Alfred Erskine Marling

Background

Alfred Erskine Marling was born on October 5, 1858 in Toronto, Ontario, and was the second son and third child of the Rev. Francis H. and Marina (Macdonald) Marling.

Education

He studied in the public schools and the Collegiate Institute of Toronto and at the age of seventeen went to New York City, where he found a position as clerk in an office.

Career

In 1877, he began work as a clerk in the office of Horace S. Ely & Company, real-estate dealers, with whom he spent the rest of his business career. He worked up to a partnership and became a director when the concern was incorporated. Upon the death of Horace S. Ely in 1904, Marling was elected president of the company and so continued until 1931, when he became chairman of the board of directors. He was president of the New York Real Estate Exchange, organized in 1890, and was one of the charter members of the Real Estate Board of New York. In such capacities, he became one of the city's highest authorities on realty and related subjects. In 1918 he headed the Advisory Council of Real Estate Interests, which advocated a state personal-income tax. In 1919 he helped sponsor a proposal of the New York State Reconstruction Commission. It was a "semi-philanthropic" housing and holding corporation, organized to buy and sell real estate, to advance money to prospective buyers, and to erect whole blocks of tenements of a new type, with daylight in every room and with gardens and playgrounds attached. In 1920 the Commission, with the joint legislative committee on housing, arranged a competition with awards for the best plans for transforming a typical block of New York slum tenements into sanitary, livable apartments. Marling, Vincent Astor, and the New York Foundation contributed the prizes, which aggregated $6, 000.

Marling was chairman of the International Committee on War Work of the Young Men's Christian Association during the First World War. He was chairman of the Citizens' Transportation Committee, representing the commercial interests of the city at the time of the longshoremen's strike of 1920. At the same time he was a member of New York's Fair Price Commission, aimed to check profiteering in the necessities of life. He was long president of United Charities, Inc. , of New York City. For at least half his life, philanthropy and public service occupied almost as much of his time as business. A lifelong Presbyterian and for many years a member of that church's mission boards, Marling in 1927 joined with George W. Wickersham and others in forming the Protestant Charities Aid Association of New York, embracing seven denominations. At the close of the First World War, he wrote several magazine articles, pointing out the responsibility of employers in the matter of Americanization of foreign-born residents. By appointment of the Transit Commission of New York City, he served as one of the three public representatives on the board of the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company, one of the great subway and elevated line systems of New York City. He was active for thirty-eight years in the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York and served as its president from 1918 to 1920. He was a trustee of Columbia University, of the Young Men's Christian Association and Young Women's Christian Association, the Fulton Trust Company, the Mutual Life Insurance Company, the Bank for Savings, and the Title Guarantee & Trust Company, and a director of the Hanover Insurance Company, the Columbia Casualty Company, the Fifth Avenue Bank, the Commercial Union Fire Insurance Company, Woodlawn Cemetery, the Associates Land Company, the Fulton Fire Insurance Company, the Merchants Association of New York, and three insurance companies in Great Britain.

Achievements

• Marling served as the president of Horace S. Ely & Co. and later president of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Excess Condemnation: A Report of the Committee On Taxation of the City of New York

    (This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before ...)

  • Final report of the Committee on taxation of the city of New York

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

Connections

On January 10, 1884, he married Harriet W. Philips of New York, who died in 1934. They had two children, both of whom died young.

Father:

Rev. Francis H. Marling

Mother:

Marina (Macdonald) Marling

Wife:

Harriet Winslow Philips Marling

4 March 1846 - 3 September 1934