Marshall Rose, a real estate developer who played an important role in reviving the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and transformed the adjacent Bryant Park from a Mecca for drug dealers in a green Midtown Oase, died in his house in Manhattan on Saturday. He was 88.
The cause was complications of Parkinson's disease, said his stepdaughter, Chloe Malle.
As chairman of the Board of Trustees of the library from 1990 to 1995, Mr. Rose, together with his predecessor, Andrew Heiskell and Vartan Gregorian, the old president of the library, the revival of the Beaux-Arts Landmark on Fifth Avenue and The Derelict Greensward, simply developed to the West.
Mr. Rose returned as chairman in 1997 for another two years after Elizabeth F. Rohatyn resigned to strengthen herself to her husband, Felix G. Rohatyn, the newly appointed ambassador in France, in Paris, in Paris.
Mr. Rose played crucial roles in the establishment of science, industry and business library in the former B. Altman Emporium on Madison Avenue (the closed after two decades, and was folded in a more high -tech incarnation of the Midden -Manhatan Library) and in The decision to build vital new piles for books, instead of a disturbing parking garage, under Bryant Park.
During his term of office as chairman, the library edited the eye -blinding renovation of the Deborah, Jonathan FP, Samuel Priest and Adam R. Rose Main Reading Room in the research library on Fifth Avenue. The project was funded with a gift in honor of their children of Frederick P. Rose, who supervised the renovation, and his wife, Sandra Priest Rose, members of a venerable New York real estate family who is not related to Marshall Rose.
After chairing the Arlen Realty and Development Corporation and its EJ Korvette Discount Chains subsidiary in the early 1970s, Mr. Rose founded the Georgetown Company in 1978, which in 1999 developed the Mall Easton Town Center in Columbus, with Leslie H Wexner, the billionaire retailer.
Mr. Rose's company built and managed shopping centers, apartments and commercial properties in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Washington; Renovated Madison Square Garden when it was owned by Gulf and Western Industries in the early nineties; And supervised the development of the Bijenkorf-like headquarters of the architect Frank Gehry of the IAC/Interactive Corporation of Barry Diller in the West Chelsea section of Manhattan, completed in 2007.
As a philanthropist, Mr. Rose helped in setting up three Charter High Schools financed by the Robin Hood Foundation, one in the South Bronx and two in Brooklyn.
Many websites that published the death advertisement of Mr. Rose, referred him in their headlines as the husband of the actress Candice Bergen, with whom he married in 2000. But he was better known in New York as a civil leader.
He can be demanding; He can also be relentlessly loyal to friends. His advice about real estate and finance was greatly appreciated.
When Donald J. Trump offered to complete the stuck renovation of Wollman Rink in Central Park in 1986, the Trump organization consulted the HRH construction of Richard Ravitch on Mr. Rose's recommendation. Mr. Rose also advised Central Synagogue on the lucrative sale of air rights above her temple on Lexington Avenue to a nearby development site in 2017.
“He was a model of social virtue and dedication,” said Gordon J. Davis, a former Parks commissioner and president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and a life manager of the library, in an interview. “Marshall was a central and indispensable figure in what happened to the New York Public Library from 1981 to today.” (His dedication even passed in death; the family encouraged contributions in his memory at the library.)
“Vartan Gregorian, Andrew Heiskell and Marshall Rose,” Mr Davis added, “not only recovered Bryant Park, they were the driving force that saved the New York Public Library and reached the extraordinary institute of learning and diversity for all New Yorkers For all New Yorkers for all New Yorkers for all New Yorkers it is today. “
Daniel Biederman, the founder of the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, said that the 'real estate know -how of Mr. Rose was crucial.
Marshall Rose was born on January 2, 1937 in Brooklyn, to Jack Rose, a Furrier born in English who also worked in real estate, and Jean (Klein) Rose.
Raised in the drill drill of Brighton Beach of the town, he went to the Lincoln High School in Brooklyn and then obtained a bachelor's degree in Economy at City College.
After graduating from the New York University School of Law, he practiced briefly rights and worked for a short time on real estate cases for the Lazard Freres investment bank, before he decided that he wanted to develop real estate.
“I asked him if he ever attended a school reunion,” his friend Elihu Rose (Frederick Rose's brother) remembered in the praise he delivered in Central Synagogue on Wednesday. “He said no, because he thought most of his classmates would have been in prison. And from that social start, he finished by being an intimate friend of Brooke Astor, the undisputed Grande Dame of the social life of New York. “
In 1965 Mr. Rose married Jill Kupin, who became president of the International Center of Photography in 1989. She died in 1996. In 2000 he married Brown ”from 1988 to 1998 and 2018 to 2019 (in her memoirs 2015, 'A Fine Romance', said Mrs. Bergen that Mr. Rose had no idea of the popular culture: 'He Had never seen 'Seinfeld', for example, and had hardly heard of 'Murphy Brown').
In addition to Mrs Malle and Mrs. Bergen, he is survived by two children from his first marriage, Wendi and Andrew Rose; And six grandchildren.
The roses lived on Fifth Avenue and had a house on Lily Pond Lane in East Hampton.
In the library, Mr. Rose to guide the renovation of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem and the Library for the Executive Arts in Lincoln Center. He briefly served as chairman of the Lincoln Center Constituent Development Corporation, but stopped in 2001 after the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera and other institutions shrink over a master plan for renovations.
In 2019, the library devoted a new square and entrance to West 40th Street in honor of Mr. Rose.
“He was not to stop natural power when it came to protecting and building what the public needed from the library,” said Anthony Marx, who followed Paul Leclerc in 2011 as president of the library.
Mr. Biederman remembered that the predecessor of Mr. Rose as chairman of the board, Mr. Heiskell, once acknowledged that Mr. Rose had not been a big donor in the library, but said he had contributed considerably with his spirit, who for some Other assumed benefactors were at the forefront.
“Give about 1 percent of people who give anonymous,” Mr. Rose de New York Times said in 1997. “It sometimes seems that all people who don't claim to be in those 1 percent.”
