, California, near Weott in southern Humboldt County, within Northern California, named after the great nineteenth-century scientist, Alexander von Humboldt. The park was established by the Save the Redwoods League in 1921 largely from lands purchased from the Pacific Lumber Company. Beginning with the dedication of the Raynal Bolling Memorial Grove, it has grown to become the third-largest park in the California State Park system, now containing 51,651 acres (20,902 ha) through acquisitions and gifts to the state.

Philipsburg Manor House

Philipsburg Manor House

Philipsburg Manor House is a historic house in the Upper Mills section of the former sprawling Colonial-era estate known as Philipsburg Manor. Together with a water mill and trading site the house is operated as a non-profit museum by Historic Hudson Valley. It is located on US 9 in the village of Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Kykuit

Kykuit

Kykuit, known also as the John D. Rockefeller Estate, is a 40-room historic house museum in Pocantico Hills, a hamlet in the town of Mount Pleasant, New York 25 miles north of New York City. The house was built for oil tycoon and Rockefeller family patriarch John D. Rockefeller. Conceived largely by his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., and enriched by the art collection of the third-generation scion, Governor of New York, and Vice President of the United States, Nelson Rockefeller, it was home to four generations of the family. The house is a National Historic Landmark owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and tours are given by Historic Hudson Valley.

Rockefeller Center

Rockefeller Center

Rockefeller Center is a large complex consisting of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres (89,000 m2) between 48th Street and 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 14 original Art Deco buildings, commissioned by the Rockefeller family, span the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue, split by a large sunken square and a private street called Rockefeller Plaza. Later additions include 75 Rockefeller Plaza across 51st Street at the north end of Rockefeller Plaza, and four International Style buildings on the west side of Sixth Avenue.

Family

In August 1900, Rockefeller was invited by the powerful senator Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich of Rhode Island to join a party aboard President William McKinley's yacht, the USS Dolphin, on a cruise to Cuba. Although the outing was of a political nature, Rockefeller's future wife, philanthropist/socialite Abigail Greene "Abby" Aldrich, was included in the large party; the two had first met in the fall of 1894 and had been courting for over four years.

Rockefeller married Abby on October 9, 1901, in what was seen at the time as the consummate marriage of capitalism and politics. She was a daughter of Senator Aldrich and Abigail Pearce Truman "Abby" Chapman. Moreover, their wedding was the major social event of its time - one of the most lavish of the Gilded Age. It was held at the Aldrich Mansion at Warwick Neck, Rhode Island, and attended by executives of Standard Oil and other companies.[35]

The couple had six children; Abby in 1903, John III in 1906, Nelson in 1908, Laurance in 1910, Winthrop in 1912, and David in 1915.

Abby died of a heart attack at the family apartment at 740 Park Avenue in April 1948. Junior remarried in 1951, to Martha Baird, the widow of his old college classmate Arthur Allen. Rockefeller died of pneumonia on May 11, 1960, at the age of 86 in Tucson, Arizona, and was interred in the family cemetery in Tarrytown, with 40 family members present.

His sons, the five Rockefeller brothers, established an extensive network of social connections and institutional power over time, based on the foundations that Junior - and before him Senior - had laid down. David became a prominent banker, philanthropist and world statesman. Abby and John III became philanthropists. Laurance became a venture capitalist and conservationist. Nelson and Winthrop Rockefeller later became state governors; Nelson went on to serve as Vice President of the United States under President Gerald Ford.

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Nelson W. Aldrich

Nelson W. Aldrich

Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich was a prominent American politician and a leader of the Republican Party in the United States Senate, where he represented Rhode Island from 1881 to 1911. By the 1890s, he was one of the "Big Four" key Republicans who largely controlled the major decisions of the Senate, along with Orville H. Platt, William B. Allison, and John Coit Spooner. Because of his impact on national politics and central position on the pivotal Senate Finance Committee, he was referred to by the press and public alike as the "general manager of the Nation", dominating tariff and monetary policy in the first decade of the 20th century.

Cuba

Cuba

Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean meet. Cuba is located east of the Yucatán Peninsula (Mexico), south of both the American state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Hispaniola, and north of both Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. Havana is the largest city and capital; other major cities include Santiago de Cuba and Camagüey. The official area of the Republic of Cuba is 109,884 km2 (42,426 sq mi) but a total of 350,730 km2 (135,420 sq mi) including the exclusive economic zone. Cuba is the second-most populous country in the Caribbean after Haiti, with over 11 million inhabitants.

