Builder of Skylines: Builder of Skylines

ERWIN S. WOLFSON

THE Manhattan skyline is an ever-changing panorama that has been pierced by 132 new office buildings since 1947 in the world’s biggest building boom. One of the men who has done the most to change the skyline is a quiet, studious owner-builder named Erwin S. (for Service) Wolf son. Last week Wolfson, 57, was busy preparing for the biggest building job of its kind ever undertaken in New York City: a 59-story, $100 million Grand Central City that will rise just north of Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal.

Other builders, notably William Zeckendorf, have seen the dream of a Grand Central City vanish before the hard realities of finance, but Wolfson neatly turned the trick. He already has all the capital needed to start building: $25 million from City Centre Properties, Ltd., one of Britain’s largest real estate organizations. On May 1, Wolfson’s Diesel Construction Co. will begin demolishing the six-story building that stands on the site.

The massive, 3½-acre octagonal tower of metal, masonry and glass planned by Wolfson has already stirred heated controversy, even though Wolfson enlisted the talents of famed Architects Pietro Belluschi and Walter Gropius to design the building. City planners complain that its huge population (25,000 workers) will strain service facilities in the area, and architects grumble that the building will be too big (2,400,000 sq. ft.) to achieve architectural distinction.

CONSTRUCTION of the building will be inordinately complex. During it, traffic must flow on the railroad tracks beneath, on the motor ramps that now cut into the present building. Much of the work will have to be done at night, and materials will have to be hauled underground by flatcar, operations coordinated on a split-second schedule with the movement of trains into and out of the terminal. Says Wolfson: “Problems are normal on my job. There will be just a few more here, but it doesn’t bother us.” Wolfson’s philosophical calm conceals a genuine, almost intellectual excitement about construction. The son of a Cincinnati pantsmaker, he majored in philosophy and political science at the University of Cincinnati, went to Florida after graduation in 1924 to cash in on the Florida land boom. He and a partner bought two lots for $7,000, pyramided their investment into a tidy fortune in a few years — then lost it all when the bubble burst. But that did not shatter Wolfson’s love affair with building. He went to New York, got work as assistant timekeeper on a construction job, steadily worked his way up in the building business until he became an executive in a Manhattan construction firm. In 1936 he and a partner (who died in 1952) formed Diesel Electric Co. to install power plants in buildings, in 1937 switched to putting up their own buildings. Wolfson admits to luck in getting in on the building boom at the right time, but he quickly showed a knack for the trade that pushed his company ahead.

GRAND CENTRAL CITY completed will make Wolfson New York’s No. 1 office builder. His firm has just finished Manhattan’s first midtown motel near the Hudson River, will soon start construction of a new office building on Park Avenue. Despite a thorough knowledge of the building business, Wolfson considers himself “basically a salesman.” Says he : “Tenants don’t just come. You have to go and get them. The fact that I also know construction and real estate brokerage gives me an added plus, but basically I sell space.” As a salesman, Wolfson is unusual: he studies Russian history at night at Manhattan’s New School for Social Research (of which he is a trustee), is interested in adult education, has established a chair of philosophy at Brandeis University. Though New York City has made his fortune — his holdings are worth almost $100 million — he does not like it as a place to live. He lives with his wife and two teen-age children on a large estate at Purchase, in Westchester County, where he rides his own horses, plays tennis, swims in his pool. In 1952 Wolfson decided to retire to “have some fun.” He quickly became bored. Says he: “You can even get to hate your horse if you ride him every day.” Within two months he was back at work, once more relishing the heady thrill of changing the city’s skyline.