Tishman history

In 1910 he built a nine-story luxury apartment building on the Upper West Side despite warnings that no well-to-do New Yorker would live north of 86th Street.

In 1923, he decided to put up an office building across from Penn Station, even though this area around West 34th Street and Seventh Avenue was mainly occupied by garment factories.

Inc. was established as a publicly traded firm in 1928, with Julius's son David as president.

In 1950 the company began putting up office and apartment buildings on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, and within a few years it was the largest landlord in southern California.

By 1958 the firm was operating 31 large office or apartment buildings and three shopping centers in five cities, with others under construction in Buffalo and Cleveland.

Tishman Realty & Development moved into Chicago in 1962 to build the Gateway Center and soon had become the city's second largest office landlord.

Tishman Realty & Construction continued as a general-contracting subsidiary of Rockefeller Center Corp. under John L. Tishman until 1980, when 16 of the senior executive officers of the subsidiary bought it back.

By the spring of 1983 Tishman Speyer had developed 12 projects in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, and Stamford, Connecticut, worth $1.2 billion.

In 1984 Tishman Speyer formed a syndication company that would allow individual investors not as well-heeled as Equitable or the Crown brothers, but capable of putting up at least $500,000, to participate in the ownership of existing properties through private limited partnerships.

In 1986 the firm completed a 54-story tower for Equitable on Seventh Avenue--the first major office building on this avenue and a trendsetter as developers began moving farther west in midtown.

By late 1990, in spite of a recession, it was 80 percent rented by prestige tenants and had been renamed the Credit Lyonnais Building.

In 1996 TSP completed Friedrichstadt Passagen, a $500 million property with one million square feet of office, retail, and residential space fronting the city's historic Friedrichstrasse.

Another Manhattan classic dropped into the Tishman Speyer portfolio in 1997, when a TSP investment fund established in partnership with Travelers Group Inc. and Shearson Lehman Brothers purchased the mortgage of the Chrysler Building and adjoining 666 Third Avenue for $220 million.

In San Francisco, the firm purchased the Chevron Corp. buildings at 555 and 575 Market Street in 1998 for about $190 million after selling 525 Market Street the previous year.