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

Abigail Greene Aldrich Rockefeller was an American socialite and philanthropist. She was a prominent member of the Rockefeller family through her marriage to financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr., the son of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller Sr.. Her father was Nelson W. Aldrich who served as the Senator of Rhode Island. Rockefeller was known for being the driving force behind the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art.

Gilded Age

Gilded Age

In United States history, the Gilded Age was an era extending roughly from 1877 to 1896, which was sandwiched between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era. It was a time of rapid economic growth, especially in the Northern and Western United States. As American wages grew much higher than those in Europe, especially for skilled workers, and industrialization demanded an ever-increasing unskilled labor force, the period saw an influx of millions of European immigrants.

Aldrich Mansion

Aldrich Mansion

Aldrich Mansion is a late 19th-century property owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence since 1939. It is located by the scenic Narragansett Bay at 836 Warwick Neck Avenue in Warwick, Rhode Island, south of Providence, Rhode Island. Originally called Indian Oaks, and once the Senator Nelson W. Aldrich Estate. The extensive estate was developed in 1899 by Nelson W. Aldrich (1841–1915), a Republican Party politician who dominated state politics of the period. The main estate house is a sprawling stone French Renaissance structure with lavish interior decoration. The estate's surviving outbuildings include a boathouse and a caretaker's house, the latter located across Warwick Neck Avenue from the main estate. Aldrich's heirs sold the property to the Roman Catholic church in 1939, and it was adapted for use as a seminary. It now serves as the main campus of the Overbrook Academy, a Catholic girls' school. The property now known as "The Aldrich Mansion" still belongs to the Diocese of Providence, and is now available as a site for weddings, formal occasions, business conferences, etc. It is also occasionally used for film and television productions.

Abby Rockefeller Mauzé

Abby Rockefeller Mauzé

Abigail Aldrich Rockefeller was an American philanthropist and the daughter of American financier John D. Rockefeller Jr. and a granddaughter of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller.

John D. Rockefeller III

John D. Rockefeller III

John Davison Rockefeller III was an American philanthropist. Rockefeller was the eldest son and second child of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller as well as a grandson of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller. He was engaged in a wide range of philanthropic projects, many of which his family had launched, as well as supporting organizations related to East Asian affairs. Rockefeller was also a major supporter of the Population Council, and the committee that created the Lincoln Center in Manhattan.

Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, sometimes referred to by his nickname Rocky, was an American businessman and politician who served as the 41st vice president of the United States from 1974 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford. A member of the Republican Party and wealthy Rockefeller family, he previously served as the 49th governor of New York from 1959 to 1973. Rockefeller also served as assistant secretary of State for American Republic Affairs for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (1944–1945) as well as under secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) under Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1954. A son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller as well as a grandson of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller, he was a noted art collector and served as administrator of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, New York City.

Laurance Rockefeller

Laurance Rockefeller

Laurance Spelman Rockefeller was an American businessman, financier, philanthropist, and conservationist. Rockefeller was the third son and fourth child of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. As a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, he provided venture capital for Intel, Apple Computer and many other successful start-ups. Rockefeller was known for his involvement in wilderness preservation, ecology and the protection of wildlife. His crusade was the establishing of a conservation ethic, and he was declared America's leading conservationist by Lady Bird Johnson.

David Rockefeller

David Rockefeller

David Rockefeller was an American investment banker who served as chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan Corporation. He was the oldest living member of the third generation of the Rockefeller family, and family patriarch from 2004 until his death in 2017. Rockefeller was the fifth son and youngest child of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and a grandson of John D. Rockefeller and Laura Spelman Rockefeller.

Martha Baird Rockefeller

Martha Baird Rockefeller

Martha Baird Rockefeller was an American pianist, philanthropist and longtime advocate for the arts.

