Tony's Presentation on Albert Greenfield

A few months ago, Tony was asked to give a presentation on the life of Albert M. Greenfield, a famous Philadelphia businessman. The presentation was given at a meeting of the Sons of Utah Pioneers at our local church. Tony prepared for this presentation in such an amazing way. He researched online and at the Free Library of Philadelphia. He remembered an article in Philadelphia Magazine years ago and went and found the article in the archives. He even went to Greenfield's offices and met Greenfield's grandson.

Barbara Greenfield and Tony, 2010

A few years previously, Tony and I had met Barbara Greenfield, Albert Greenfield's daughter-in-law. That was also at a Sons of Utah Pioneers activity. She owned the property where my great-great-great-grandfather had spoken as a missionary. That opened the door for the man who then owned the property to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and he later became a presiding bishop. Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith both visited that property at different times, so it is part of the history of the Church in Philadelphia. Barbara was so gracious to let us visit and see this special place. She and Tony hit it off as Tony had known her husband earlier.

Tony's presentation was wonderful! He comes to life as he tells stories and everyone was fascinated. He showed a portion of a film at the beginning which you can learn more about at http://www.mrphiladelphiathefilm.com.

Below is Tony's written presentation as well as a few clips of him speaking. What a wonderful night!

Presentation Part 1

Presentation Part 2

Presentation Part 3

  

Mr. Philadelphia

A Brief Story of Albert M. Greenfield

Anthony M. Rombola

March 21, 2014

My introduction to Albert M. Greenfield came innocently enough in June of 1976. Gerald R. Ford was President.  Frank Lazarro Rizzo was Mayor of Philadelphia and the bicentennial was getting in full swing with events leading up to the big festivities on the fourth of July with Queen Elizabeth.  One evening I was in The Gold Bug/Inn of the Raven, a bar and restaurant up the road in Springhouse with my buddy Larry Gessler.  It was a nice place with lots of blond wood, good food and drink, great servers and customers.  They also had a little section with a table and some books and magazines.  One of the mags was a May 1976 issue of Philadelphia Magazine.   I always liked Philly Mag and loved the well written articles if you could follow them amongst the endless and prolific ads.  One article caught my eye.  Once There Was Greenfield.  I recognized the name because of the ubiquitous green background and white Albert M. Greenfield Sale or Rent signs all over the town then.  Sale signs on retail, commercial and residential properties almost everywhere in the city.  The author, Dan Rottenberg, told a compelling story that I never forgot.  I read the whole long article right there at the table all alone with my drink.  Larry would look in on me every now and then and just shake his head.  I love a good story.

I have remembered a good bit of the Greenfield saga since then.  Whenever business matters and companies collapsed, frequent Government debacles, development deals went wrong or proceeded off target I would think, “If only Greenfield were still around”.   When I see the outlying parishes and schools of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia I still smile to think of the portly Jewish man and the large Irish Cardinal who made them happen so long ago. 

It all came back to me suddenly in 2010 when my Beloved wanted to go to somewhere in Chester County to some obscure little building to see a plaque unveiling.  I did not ask.  We brought the GPS.  The building in Glenmore, PA was, in 1830, The West Nantmeal Seminary.  It was visited by Joseph Smith himself.

There was a lady with a large brimmed white hat and when the ceremony was finished we all went back to her real colonial home for refreshments.  Her name was Barbara Greenfield.  I asked any relation to Albert?  And she said yes!  Her late husband was Albert M. Greenfield, Jr. and the great Albert M. Greenfield her father-in-law.  I told her all the stories I remembered about her father-in-law and she told me a few others.  I saw the autographed pictures of both Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  It was a fascinating day.  I also met Brother Kruman and it is because of that day and those two meetings that I am here tonight.   Also I found out that both Joseph Smith and Hiram Smith slept in her home.

