When Victims Rule (pdf)

MONEY, CLASS, AND POWER
of the face of Chicago over the last half century.” [OLIVER, p. A16] He is largely
responsible for the planned Chicago suburb of Park Forest and he owned the
downtown landmark Water Tower Place.
In Washington DC, yet another Jewish real estate king, Charles Smith, controlled
“Washington’s greatest real estate fortune.” [HAGGERTY, M. p. F10] His
son Robert, and son-in-law Robert Kogod today run an empire of 2,000
employees, 14,000 apartment units (20,000 counting the ones they also manage),
and interests in 54 office buildings. Their total worth was estimated by the
late 1980s to be $3-5 billion. Other area Washington area Jewish real estate
moguls include the Hafts, Mort Zuckerman, Albert Abramson, Ted Lerner, Bernard
and Carol Gewirz, Robert Rosenthal, Estelle Gelman, Hermen Greenberg,
Abe Pollin, Myer and Adrienne Arsht Feldman, Joel Meisel and Barry Cohen,
among others. [REGARDIE’S, p. 64-] As Barbara Matusow notes about an earlier
Jewish generation in the nation’s capitol:
“Morris Pollin eventually became a leading builder and developer in
the area – the path to wealth for so many other Jews of humble origins
… Abraham Kay parlayed his earnings from a grocery store on Capitol
Hill into vast landholdings in the suburbs. Morris Cafritz, the city’s richest
developer, used to hawk newspapers… Nearly all the other first generation
success stories – car dealer Joe Cherner, Giant Food’s patriarch
Nehemiah Cohen, Macke Vending’s Hyman Goldberg, lumber merchant
Isadore Turover – also had major holdings in real estate.” [MA-
TUSOW, B., MAY 2000, p. 79]
In Houston, Jewish real estate mogul Jerry Moore is worth over $400 million,
owning over 140 shopping centers. Forbes noted that he bought
“shabby, low-profit but promising strip centers and turn[ed] them
into born-again cash machines … Moore lives with his wife in an authentic
18th-century, 40-room French château (transported from
France and reassembled in Houston’s ritzy Memorial section). He owns
22 Ferraris, 14 Rolls Royces, and over 200 well-restored antique Dusenbergs,
Packards, and other vehicles.” [FIELD, p. 32]
Elsewhere in Houston, David Mincberg owns “one of the largest apartment
firms in the city.” [HOUSTON CHRONICLE, 1998] He is also chairman of the
Harris County Democratic Party and president of the Jewish Federation of
Greater Houston.
Also in Texas, based in Dallas, the Centex real estate company “is one of the
nation’s largest home builders, with operations in 53 markets in 19 states.”
[NEW YORK TIMES, 9-3-98] Its CEO is also Jewish, Laurence Hirsch.
In Boston, “the young professionals who began favoring Boston as a place
to live around the time of the Vietnam War are ensconced in their lairs, many
of them either built or financed by [Mark] Goldweitz.” [ROBINSON, p. 61] In
2000, Jerome Rappaport sold his massive Charles River Park development –
apartments and condos – for $300 million. [Van Voorhis, S., 2-14-00] Other
Jewish real estate moguls in Boston include “the Krupp brothers, Philip and
William, who made a killing in real estate,” as well as Stephen Karp, Julian
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