Financier and philanthropist Arthur Zankel committed suicide on July 28. He was 73.
The native New Yorker earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He started working for the First Manhattan Co. in 1965, and spent the next three decades amassing a fortune as an investment manager.
In 2000, Zankel founded the real estate investment firm, High Rise Capital Management, where he was the co-managing partner. He sat on the board of directors at Citigroup Inc. until 2004, when he reached the mandatory age of retirement.
Zankel lived well, but he also believed in helping people follow their dreams through education. A trustee at Skidmore College and Columbia University’s Teachers College, he underwrote Reading Buddies, a tutoring program for Harlem youths.
In the late 1990s, Zankel and his wife donated $10 million to fund a new $100 million venue at Carnegie Hall. Named in their honor, Judy and Arthur Zankel Hall fulfilled Andrew Carnegie’s original plans to create three performance spaces in one location. The 600-seat underground recital space, which offers a wide variety of performing and educational events, opened in 2003.
In his spare time, Zankel took music appreciation classes and often attended events at Carnegie Hall. He also managed the hall’s endowment fund. Under his guidance, it grew nearly sevenfold to $124 million.
Zankel, who was being treated for depression, jumped from the ninth floor of his Fifth Avenue apartment and later died at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He did not leave a note.
August 2, 2005 by
Arthur Zankel
Categories: Business
I am deeply touched by the life and death of Arthur Zankel. God bless his family and loved ones.
I never knew Arthur Zankle I only read of his life on the front page of the Wallstreet Journal, He had it all Money, Compassion, generousity, so well accomplished, yet so desperate for something real,Dr’s could not fix his pain, specialists or Medicine was useless he needed something to fulfill the empty space he experienced in his life. I can not even begin to have empathy and could not articulate what he felt. Let his life give rise to others who are so succesful and gifted in the ways he was, that as they travel the course of this life. Real greatness is when you find Jesus to fill the God shaped whole in our hearts that completes us.
when we are great and when we fill that whole with the love of our creator we are greater still. Jesus is the way the truth and the life, all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
God bless Arthurs family and friends and may they be blessed by our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. May Arthur rest in peace
We at the National Alliance on Mental Illness send the Zankel family our prayers in this diffucult time. As a leading advocate for mentally illness we understand you pain. May you be conforted in knowing that one day depression will have a cure.
Love does not obliterate pain but compassion goes a long way to keep the devil dog of depression from the gate. Bless you, and your family. Carnegie’s spirit salutes you. An admirer from Scotland