On August 4, 1887 Avrum Moishe Grunfeld was born in southern Ukraine.  The Grunfelds and, for that matter, all Russian Jews were forbidden to live in cities and it was only in the city that one could find a good job.   In 1892 Avrum’s  father, Jacob, left for New York City where he went to work in a factory.  The path to the USA from Eastern Europe went through Ireland (where the Titanic would be built some time later). Ireland was broken into four “provinces” called Greenfields.  Four years later the family followed.  They lived in New York City for six months until one Friday in the fall of 1896 Jacob Grunfeld got a letter from one of his old friends from the factory telling him about a great job in Philadelphia.  Jacob would not travel on Saturday, but he took the train to Philadelphia on Sunday to check out the job.  Two weeks later he wrote to his wife, Esther, telling her to sell whatever she could and ship the rest to Philadelphia, their new home.   Avrum – now Albert Monroe Greenfield – was nine years old.

          Philadelphia was a very structured society, very hierarchal, governed by proper Philadelphians whose heritage dated back to Colonial Philadelphia.  The foundation of Philadelphia’s prosperity was the industrial economy established in the 19^th century.  By the 20^th century Philadelphia was known as The Workshop of The World.  Philadelphia was less of an immigration city than other cities in the country.  So much so that Lincoln Steffens, the noted muckraker, said Philadelphia was, “the most American city in America.”  He also called Philadelphia “corrupt and contented”.  In that regard, not much has changed.

          You will see throughout this story that all of Greenfield’s life was spent as an outsider. This proved to be an asset more than a hindrance. His first home was in South Philadelphia.  South Philly was where the immigrants without   money went.  It is not an accident that the city’s trash went to South Philly.  The stadiums and a lot of heavy industry went there also.  Being from South Philly was not a good thing to the power elite.  In addition, the Grunfelds/Greenfields were Russian Jews.  There has always been a social pecking order in the Jewish community and the European Jews looked down on the Russian and Eastern European Jews.  The determination of social status in the Jewish community was philanthropy.  Successful Russian Jews, symbolized by Mr. Greenfield, rose to influential positions in the city’s business community.  Eventually Mr. Greenfield moved to Germantown, Wynnefield in West Philadelphia whose then majestic homes were inhabited by wealthy and influential Jews.  From there he, along with other wealthy and influential Jews migrated to Overbrook.  Finally Albert M. Greenfield moved to Sugarloaf his estate in Chestnut Hill, bastion of the WASPs. 

The Grunfeld family settled in South Philadelphia and Jacob, Albert’s father, soon opened a grocery and furniture store in his home near 6^th & Spruce.  Later Albert would attend Central High School when it was still very prestigious. There were two top public schools in the city.  Boys attended Central High and girls attended Girls High.  Both would only accept the very top students in the city and attendance there opened doors to colleges and business and ultimately to very good jobs.  They both declined to irrelevance in the 1970’s.  Albert decided to quit school when he was 15 and took a job as a clerk and errand boy in the law office of John J. McDevitt, Jr. who later became a judge and J. Quincy Hunsiker, a leading real estate lawyer.  It was here that Albert first saw the possibilities of real estate and made his first contacts in the field.  Two of McDevitt’s clients - Finberg, a Russian Jew, and D.E. Simon, a German Jew – were the biggest Jewish realtors in Philadelphia and both took a liking to the bright young lad and the industrious way he wrote out deeds and mortgages in long hand.

          It was through them that Albert met Louis H. Cahan, and it was in Cahan’s building at 218 S. 4^th Street that Albert M. Greenfield first opened his real estate business probably in May of 1904.  He was 16 years old.  Within 2 years he would own, among other things, the house where his parents lived (like a good Jewish boy); within 7 years he would be making $60,000.00 annually; within 12 years he would be worth about $15 million; within 25 years his company would be the largest real estate concern in the United States; within 50 years there would be virtually no endeavor in Philadelphia that he did not somehow influence.