Governor (United States)

Governor (United States)

In the United States, a governor serves as the chief executive and commander-in-chief in each of the fifty states and in the five permanently inhabited territories, functioning as head of state and head of government therein. As such, governors are responsible for implementing state laws and overseeing the operation of the state executive branch. As state leaders, governors advance and pursue new and revised policies and programs using a variety of tools, among them executive orders, executive budgets, and legislative proposals and vetoes. Governors carry out their management and leadership responsibilities and objectives with the support and assistance of department and agency heads, many of whom they are empowered to appoint. A majority of governors have the authority to appoint state court judges as well, in most cases from a list of names submitted by a nominations committee.

Residences

From 1901 [36] to 1913, Junior lived at 13 West 54th Street in New York. Afterward, Junior's principal residence in New York was the 9-story mansion at 10 West 54th Street, but he owned a group of properties in this vicinity, including Nos. 4, 12, 14 and 16 (some of these properties had been previously acquired by his father, John D. Rockefeller).[37] After he vacated No. 10 in 1936, these properties were razed and subsequently all the land was gifted to his wife's Museum of Modern Art. In that year he moved into a luxurious 40-room triplex apartment at 740 Park Avenue. In 1953, the real estate developer William Zeckendorf bought the 740 Park Avenue apartment complex and then sold it to Rockefeller, who quickly turned the building into a cooperative, selling it on to his rich neighbors in the building.

Years later, just after his son Nelson become Governor of New York, Rockefeller helped foil a bid by greenmailer Saul Steinberg to take over Chemical Bank. Steinberg bought Junior's apartment for $225,000, $25,000 less than it had cost new in 1929. It has since been called the greatest trophy apartment in New York, in the world's richest apartment building.[38]

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John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller

John Davison Rockefeller Sr. was an American business magnate and philanthropist. He has been widely considered the wealthiest American of all time and the richest person in modern history. Rockefeller was born into a large family in Upstate New York that moved several times before eventually settling in Cleveland. He became an assistant bookkeeper at age 16 and went into several business partnerships beginning at age 20, concentrating his business on oil refining. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870. He ran it until 1897 and remained its largest shareholder.

Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

740 Park Avenue

740 Park Avenue

740 Park Avenue is a luxury cooperative apartment building on the west side of Park Avenue between East 71st and 72nd Streets in the Lenox Hill neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was described in Business Insider in 2011 as "a legendary address" that was "at one time considered the most luxurious and powerful residential building in New York City". The "pre-war" building's side entrance address is 71 East 71st Street.

William Zeckendorf

William Zeckendorf

William Zeckendorf Sr. was a prominent American real estate developer. Through his development company Webb and Knapp — for which he began working in 1938 and which he purchased in 1949 — he developed a significant portion of the New York City urban landscape. Architects I. M. Pei and Le Corbusier designed structures for Zeckendorf's development projects.

Housing cooperative

Housing cooperative

A housing cooperative, or housing co-op, is a legal entity, usually a cooperative or a corporation, which owns real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings; it is one type of housing tenure. Housing cooperatives are a distinctive form of home ownership that have many characteristics that differ from other residential arrangements such as single family home ownership, condominiums and renting.

Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, sometimes referred to by his nickname Rocky, was an American businessman and politician who served as the 41st vice president of the United States from 1974 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford. A member of the Republican Party and wealthy Rockefeller family, he previously served as the 49th governor of New York from 1959 to 1973. Rockefeller also served as assistant secretary of State for American Republic Affairs for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (1944–1945) as well as under secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) under Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1954. A son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller as well as a grandson of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller, he was a noted art collector and served as administrator of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, New York City.

Greenmail

Greenmail

Greenmail or greenmailing is the action of purchasing enough shares in a firm to challenge a firm's leadership with the threat of a hostile takeover to force the target company to buy the purchased shares back at a premium in order to prevent the potential takeover.

Chemical Bank

Chemical Bank

Chemical Bank was a bank with headquarters in New York City from 1824 until 1996. At the end of 1995, Chemical was the third-largest bank in the U.S., with about $182.9 billion in assets and more than 39,000 employees around the world.

Honors and legacy

In 1929, Junior was elected an honorary member of the Georgia Society of the Cincinnati. In 1935, he received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York." In 1939, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society under statute 12.

The John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library at Brown University, completed in 1964, is named in his honor.

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Society of the Cincinnati

Society of the Cincinnati

The Society of the Cincinnati is a fraternal, hereditary society founded in 1783 to commemorate the American Revolutionary War that saw the creation of the United States. Membership is largely restricted to descendants of military officers who served in the Continental Army.

