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2 Business career
After graduation from Brown, Rockefeller joined his fathers business in October 1897, setting up operations in
the newly formed family oce at 26 Broadway where he
became a director of Standard Oil. He later also became a
director at J. P. Morgan's U.S. Steel company, which had
been formed in 1901. Junior resigned from both companies in 1910 in an attempt to purify his ongoing philanthropy from commercial and nancial interests after
the Hearst media empire unearthed a bribery scandal involving John Dustin Archbold (the successor to Senior
as head of Standard Oil) and two prominent members of
Congress.[2]
Early life
tenants in the complex, including GE and its then aliates RCA, NBC and RKO, as well as Standard Oil of
New Jersey (now ExxonMobil), Associated Press, Time
Inc (now Time Warner), and branches of Chase National
Bank (now JP Morgan Chase).
committed internationalist, he nancially supported programs of the League of Nations and crucially funded the
formation and ongoing expenses of the Council on Foreign Relations and its initial headquarters building, in
New York in 1921.[17]
In 1925, he purchased the George Grey Barnard collection of medieval art and cloister fragments for the
Rockefeller was known for his philanthropy, giving over Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also purchased land
$537 million[13] to myriad causes over his lifetime[14] north of the original site, now Fort Tryon Park, for a new
compared to $240 million to his own family.[15] He cre- building, The Cloisters.[20][21]
ated the Sealantic Fund in 1938 to channel gifts to his In November, 1926, Rockefeller came to the College of
favorite causes; previously his main philanthropic orga- William and Mary for the dedication of an auditorium
nization had been the Davison Fund. He had become built in memory of the organizers of Phi Beta Kappa, the
the Rockefeller Foundation's inaugural president in May, honorary scholastic fraternity founded in Williamsburg in
1913 and proceeded to dramatically expand the scope of 1776. Rockefeller was a member of the society and had
this institution, founded by his father. Later he would helped pay for the auditorium. He had visited Williamsbecome involved in other organizations set up by Senior, burg the previous March, when the Reverend Dr. W.A.R.
the Rockefeller University and the International Educa- Goodwin escorted him along with his wife Abby, and
tion Board.
their sons, David, Laurance, and Winthrop on a quick
In the social sciences, he founded the Laura Spelman tour of the city. The upshot of his visit was that he
Rockefeller Memorial in 1918, which was subsequently approved the plans already developed by Goodwin and
folded into the Rockefeller Foundation in 1929.[16] A launched the massive historical restoration of Colonial
3
Williamsburg on November 22, 1927. Amongst many which was awarded decades later to his son David Rockother buildings restored through his largesse was The Col- efeller.
lege of William & Marys Wren Building.[22]
He also liberally funded the notable early excavations at
In 1940 Rockefeller hosted Bill Wilson, and others, one Luxor in Egypt, and the American School of Classical
of the original founders of Alcoholics Anonymous at a Studies for excavation of the Agora and the reconstrucdinner to tell their stories. News of this got out on the tion of the Stoa of Attalos, both in Athens; the Amerworld wires; inquiries poured in again and many peo- ican Academy in Rome; Lingnan University in China;
ple went to the bookstores to get the book, Alcoholics St. Lukes International Hospital in Tokyo; the library
Anonymous. Rockefeller oered to pay for the publi- of the Imperial University in Tokyo; and the Shakespeare
cation of the book, but in keeping with AA traditions Memorial Endowment at Stratford-on-Avon.
of being self-supporting, AA rejected the money from In addition, he provided the funding for the construcRockefeller.[23]
tion of the Palestine Archaeological Museum in East
Through negotiations by his son Nelson, in 1946 he
bought for $8.5 million - from the major New York real
estate developer William Zeckendorf - the land along the
East River in Manhattan which he later donated for the
United Nations headquarters. This was after he had vetoed the family estate at Pocantico as a prospective site
for the headquarters (see Kykuit).[24] Another UN connection was his early nancial support for its predecessor, the League of Nations; this included a gift to endow
a major library for the League in Geneva which today still
remains a resource for the UN.[25]
A conrmed ecumenicist, over the years he gave substantial sums to Protestant and Baptist institutions, ranging from the Interchurch World Movement, the Federal
Council of Churches, the Union Theological Seminary, the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New Yorks Riverside
Church and the World Council of Churches. He was also
instrumental in the development of the research that led
to Robert and Helen Lynds famous Middletown studies
work that was conducted in the city of Muncie, Indiana,
that arose out of the nancially supported Institute of Social and Religious Research.