          His initial capital was $500 borrowed from his mother (like a smart Jewish boy) and $500 borrowed from his older brother William.  But contacts were more valuable than capital. These he got from his landlord, Cahan the printer.  Although he took no money from Cahan, Albert gave Cahan a partnership in his real estate company figuring – correctly – that Cahan would thus be motivated to steer his printing customers to Albert when they had real estate business to transact.  Finberg and Simon gave some of their business to Albert to help him get started.  But he didn’t need much help as word spread quickly that young Greenfield was somehow able to move property that other realtors could not.  His success was due partly to his persuasive personality and his instinctive sense of timing in dealing with people and partly because he knew – or gave the impression of knowing – so much that was important.  But his main asset was simply the fact that Albert, unlike others, did his homework.

Many realtors knew nothing about the properties they were given to buy or sell.  Albert would immediately launch a thorough investigation of the neighborhood in which the property was located.  He reasoned that people buy real estate based on their expectations of what the property will be worth five years later and the best way to determine that is to look at the condition of the stores and businesses in the neighborhood.  Property values would rise if they are prospering.  He would scour the neighborhood interviewing merchants and come up with so many examples of business prosperity that no potential buyer could argue with him.   If a business was failing, he studied that too, to see why.  He did not discuss the failures but if a potential customer asked he had a ready answer.  “What about Jacobson’s Shoe Store?  Nobody ever goes in there.” To which Mr. Greenfield would reply, “That’s true.  But have you seen the shoes he stocks there?  It isn’t the neighborhoods fault that he is doing badly.”  He had an answer, a true answer, for everything and thus it was hard to turn him down.

Many opportunities came around and Mr. Greenfield capitalized on them because he was a visionary and an outsider.  For example in 1907 the Market Street Elevated opened and Greenfield thought that where rapid transit goes, new development follows and he began buying up lots in West Philadelphia.  When the biggest realtors in town were ready to move into West Philadelphia it was logical for them to come to Greenfield and he assembled a huge $2.5 million dollar parcel for them along 52^nd Street.  His 2½ % commission was $62,500.00 He was 19 years old.   He did the same thing the next year for another realtor and over the next four years branched out into Logan and the Northeast selling millions of dollars of property there. 

Over the years this would be duplicated time and again.  As I said Greenfield was a visionary.  He saw the potential and what was going to happen in the future.  They say a chess player is always thinking three moves ahead.  Greenfield thought ten years ahead.   As an immigrant Russian Jew he would always be an outsider.  Even though he had absolutely no accent and spoke like a cultured, educated Philadelphian he was an outsider.  The advantages of that were he was not locked into a patrician, historical way of thinking but had the brains, experience and vision to see things from outside the system.  Once Greenfield said that he would always be an outsider but perhaps his grandchildren would finally be considered Philadelphians.  He married the daughter of a wealthy German Jew and when a son was born he wanted to name him Albert but naming a son after your self was considered awful by the German Jews so he named him Gordon.  They had three daughters and with the next son he just said the heck with them and named him Albert M. Greenfield, Jr.  Within 2 years he was divorced.

For Greenfield, as with so many other American businessmen, the hard earned success of the pre-World War I era snowballed in the Roaring Twenties with rampant speculation.  He was now doing about $125 million dollars in real estate a year.  His activity and contribution to the Republican Party earned him a seat on the Philadelphia Common Council, the predecessor of City Council and this gave him access to city business.  In 1917 he started handling real estate transactions for the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co.  In 1916 he sold a string of movie theaters he owned for $2 million.  In 1920 he negotiated his first downtown sale that of the Metropolitan Opera House at Broad & Poplar for $655,000.   In 1921 he bought the Colonade Hotel at 15^th & Chestnut and replaced it with the 20 story Greenfield Building.  He was beginning to change the face of Philadelphia.

In the early 20’s with his father-in-law Sol Kraus, Greenfield had bought control of 27 building and loan associations with total assets of $35 million, thus enhancing his value as a realtor by giving himself control over the financing of his real estate. 