The Hundred Year Association of New York

The Hundred Year Association of New York

The Hundred Year Association of New York, founded in 1927, is a non-profit organization in New York City that recognizes and rewards dedication and service to the City of New York by businesses and organizations that have been in operation in the city for a century or more and by individuals who have devoted their lives to the city as city employees.

Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, recognising excellence in science, supporting outstanding science, providing scientific advice for policy, education and public engagement and fostering international and global co-operation. Founded on 28 November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II as The Royal Society and is the oldest continuously existing scientific academy in the world.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library

John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library

The John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, nicknamed "the Rock", is the primary teaching and research library for the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. It is one of five individual libraries which make up the Brown University Library.

Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. One of nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution, Brown was the first college in the United States to codify in its charter that admission and instruction of students was to be equal regardless of their religious affiliation.

Source: "John D. Rockefeller Jr.", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 15th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller_Jr..

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Citations
  1. ^ a b "Rockefeller Archive Center: Extended Biography". Archived from the original on May 28, 2015. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  2. ^ Simmons, R. Laurie; Simmons, Thomas H.; Haecker, Charles; Siebert, Erika Martin (May 2008). National Historic Landmark Nomination: Ludlow Tent Colony (PDF). National Park Service. pp. 41, 45.
  3. ^ "Ludlow Massacre". University of Denver.
  4. ^ Details of Brown University days – see Bernice Kert, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family. New York: Random House, 1993. (pp.62–63)
  5. ^ Resignation from Standard Oil and U.S. Steel boards - see Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr., London: Warner Books, 1998. (pp.548-551)
  6. ^ Zinn, Howard (1990). The Politics of History (2nd ed.). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 81. ISBN 978-0-252-06122-6.
  7. ^ In the Hot Seat: Rockefeller Testifies on Ludlow, The New York Times, May 21, 1915. Retrieved December 26, 2017.
  8. ^ The Public Papers of Margaret Sanger: Web Edition. Nyu.edu. Retrieved on September 5, 2013.
  9. ^ Baker, Jean H. Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion Hill and Wange New York 2011 page 79
  10. ^ Robert L. Heath, ed.. Encyclopedia of public relations (2005) 1:485
  11. ^ The Ludlow massacre and the turning point in Junior's life - Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr., London: Warner Books, 1998. (pp.571-586)
  12. ^ Largest shareholder in Chase Bank - see David Rockefeller, Memoirs, New York: Random House, 2002. (pp.124-25)
  13. ^ Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt, ed. (September 1930). "Along the color line". Crisis. Vol. 37, no. 9. p. 309.
  14. ^ Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt, ed. (August 1933). "Along the color line". Crisis. Vol. 40, no. 8. p. 186.
  15. ^ Harvey, Chester D.; Reed, James, eds. (1939). "The Harlems". New York City Guide. New York, New York: Random House. p. 265.
  16. ^ Letter on Prohibition - see Daniel Okrent, Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center, New York: Viking Press, 2003. (pp.246/7).
  17. ^ "John Rockefeller Jr". The Philanthropy Hall of Fame.
  18. ^ "Rockefeller Archive Center". Archived from the original on May 28, 2015. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  19. ^ Agenda for Reform
  20. ^ Laura Spelman Memorial - see Chernow, op.cit. (p.596)
  21. ^ Funding of the CFR and other international institutions - Ibid., (p.638); John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of America's Greatest Family, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988. (p.156)
  22. ^ The Bureau of Social Hygiene and social issues; funding for Margaret Sanger - see Harr & Johnson, op.cit. (pp.113-15, 191, 461-2)
  23. ^ Katz, Esther; Sanger, Margaret (2003). The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger Volume 1: The Woman Rebel. University of Illinois Press. p. 430.
  24. ^ Barnet, Peter; Wu, Nancy (2005). The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 11–13. ISBN 1-58839-176-0.
