HelmsleySpear history

Helmsley was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1909 to a family of modest means.

Schwartz was born on May 3, 1912, in New York City.

Following graduation from high school in 1925, he obtained a job with the small Manhattan real estate brokerage of Dwight, Voorhis and Perry, serving first as a mail room clerk for $12 a week.

Around the time of the 1929 stock market crash, Helmsley began free-lancing; that is, although he had no money of his own and his firm had none to spare, he began snatching up prime foreclosed properties by convincing banks the investments were sound and that he would manage the properties for them.

Helmsley took his first major stride toward self-made billionaire status in 1938 when he assumed ownership--rather than management--of his first property, a ten-story office building on East 23rd Street between Fifth and Madison avenues.

Foreseeing a postwar boom in the 1940’s, Helmsley began to seek out bargain properties located close to major commuter terminals.

Helmsley himself won early recognition in 1958 when he was named Realty Man of the Year by his peers.

After fashioning Helmsley-Spear into the largest real estate management company in the United States by 1970, Helmsley turned his attention to the luxury hotel business, to which he had first been exposed years back when he purchased the St Moritz with Wien.

Ironically, this was one of the few Helmsley properties not solely owned by Helmsley founder Harry Brakmann Helmsley and his wife, Leona, whom he married in 1972.

Helmsley to retreat from active participation in Helmsley-Spear in the late 1980's, but the void was filled by Mr.

In 1983 the Leperq group won a $3.5 million judgment against Helmsley for excessively high commissions charges related to Deco.

Following a final appeal of her conviction, Leona began her prison term on April 1, 1992.

Leona Helmsley was freed from prison in February 1994, after having served eight months in a federal prison, plus several months at a halfway house and in her own home under house arrest.

Helmsley's relationship with the two men, who filed a lawsuit in 1995 alleging that Mrs.

In May 1996, according to Relocate, a real estate data service, Helmsley-Spear was managing about 28 million square feet in 107 buildings in New York.