The rise of all those building and loan associations and mortgage companies was fed by Philadelphian’s insatiable appetites for homes of their own.  At the time Philadelphia had more single family homes than New York and Boston combined and more than 50% were owner occupied.  In 1925 there were 3,400 building and loan companies in Philadelphia out of 4,500 in the entire state.  Inevitably some of these were mismanaged. And when 17 b&l’s were seized by the state for being insolvent in 1925, Greenfield was appointed receiver and asked to reorganize them.  There were inherent conflicts just as there were conflicts in a realtor acting as a banker in the first place.  Everyone knew that Greenfield could get the job done whereas someone with no conflicting involvements might not.  To be sure, he did successfully reorganize the b&l’s under his control.

He then moved into commercial banking buying a small West Philadelphia bank, moving it downtown and naming it Bankers Trust Company.  At that time there were 128 banks in Philadelphia and Greenfield bought out 9 of them over the next 5 years. 

His biggest jewel was Bankers Securities Corporation which he formed in 1928 by raising $12 million from 1,628 investors.  It ultimately became the parent of virtually all Greenfield’s concerns.  Five months after it’s creation Bankers Securities took $10.5 million and bought control of Lit Brothers Department Stores. Six weeks later Bankers Securities sold Lit’s to City Stores Company for $12.8 million, a quick $2.3 million dollar profit and drove the price of the stock up to $156 a share, up from the initial price of $60 seven months earlier.  It also enabled Bankers Securities to raise an additional $19 million in a second public offering.

Needless to say the Philadelphia Protestant establishment did not look upon Greenfield kindly, but with alarm.  The trouble with Greenfield was not that he was evil, he was incalculable.  Greenfield was far more brilliant and imaginative than they would ever be.  He was also more brazen.  They saw him as a threat.  Because he took so much more risk than most, when the stock market crash came he seemed more vulnerable than most.

          In July of 1930 the Bank of Philadelphia & Trust Co showed signs of going under. Greenfield moved in and bought the ailing bank and the nine branches reopened as Bankers Trust Company.  Greenfield would later claim the city’s leading bankers had urged him to buy the Bank of Philadelphia and they claimed it was his idea.  Nevertheless he did not purchase the bank until he was assured by the city’s two leading bankers that they would extend loans to Bankers trust “upon good and sufficient collateral”.  The collateral was largely real estate mortgages held by Greenfield’s banks.

          Unfortunately, in buying up weak banks and thus averting the public disaster of a bank failure Greenfield deluded not only the public but himself.  Real estate mortgages which had been such good collateral in the 20’s were worthless in the Depression as home owners lost their jobs and home payments ceased.    In the ten years after 1926, 144,000 of the 500,000 homes in Philadelphia were auctioned off by the sheriff and 99% of those sales were against mortgages not taxes.  During this period 1,600 of the city’s 3,400 building & loan associations were wiped out. 

          Nevertheless, on August 1, 1930 Bankers Trust paid a nice bonus to its 322 employees.

          The rude awakening was just around the corner.  For once, Greenfield could not transfer the public’s confidence in him to a property he had acquired.  Instead, the public’s doubt about the stability of the Bank of Philadelphia was now transferred to its new owner, Greenfield’s Bankers Trust.

          The run on the bank began in September and true to their word the Protestants backed Greenfield to the tune of $7 million.  By mid-December it became clear that it was not enough.  They demanded that mortgage assets be replaced with cash and on December 19^th Greenfield agreed and went to Washington to talk to his old friend, President Hoover.  Greenfield was treasurer of his campaigns and had seconded his nomination at the convention in 1928.

          While he was away there was a night time meeting on the Main Line in Merion.  The host of the evening was William Purves Gest, chairman of the Fidelity-Philadelphia Trust Company.  The rest were the most powerful bankers in Philadelphia. Edward Hopkinson, Jr., partner in Drexel & Company, whose great-great-great grandfather had been friends with Benjamin Franklin and his great- great grandfather had signed the Declaration of Independence and his great grandfather had written “Hail, Columbia”.  E.T. Stotesbury, senior of the Drexel Partners had been a drummer boy in the Civil War.  Joseph Wayne, Jr., president of Philadelphia National Bank, largest in the city.  C. Stevenson Newhall president of the Pennsylvania Company, Stacy B, Lloyd, President of PSFS, the oldest mutual savings bank in the USA.

