NEW YORK CITY—Noted developer and philanthropist Bernard Spitzer, father of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan at the age of 90.
His son Eliot confirmed his father's passing. Bernard Spitzer had been suffering from Parkinson's disease.
The elder Spitzer was a prominent developer and real estate investor for more than 50 years. He built a host of major residential buildings in the city, including several along Central Park.
Bernard Spitzer was born on the Lower East Side on April 26, 1924, to Austrian immigrants Morris and Molly Spitzer. After graduating from City College with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, he joined the Navy and served in Germany during World War II.
He earned a master's degree in engineering from Columbia University and began his real estate career, working as a field supervisor for real estate developer Sam Minskoff. A few years later, he started his own company. The family-run business now operates as Spitzer Enterprises.
His first residential ventures were in the Bronx, where he and his wife Anne lived and where their son Eliot was born in 1959. In 1985, with several partners, he bought the former East Side Airlines terminal in Manhattan and built the 800-unit Corinthian, the largest residential building in the city at the time at the site. In 1991, purchased the Crown Building on Fifth Avenue, with two partners for $93.6 million, according to the New York Times.
He donated millions of dollars though his family's foundation to the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York and also contributed to what would become the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History.
Estimated to be worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Spitzer supported his son's political ambitions and at times became entangled in controversies that have dogged his son's public career. Eliot Spitzer, a maverick Attorney General for New York State, resigned as governor of New York in March 2008. A corporate attorney, he returned to the family's real estate business in 2013.
Bernard Spitzer is survived by another son, Daniel, a neurosurgeon; a daughter, Emily Spitzer, a lawyer; and seven grandchildren. See story in the New York Times.
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