Everything about John D Rockefeller Jr totally explained
John Davison Rockefeller, Jr. (
January 29,
1874 –
May 11,
1960) was a major
philanthropist and a pivotal member of the prominent
Rockefeller family. He was the sole son and scion of the billionaire
Standard Oil industrialist,
John D. Rockefeller and the father of the five famous Rockefeller brothers. In biographies, he was invariably referred to as "Junior" to distinguish him from his more celebrated father, known as "Senior".
Early life
Rockefeller, Jr. was the fifth and last child of
John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) and his wife,
Laura Celestia Spelman (1839–1915). Living in his father's mansion at 4 West
54th Street, attended Park Avenue Baptist Church (now
Riverside Church), he attended
The Browning School from 1889 to 1893, 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.
Initially he'd intended to go to
Yale 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.
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.
Business career
After graduation, Rockefeller, Jr. joined his father's business (October 1, 1897) and set up operations in the newly-formed family office at
Standard Oil's headquarters at 26 Broadway. He became a Standard Oil director; he later also became a director in
J. P. Morgan's
U.S. Steel company, which had been formed in 1901. After a scandal involving the then head of Standard Oil,
John Dustin Archbold (the successor to Senior), and bribes he'd made to two prominent Congressmen, unearthed by the
Hearst media empire, Junior resigned from both companies in 1910 in an attempt to "purify" his ongoing philanthropy from commercial and financial interests.
In April, 1914, after a long period of industrial unrest the
Ludlow massacre occurred at the coal-mining company, Colorado Fuel and Iron (CFI). Senior owned a majority of stock in the company and Junior sat on the board, as an absentee director. Twenty men, women and children died in the incident and Junior was subsequently called to testify in January, 1915, before the US
Commission on Industrial Relations. He was at the time being advised by
William Lyon MacKenzie King and the pioneer public relations expert,
Ivy Lee. Junior also at this time met with the union organizer,
Mother Jones and admitted fault in his testimony. MacKenzie King was later to say that this 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 (see below).
During the
Great Depression he developed and was the sole financier of a vast 14-building real estate complex in the geographical center of Manhattan,
Rockefeller Center, 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 (Esso), and
Associated Press and
Time Inc, as well as branches of the then
Chase National Bank, now
JP Morgan Chase.
The
family office, of which he was in charge, called now formally
"Rockefeller Family and Associates" (and informally,
Room 5600), shifted from Standard Oil headquarters to the 56th floor of what is now the landmark
GE Building, upon its completion in 1933.
In 1921, he received about 10% of the shares of the
Equitable Trust Company from his father, making him the bank's largest shareholder. Subsequently, in 1930, the Equitable merged with the
Chase National Bank, now
JP Morgan Chase, and became at that time the largest bank in the world. 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 1960's his family still retained about 1% of the bank's shares, by which time his son
David had become the bank's president.
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, Jr., 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 the singular event that pushed the nation to repeal Prohibition.
However, Rockefeller, Jr. is most remembered for his
philanthropy, giving over $537 million to myriad causes over his lifetime.
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'd become involved in other organizations set up by Senior, the
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.
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.
In 1900, after he'd earlier (1896) persuaded his father to support nascent cancer research, Rockefeller money built a medical laboratory on the campus of
Cornell Medical Center. This subsequently became Memorial Hospital, which decades later became the world renowned
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
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 in her pioneering work on birth control and involvement in population issues.
In the arts, he gave extensive property he owned on West Forty-fourth Street for the site of the
Museum of Modern Art, which had been co-founded by his wife in 1929. He also founded the
Museum of Primitive Art, now part of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
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 And Mary's Wren Building.
Through negotiations by his son
Nelson, in 1946 he bought for $8.5 million - from the major New York real estate developer
William Zeckendorf - and then donated the land along the East River in Manhattan upon which the
United Nations headquarters was built. This was after he'd vetoed the family estate at Pocantico as a prospective site for the headquarters (see
Kykuit).
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.
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.
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
Rheims Cathedral, the
Château de Fontainebleau and the
Palace of Versailles, for which in 1936 he was awarded France's highest decoration, the Grand Croix of the
Légion d'honneur (subsequently also awarded decades later - in 2000 - 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 Attolos, 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 to 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 such notable antiquities as the
Dead Sea Scrolls.
Conservation
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),
Acadia,
Great Smoky Mountains,
Yosemite, and
Shenandoah. In the case of Acadia National Park, he financed and engineered an extensive carriage trail 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'd acquired: Philippe Castle in North Tarrytown (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 proton-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.
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".
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."
Wives, children and legacy
In August 1900, Rockefeller was invited by the powerful Senator
Nelson W. Aldrich of
Rhode Island to join a party aboard President
William McKinley's yacht, the
Dolphin, on a cruise to
Cuba. Although the outing was of a political nature, Rockefeller's future wife
Abby Greene Aldrich was included in the large party; the two had been courting for over four years.
Junior married
Abby Greene Aldrich on
October 9 1901, in what was seen at the time as the consummate marriage of capitalism and politics. 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 summer mansion at Warwick Neck,
Rhode Island, and attended by
Standard Oil and other great industrial executives of the age.
The couple had six children, a daughter and the five Rockefeller brothers:
- Abby Rockefeller Mauze (November 9, 1903 - May 27, 1976)
- John D. Rockefeller III (March 21, 1906 - July 10, 1978)
- Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (July 8, 1908 - January 26, 1979)
- Laurance Spelman Rockefeller (May 26, 1910 - July 11, 2004)
- Winthrop Rockefeller (May 1, 1912 - February 22, 1973)
- David Rockefeller (born June 15, 1915)
Abby Rockefeller died of a heart attack at the family apartment at 740 Park Avenue in April, 1948. Junior remarried in 1951, to Martha Baird Allen, the widow of his old college classmate, Arthur Allen. He died of
pneumonia on
May 11,
1960 at the age of 86, and was interred in the family cemetery in
Tarrytown, with 40 family members present.
His sons, the five Rockefeller brothers established an unparalleled network of social connections and institutional power over time, based on the foundations that Junior - and before him Senior - had laid down. David became an internationally renowned banker, philanthropist and world statesman. John D. III became a major philanthropist and internationalist. Laurance became a significant venture capitalist and major conservationist. Nelson and Winthrop Rockefeller later became state
governors; Nelson went on to become
Vice President of the United States under
Gerald Ford.
Residences
Junior's principal residence in New York was the 9-story mansion at 10 West Fifty-fourth 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). After vacating Number 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, as Governor of New York State, 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.
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