          The problem these men faced was Bankers Trust Company, the tenth largest bank in Philadelphia.  The bankers knew that if Bankers Trust were to close it would cause a run on all their banks.  Finally someone said it was a matter of trust,  a matter of character.  There was nothing anyone could put a finger on.  Greenfield made them uncomfortable.  He was an immigrant and a Jew, yes, but he did not operate according to Philadelphia tradition, did not look back longingly at the golden age of Benjamin Franklin or the steel age of William McKinley.  He sought to change Philadelphia to turn it into a New York or a Chicago.  He had come too far, too fast from too little.  The laws of economics caught up with him. It would be painful for the men in that room but it was painful for their ancestors with William Penn aboard the Welcome, and with Washington at Valley Forge.  They could stand to suffer also for the cause of sound business principles.

          So they let Bankers Trust fail. At age 43 Albert M. Greenfield would be ruined – or so they thought.

          Oh, that home Albert M. Greenfield lived in in West Philadelphia?  It had been William Purves Gest’s childhood home.

          Over the next five years, after the two Philadelphia Banks got their $7 million within 30 days of the closing, depositors were paid off at 59 cents on the dollar which suggests it never should have been closed in the first place.  A small, secret group of powerful men had the power of life and death over banks.  50 smaller banks failed in Philadelphia until Roosevelt’s bank moratorium in 1933.  The same thing happened in NYC.  Only two large banks failed.  Both owned by Jews.

          Since Bankers Securities owned City Stores, Greenfield became a retailing magnate also.  City Stores owned department stores in 19 states eventually.  Lit Brothers, Snellenbergs, Maison Blanche in New Orleans, Bonwit Teller, Franklin Simon, W. & J. Sloane and B. Lowenstein’s in Memphis.  The Depression offered new opportunities.  As property owners defaulted on mortgages and bonds Greenfield picked  them up, often for 5 cents on the dollar.  When he acquired enough of the bonds in a particular building he’d then demand that the building’s management be turned over to his real estate company.  In this way he acquired the Ben Franklin Hotel, The Bellvue-Stratford Hotel, Atlantic City’s Steel Pier and various Center City office and loft buildings.

          He emerged from the Depression a sadder but wiser man aware of his own limitations, perhaps for the first time.

          He switched political parties for Franklin Roosevelt not for political expediency but because he truly believed in reform.  Greenfield saw that society was in trouble.  As he had done with Hoover he served as a Treasurer for Franklin Roosevelt’s campaigns and was a frequent visitor to the White House.  He was not afraid to ask for a favor even though he mostly provided favors and money.  His oldest son joined the Marines and was on a helicopter landing on a ship on its way to Korea when the Admiral said over the loudspeaker, “Sgt. Greenfield report to me”.  He did and the Admiral said, “No war for you.  You’re heading back.  Who do you know?”  His father had called his friend Harry S Truman.  Albert M. Greenfield would not have his son in a shooting war.

          At Sugarloaf in Chestnut Hill, now owned by Chestnut Hill College, are pictures showing Greenfield and his third wife, Bunny, with guests including Senator John F. Kennedy, LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, Richard M. Nixon, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other luminaries.  He truly believed in advancing society.

          In the 40’s and 50’s Philadelphia was ripe for massive redevelopment.  All cities were scarred by the railroads.  Tracks and stations were above ground wasting huge swaths of land and they were filthy.  The Depression and 2^nd World War ceased any rebuilding and maintenance of infrastructure and just plain improvements.  The optimism at the end of the war and the need for millions of jobs and housing for the returning troops forced development.  Greenfields vision, power, connections and brains changed Philadelphia yet again.

