Rose was born in Brooklyn to a Jewish family, one of three sons of Belle and Samuel B. Rose. His father and his uncle David Rose founded the real estate development company Rose Associates in 1923 and built small apartment buildings in the Bronx and then in Manhattan in the 1930s.
Rose graduated from Yale University in 1944 majored in civil engineering and then served as a lieutenant in the United States. Navy Seabees during World World War II After the war, he went to work for Rose Associates where he was responsible for design and construction while his brother Daniel was responsible for planning and finances. And his brother Elihu managed the family"s apartment houses.
He was raised in Mount Vernon, New New York He has two brothers, Daniel and Elihu. The family typically purchased properties with their own money, minimizing the use of debt thus enabling to better weather market downturns.
In 1961, they built their first office development, the two-building, 1 million square-foot 280 Park Avenue.
He eventually served as chairman of Associates. The family was one of the most established and prominent real estate families in New York City in the 20th century (along with the Dursts, the Lefraks, the Rudins, and the Tisch family).
In 2006, Associates, managed over 31,000 apartments in New York City including Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. was a prominent philanthropist who gave away a total of $95 million including $5 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, $15 million to the New York Public Library, $18 million to Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, and $20 million for the $150 million Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History. helped to create the Association of Yale Alumni and was the first chair of its Board of Governors from 1972 to 1974.
He was a member of the University Council from 1976 to 1981 and served on the Yale Corporation as a Fellow from 1989 to 1994.
