Background
Erwin Service Wolfson was born on March 27, 1902, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. He was a son of Bernard Wolfson, a prosperous manufacturer of men's clothing, and Rose Service Wolfson.
1959
From left to right: Erwin Wolfson, Walter Gropius and Emory Roth with a model of proposed building atop Grand Central, 1959.
2600 Clifton Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45221, United States
From 1920 till 1924, Erwin studied at the University of Cincinnati.
builder contractor philanthropist
Erwin Service Wolfson was born on March 27, 1902, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. He was a son of Bernard Wolfson, a prosperous manufacturer of men's clothing, and Rose Service Wolfson.
As a boy, Erwin tinkered extensively with radios and cars. When he entered the University of Cincinnati in 1920, he intended to major in Engineering, but after becoming disenchanted with his original choice, he majored in Philosophy. Erwin graduated from the university in 1924.
After graduation in 1924 from the University of Cincinnati, Wolfson intended to become a teacher, but a vacation in Florida changed the course of his life. After initial successes in building homes, apartment houses and small office buildings and in real estate speculation, Wolfson lost everything in 1926, when the land bubble burst. He then moved to New York City and was hired by the Abe N. Adelson building organization as an assistant timekeeper for a crew, erecting a twenty-eight-story skyscraper on Park Avenue in Manhattan. Erwin stayed with this firm for ten years, during which he also directed the construction of more than twenty large commercial structures and became one of its officers and directors.
In 1936, Wolfson left Adelson and helped organize the Diesel Electric Company, a contracting concern, that installed electric plants in commercial buildings, and later the Diesel Construction Company, which engaged in general contracting and investment building. He was vice-president of both firms and in 1952 became their president. Eventually, the former firm was absorbed into the latter.
Wolfson also established the Wolfson Management Corporation to rent space in the buildings, erected by Diesel Construction. In a 1957 realignment, he became chairman of the board of the construction firm, and in 1959, chairman of the board of Wolfson Management. By 1960, Erwin had owned 51 percent of the former and 100 percent of the latter.
During his lifetime, Wolfson and his firms were responsible for constructing nearly 16 million square feet of office space in New York City. At the time of his death, he was the contractor for the fifty-seven-story Americana Hotel, which, upon completion, became the world's tallest hotel. The Pan Am Building in midtown Manhattan was the climax of Wolfson's professional career. He conceived the plans for the structure, financed it himself with the aid of British capital after traditional financing methods proved impossible and had his own contracting firm build it. Wolfson intended it to be the world's largest commercial office building (displacing the Empire State Building), housing more than 25,000 office workers and containing the world's fastest elevators, traveling 1,600 feet per minute. To aid him in creating an aesthetically pleasing "civic monument", he retained the services of the architects Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi. The building was completed in 1963, at a cost, exceeding $100 million.
It's worth mentioning, that, during 1957-1961, Erwin was a member of the Westchester County Parkway Authority and assisted it in charting a reconstruction program for the county's parkway system. In 1961, he was appointed park commissioner for Westchester County.
In his later years, Wolfson assumed civic and social responsibilities. He was generous with his philanthropy, much of it benefiting institutions of higher learning in the United States and Israel.
Erwin was vice-president of the American Technion Society. Besides, he was a member of the International Board of Governors of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.
Despite his reputation as one of the prime forces behind the skyscraper building boom, that changed the profile of Manhattan after World War II, Wolfson never studied real estate practice and had no formal training in management or sales. But a continuing reputation for honesty and dependability made up for these deficiencies. Colleagues and rivals attributed his success to a combination of charm and expert business sense. Once a contract for a skyscraper was signed, Wolfson and his associates could construct it in as short a time as twelve months, from breaking ground to installing tenants.
Wolfson married Rose (Fivars) Wolfson on March 5, 1936. Their marriage produced two children.