As a follow on to his involvement in the Ludlow Massacre, Rockefeller was a major initiator with his close
friend and advisor William Lyon Mackenzie King in the
nascent industrial relations movement; along with major
chief executives of the time he incorporated Industrial
Relations Counselors (IRC) in 1926, a consulting rm
whose main goal was to establish industrial relations as
a recognized academic discipline at Princeton University and other institutions. It succeeded through the support of prominent corporate chieftains of the time, such
as Owen D. Young and Gerard Swope of General Electric.[26]
5 Conservation
nated to the Tarrytown Historical Society), and Sunnyside, Washington Irvings home, acquired in 1945. He
bought Van Cortland Manor in Croton-on-Hudson in
1953 and in 1959 donated it to Sleepy Hollow Restorations. In all, he invested more than $12 million in the
acquisition and restoration of the three properties that
were the core of the organizations holdings. In 1986,
Sleepy Hollow Restorations became Historic Hudson Valley, which also operates the current guided tours of the
Rockefeller family estate of Kykuit in Pocantico Hills.
Family
7 Residences
Juniors principal residence in New York was the 9-story
mansion at 10 West Fifty-fourth Street, but he owned a
group of properties in this vicinity, including Nos 4, 12,
14 and 16 (some of these properties had been previously
acquired by his father, John D. Rockefeller). After vacating Number 10 in 1936, these properties were razed and
subsequently all the land was gifted to his wifes Museum
of Modern Art. In that year he moved into a luxurious
40-room triplex apartment at 740 Park Avenue. In 1953,
the real estate developer William Zeckendorf bought the
740 Park Avenue apartment complex and then sold it
to Rockefeller, who quickly turned the building into a
cooperative, selling it on to his rich neighbors in the building.
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (July 8, 1908 January In 1929 he was elected an honorary member of the Geor26, 1979)
gia Society of the Cincinnati.
Laurance Spelman Rockefeller (May 26, 1910
July 11, 2004)
See also
Rockefeller family
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library
Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Rockefeller Center
Kykuit
Chase Manhattan Bank
Colonial Williamsburg
Outsider Art
Riverside Church
League of Nations
10
Notes
12
[28] Life principle - see John Donald Wilson, The Chase: The
Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., 1945-1985, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1986. (p.328)
[29] Public Welfare Award. National Academy of Sciences.
Retrieved 14 February 2011.
[30] Details of the 1901 wedding - Harr & Johnson, op.cit.,
(pp.81-5)
[31] Michael Gross: 740 Park Avenue
11
Further reading
Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. New York: Warner Books, 1998., Detailed biography of his father
Hallahan, Kirk. Ivy Lee and the Rockefellers
response to the 1913-1914 Colorado coal strike.
Journal of Public Relations Research 14#4 (2002):
265-315.
Harr, John Ensor, and Peter J. Johnson. The Rockefeller Century (1988)
Harvey, Charles E. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and
the Interchurch World Movement of 19191920:
A Dierent Angle on the Ecumenical Movement.
Church History 51#2 (1982): 198-209.
Harvey, Charles E. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and
the social sciences: An introduction. Journal of the
History of Sociology 4#2 (1982): 1-31.
Manchester, William. A Rockefeller Family Portrait:
From John D. to Nelson (1959)
Rees, Jonathan H. Representation and Rebellion:
The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron
Company, 19141942 (2011)
Schenkel, Albert F. The rich man and the kingdom:
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Protestant establishment (Augsburg Fortress Pub, 1995)
11.1
Primary sources
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External links
http://www.nndb.com/people/059/000052900/
Rockefeller Archive Center: Extended Biography
EXTERNAL LINKS
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