  25. ^ "The Cloisters Museum and Gardens". The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  26. ^ Molineux, Will (Autumn 2004). "The Architect of Colonial Williamsburg: William Graves Perry". Colonial Williamsburg: The Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Archived from the original on February 1, 2008.
  27. ^ "Forward to the 2nd Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous" (PDF). Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous. 1955. p. xviii.
  28. ^ Family estate vetoed as site for the UN headquarters - Ibid., (pp.432-3)
  29. ^ Endowment of UN library - Ibid., (p. 173)
  30. ^ Key involvement in the Industrial Relations movement - Ibid., (pp.183-4)
  31. ^ Restorations and constructions in France, Egypt, Greece and Jerusalem - see David Rockefeller, Memoirs, op.cit. (pp.44-8).
  32. ^ "Mesa Verde National Park Receives Gift Of Artworks From The Estate Of David Rockefeller". www.nationalparkstraveler.org. Retrieved July 24, 2019.
  33. ^ Life principle - see John Donald Wilson, The Chase: The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., 1945-1985, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1986. p. 328.
  34. ^ "Public Welfare Award". National Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on December 29, 2010. Retrieved February 14, 2011.
  35. ^ Details of the 1901 wedding - Harr & Johnson, op.cit., (pp.81-5)
  36. ^ "New Home for John D. Rockefeller Jr". The New York Times. September 26, 1901. p. 16. Retrieved May 24, 2021.
  37. ^ Gray, Christopher (May 22, 1994). "Streetscapes/The Rockefeller City House; Pied-a-Terre Off Fifth for a Parsimonious Billionaire". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 25, 2021.
  38. ^ Michael Gross: 740 Park Avenue
Further reading
  • Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. New York: Warner Books, 1998., Detailed biography of his father
  • Fosdick, Raymond B. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.: A Portrait (1956), full biography. online
  • Greenspan, Anders. "How philanthropy can alter our view of the past: a look at Colonial Williamsburg". Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 5.2 (1994): 193–203.
  • Hallahan, Kirk. "Ivy Lee and the Rockefellers' response to the 1913-1914 Colorado coal strike". Journal of Public Relations Research 14#4 (2002): 265–315.
  • Harr, John Ensor, and Peter J. Johnson. The Rockefeller Century (1988)
  • Harvey, Charles E. "John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Interchurch World Movement of 1919–1920: A Different Angle on the Ecumenical Movement". Church History 51#2 (1982): 198–209.
  • Harvey, Charles E. "John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the social sciences: An introduction". Journal of the History of Sociology 4#2 (1982): 1-31.
  • Henry, Robin. "'In our image, according to our likeness': John D. Rockefeller, jr. and reconstructing manhood in post-Ludlow Colorado". Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 16.1 (2017): 24.
  • Loebl, Suzanne. America's Medicis: The Rockefellers and Their Astonishing Cultural Legacy (Harper Collins, 2010).
  • Manchester, William. A Rockefeller Family Portrait: From John D. to Nelson (1959)
  • Moore, Jay D. Alcoholics Anonymous and the Rockefeller Connection: How John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his Associates Saved AA (2015).
  • Patmore, Greg. "Employee representation plans at the Minnequa steelworks, Pueblo, Colorado, 1915–1942". Business History 49.6 (2007): 844–867.
  • Rausch, Helke. "The Birth of Transnational US Philanthropy from the Spirit of War: Rockefeller Philanthropists in World War I". Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17.4 (2018): 650–662.
  • Rees, Jonathan H. Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914–1942 (2011)
  • Schenkel, Albert F. The rich man and the kingdom: John D. Rockefeller Jr., and the Protestant establishment (Augsburg Fortress Pub, 1995)
  • Scott, Nicholas R. "John D. Rockefeller, Jr. & Eugenics: A Means of Social Manipulation". Journal of American History 61 (1974): 225–26.
  • Tevis, Martha May. "Philanthropy at its best: The General Education Board’s contributions to education, 1902–1964". Journal of Philosophy & History of Education 64.1 (2014): 63–72.

Primary sources

  • Ernst, Joseph W., and John Davison Rockefeller. Dear Father/dear Son: Correspondence of John D. Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller Jr. (Fordham Univ Press, 1994)
  • Ernst, Joseph W., John Davison Rockefeller, and Horace Marden Albright. Worthwhile Places: Correspondence of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Horace M. Albright (Fordham Univ Press, 1991).
External links
Non-profit organization positions
New title President of the Rockefeller Foundation
February 11, 1913 – November 6, 1917
Succeeded by
New title Chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation
1917–1939
Succeeded by
Awards and achievements
Preceded by Cover of Time magazine
January 19, 1925
Succeeded by
Categories

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