Background
Roth was born to a Jewish family, the son of Fred and Virginia Roth.
Roth was born to a Jewish family, the son of Fred and Virginia Roth.
He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. In 1962, Roth graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College and in 1963, he graduated with a Master of Business Administration from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
He repaid Mandelbaum within a year. His efforts were very successful and in 1980, he founded the New York-based real estate investment trust Vornado Realty Trust. In 1993, he took Vornado Realty Trust public.
In 1995, Vornado purchased a controlling interest in Alexander"s - a former retailer that had declared bankruptcy in 1992 - for $54.8 million from Citicorp adding Alexander"s substantial real estate holdings to his existent portfolio.
In 1997, marking its first major acquisition outside of strip malls, Vornado purchased seven Midtown office buildings with 4 million square feet from Bernard H. Mendik for $656 million. In 1998, they purchased 20 more office buildings in Manhattan for $1.7 billion, including One Penn Plaza.
Roth has served as a trustee of the Intrepid Museum Foundation, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the New York University School of Medicine Foundation. He funded the Roth Center for Jewish Life at Dartmouth and in 2012, he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Dartmouth.
He also served as chair of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) and as a member of the Board of Overseers of Tuck.
