Aby J. Rosen (born May 16, 1960) is a German-born real estate tycoon living in New York. He is the co-founder of RFR Holding, which owns a portfolio of 71 properties in cities including New York, Miami, Las Vegas and Tel Aviv. Highlights include the Seagram Building, Lever House, W South Beach, W Tel Aviv, Gramercy Park Hotel, Paramount Hotel, and Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino, among other properties. Rosen is also a member of, a founding investor in, and the landlord to the Core Club in New York.
Aby is a noted collector of modern and contemporary art, owning over 800 postwar pieces including 100-plus works from Andy Warhol. His collection also houses works from Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Damien Hirst, Richard Prince and Jeff Koons.
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Early life
He was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1960, the son of Jewish Holocaust survivors. His mother Anni spent World War II hiding in a Belgian farmhouse while his father Isak was interned in concentration camps in Germany and Poland. After the war, his mother became a painter and his father a real estate developer.
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Career
In 1987, he moved to New York City where he apprenticed at a real estate brokerage firm selling properties to German investors.
Real estate holdings
In 1991, he founded the partnership RFR Holding LLC with his childhood friend Michael Fuchs (who was also the son of Holocaust survivors). Although the real estate market was in a downturn at the time, they had access to capital initially using properties they each owned in Germany as collateral and later, leveraging their access to German investors. Their strategy was to purchase large, vacant office buildings in need of an upgrade and then hiring the best architects to refurbish them to exceptional standards. In the 15 years after RFR Holding was established in 1991, Rosen had acquired a vast portfolio of real estate holdings including the landmark Seagram Building and Lever House.
In 2006, Rosen partnered with longtime friend and co-founder of Studio 54, Ian Schrager to transform the 123-year-old Gramercy Park Hotel with minimalist architect John Pawson. In 2014, they put the hotel on the market for $260 million, after completing a 4-year $200 million renovation.
In 2006, Rosen announced plans to develop the site at 610 Lexington Avenue in NYC (situated directly behind the Seagram Building) into a glass hotel and condominium tower designed by Sir Norman Foster.
Lever House Art Collection
The Lever House Art Collection is a collection of works commissioned for display at the Lever House by Aby Rosen. It is curated by Richard Marshall, an art historian as well as an associate curator for the Whitney Museum in New York City. The Lever House Art Collection was inaugurated in 2004 featuring a work by Jorge Pardo. Other works have included: Bride Fight by E.V. Day, Hulks by Jeff Koons, and Hello Kitty by Tom Sachs.
Outside the United States
Rosen, with partner Fuchs holds a large real estate portfolio in Germany, especially in Frankfurt, his natal city. In early 2007, they bought the headquarters building of the European Central Bank. Furthermore, the company owns the Swift Haus on Jungfernstieg and the Kaufmannshaus on Große Bleichen in Hamburg. The portfolio is currently administrated by their office in Frankfurt.
Personal life
Rosen has been married twice. In 1991, he married Elizabeth Mina Wechsler in a Jewish ceremony at The Pierre in Manhattan. Before their separation in 2000 and divorce in 2004, they had two sons:
- Gabriel "Gaby" Rosen (born 1994)
- Charles "Charlie" Rosen (born 1996)
In 2005, he married Dr. Samantha Boardman, a psychiatrist and socialite. Boardman is the daughter of D. Dixon Boardman, who founded the hedge fund Optima Fund Management, and Pauline Pitt, a banking heiress She is also a graduate of Harvard University and Cornell University medical school. She converted to Judaism. Together, they had two children:
- Alexander Rosen (born 2006)
- Vivian Rosen (born 2008).
Personal residences
Rosen currently resides on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with his wife and two children. The family summers in Southampton, New York where they have a $21.5 million home.
In 2011, Rosen bought the A. Conger Goodyear House in Old Westbury, New York on Long Island for $3.4 million. The home was designed and built in 1938 by Edward Durell Stone in the International Style for Anson Conger Goodyear, the first president of the Museum of Modern Art. He then completed a several year renovation of the property, where he keeps many of his important pieces of art, including The Virgin Mother, a 13-ton, 33-foot-high bronze sculpture by Damien Hirst of a pregnant woman, with peeled skin and exposed fetus.
In 2012, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, the former Prime Minister of Qatar, reportedly bought Rosen's 71st Street New York townhouse for $47 million. Aby is also said to own a $36 million vacation home in Saint Barthélemy.
Lifestyle
Rosen is known for his annual dinner party at the W South Beach during Art Basel that has drawn a mix of celebrities including Alex Rodriguez, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, Steven Tyler, Tommy Hilfiger, Lenny Kravitz, Roberto Cavalli, Sean Penn, Michael Douglas, Tory Burch, Naomi Campbell, Owen Wilson, Andre Balazs, Larry Gagosian, Alex Von Furstenberg, and business leaders such as Eric Schmidt, Ron Burkle, Micky Arison, Steve Tisch, Eli Broad, Peter Brant, and John Hess.
His 53rd birthday, held at the Paramount Hotel, featured guests ranging from Bono to Vera Wang and was extensively covered in magazines including Vanity Fair and Vogue.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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