The Rockefellers

John D. Rockefeller is best known as the founder, owner, and decades-long driver of America’s largest petroleum empire, the Standard Oil Company, established in 1870. Through it, he controlled the lion’s share of American oil refining, not to mention huge stakes in oil production and transportation. All this easily powered Rockefeller to the rank of America’s richest individual, as well as one of its most controversial—and

most sued. Found guilty before the U.S. Supreme Court of antitrust violations in 1911, Standard Oil was broken

into nearly three dozen still formidable competing units. They included those that became Exxon, Amoco, and Chevron.

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER and John D. Rockefeller, Jr., 1925 (left)

PATRIARCH JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER and his only son, Junior, sit for a family portrait with Junior’s wife, Abby, and their six children (above).

Rockefeller was a devout Baptist, Sunday school teacher, teetotaler, and nonsmoker who retired to his

Westchester estate overlooking the Hudson in Pocantico Hills at the age of 63. There he lived on for another 34 years, enjoying golf, cycling, and philanthropy— founding enduring institutions, from the University of Chicago to his eponymous foundation, and giving away more than $500 million.

His only son, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., continued to fund good works on a grand scale, among them restoration of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia and donation of the East River site in Manhattan for the by Rockefeller Center architect Wallace K. Harrison). Arguably, Junior is best remembered for his union with Abby Greene Aldrich, which yielded six children. Their second son Nelson became head of Rockefeller Center

at 30 and went on to serve as governor of New York and, later, vice president under Gerald Ford; youngest son David headed Chase Manhattan Bank. Abby herself became a towering figure in philanthropy as a cofounder of the Museum of Modern Art and numer-

ous other arts and women’s advocacy projects.

CROWDS FILL WALL Street in lower Manhattan following the stock market crash of 1929 (right).

THE ROCKEFELLER BROWNSTONE at No. 4 West 54th Street seems imposing until Junior builds his outsize white mansion at No. 10. Both lots and several around them would eventually be given to a trust to build the Museum of Modern Art (below).

In the end, the project hinged on the financial wherewithal of one man, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. In October 1928, he agreed to lease the entire tract from Columbia for up to 87 years. First, the existing leaseholders had to be bought out and their 203 properties—where more than 5,000 people lived and worked—razed. Demolition began that summer. It ran for a few months until it hit a wall. When the stock market crashed that October, plans for the new opera house were shelved. Instead, Junior, whose family mansion on West 54th Street stood almost in sight of the deepening pit he now leased, had to come up with plan B.