          Among his contacts was the legendary John B. Kelly, father of Princess Grace of Monaco, Olympic champion, head of the Democratic Party in Philadelphia and very successful builder.  (By the way, long after his death Kelly was the direct cause of the Watergate Affair which toppled Richard M. Nixon. But you all knew that anyway.)  Greenfield liked and respected Kelly because, like Greenfield, he was an outsider, being Irish Catholic, but became wildly successful anyway.  Greenfield admired the Catholics because they too were shut out of society. 

          In 1918 Dennis Dougherty became Archbishop of Philadelphia and was elevated to Cardinal.  Dennis Cardinal Dougherty was a big man and powerful in the church, the second most influential after Cardinal Spellman of New York.  By his brains, wit and sheer force of his personality he got things done.  Greenfield was impressed with Dougherty and they became fast friends.  Greenfield was named exclusive real estate agent for the Archdiocese and on many Sundays they would go out in Greenfield’s car or Dougherty’s chauffeur-driven limo, since Archbishops in Philadelphia are forbidden to drive, to find properties for all the schools that needed to be built and future churches, hospitals and cemeteries.  Greenfield also became Dougherty’s personal financial advisor. They were both begrudgingly admired by the business community, which was a triumph considering they were Jew and Catholic.  The Cardinal was a frequent dinner guest at Greenfield’s home, where his Catholic servants would invariably genuflect and kiss the Cardinal’s ring, to the wonder of Greenfield’s five children.  Greenfield cemented this relationship by contributing heavily to Catholic charities and to Catholic schools like Villanova, St. Joe’s and St. Mary’s Home for Children in Ambler; the organ at St. Charles Seminary was a gift from Greenfield. Dougherty arranged for the Pope to confer upon Greenfield the title of Commander of the Order of Pius IX in 1929; he was the first American Jew to receive the honor.  Greenfield’s children were amused at the title and by the costume he wore to receive it and started saying, “Hello Pope Albert” as a greeting.

          There is no doubt that Greenfield was sincere in his fondness for Catholicism.  He often spoke of his high regard for Catholics and their school system.  “If I weren’t a Jew, I would be a Catholic” he once remarked. Catholic visitors to his office were always impressed by a large photo of St. Peter’s Cathedral that hung just outside Greenfield’s door.  And if Jewish visitors expressed dismay at finding the picture there, Greenfield would take them by the arm with a sly wink and point out that in one obscure corner of the photo, imperceptible at first glance, could be seen the figure of a man relieving himself against a wall.

          Greenfield was also sensitive to virtually all forms of prejudice.  He was instrumental in the start of Albert Einstein Hospitals because Jewish doctors could not work in many hospitals because of “quotas”,   Abington Memorial Hospital did not grant privileges until the 1950’s.  When he became head of Einstein the first thing he did was appoint a Catholic as Chair.  When he suggested a certain person to be on the Board he received backlash because the person was a woman.  He chastised the Board and not that day but soon after a woman was appointed to the board.

          Greenfield was instrumental in President Truman’s appointment of William Hastie as a federal judge, the first black federal judge.  He came to Philadelphia and could not find a place to live as no one would sell him a home.  Greenfield persuaded his brother to sell Judge Hastie his house.  Once when Greenfield and his third wife, Bunny, were dining out there was a black woman sitting near them alone and being ignored by the wait staff.  She was in tears and Greenfield asked what was wrong and she told them they will not wait on her and how she had been there before the Greenfields and they were eating and she did not even have water.  Greenfield called the waitress over and politely told her to take the lady’s order.  She had her meal.  When he was Chairman of The Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co. they started hiring their first blacks.  His hotels were the first to rent rooms to blacks.  The Bellvue-Stratford offered their convention facilities to the Urban League.

          The newspaper business in Philadelphia was cut throat to say the least.  There were two morning papers and at least three evening papers.  In the morning there was the Democrat Philadelphia Record, owned by J. David Stern a friend of Greenfield and the Republican Philadelphia Inquirer.  In 1936 Moses Annenberg purchased the Inquirer.  Moe was tough as nails and had a fluid morality which was what you needed to be a successful newspaper owner.  He also owned The Racing Forum which gave him entrée into gambling.  Big time.  Not only did he usually win he absolutely hated losing.  He was a veteran of the Chicago Newspaper wars where five or six people were killed.  He was also a dyed in the wool Republican.  When he came to Philly he took steps to monopolize distribution and intimidate news dealers, as he had done in Chicago.

          Greenfield and Annenberg had a pleasant lunch one day and Moe said, “I like you Al but you are financing Dave Stern.  I’ve got to destroy you to destroy Dave Stern.”  Within a week there was an 8 column headline saying that Greenfield withdrew $300,000.00 from Bankers Trust just before the collapse of the bank.  The game is hardball.  The article failed to mention it was the routine renewal of an old note. 

Greenfield retaliated by buying newspaper ads and radio time (he also owned WFIL, through Lit Brothers) to reply.  “Moses Hitler Annenberg was like a dog who had returned to its vomit.”

It went back and forth but ultimately each sued the other for libel but the suits were withdrawn in 1939 with the signing of mutual public apologies.  In 1940 Annenberg pleaded guilty to income tax evasion and went to the Federal Penitentiary.  Not only did Greenfield quietly help to put him in jail.  He later was influential in getting him out. 

          Greenfield was Richardson Dilworth’s choice to head the City Planning Commission when Dilworth became Mayor in 1956, a role in which Greenfield laid the groundwork for Edmund Bacon’s vision of a restored Society Hill.  The Chairmanship required Greenfield to resign from his real estate company, since it would be a clear conflict for a realtor to have an inside track on the city’s prospective land purchases.  Countless other conflicts still remained through Greenfield’s other business dealings, but it was counter-productive to regulate Albert M. Greenfield.  Nobody knew the city as well and no one could get things done as he could.  He developed Society Hill and Washington Square East and laid the plans for rebuilding Penn Center and University City.  The four goals Dilworth gave to the Commission.  Most major cities were going through renewal.  New York, etc. were bulldozing huge swaths and acres upon acres of land but Philadelphia alone, under Greenfield, took a more surgical approach.  All the buildings that were being razed around Independence Square had businesses in them.  Care was taken to relocate the businesses and preserve the jobs.  Redevelopment was planned to start at the city center and branch out instead of little pockets of development with no grand plan. 

          Today Philadelphia has the third largest residential downtown.  88,000 people live there and 40% of those walk to work.  It is thriving. The infrastructure, vision, future preservation and planning were all there and still are there but you need a Greenfield.  It is difficult because, politics, development and real estate are all contact sports in Philadelphia.  As Lincoln Steffens said over a hundred years ago, corrupt and contented.

          Greenfield used to say that progress is a centrifugal force. Whatever Greenfield did was a virtuoso performance, for example there was a federal rule that halted development.  Greenfield picked up the phone called the White House and poof!  Obstacle removed. 

          Albert M. Greenfield was a man who got things done.  He was unashamedly a booster of Philadelphia when boosterism was and still is frowned upon.  He was called the last angry man.  He would get mad and pick up a phone, write a letter and/or do something about what made him angry!

          In the end, his body racked by cancer he died at Sugarloaf in January of 1967.  Bankers Securities, Bankers Trust, City Stores, etc. are no more.  Albert M. Greenfield Real Estate is still there but not at all as powerful as before because the empire was in Albert M. Greenfield’s head and contacts and charisma.  The Stotesbury’s, Czar Alexander, Hitler and Moe Annenberg had, in one way or another each tried to destroy Greenfield.  He outlasted them all.  He had not merely endured, but he had triumphed.

          In his own words Albert M. Greenfield said, “I see unlimited opportunity and tremendous promise.”  We need a Greenfield today.