August Heckscher (industrialist)

Carl August Heckscher (born August 26, 1848 in Hamburg , German Confederation ; † April 26, 1941 in Mountain Lake , Florida ) was an American industrialist , entrepreneur and philanthropist of German origin.

Life

Heckscher emigrated to the USA in 1867 and began working as a worker in the mining company of his cousin Richard Heckscher. At night he learned the English language. The two later founded Richard Heckscher & Company, which they then sold to the Reading Railroad . August Heckscher then turned to the smelting of zinc and iron. In 1897 his company merged with other companies to form the New Jersey Zinc Company , of which he became general manager.

Heckscher invested his million dollar fortune, which arose over the years, in properties in New York City . From 1919 he left the Heckscher Building, today's Crown Building , on the corner of Fifth Avenue and E. Build 97th Street by Warren and Wetmore Architects . It was built as one of the first skyscrapers under the city's new building regulations from 1916.

In New York, Heckscher's foundation, The Heckscher Foundation for Children , worked among other things by building playgrounds in the south of Manhattan . The largest playground in Central Park is still the Heckscher Playground today . In East Islip on Long Island , New York State bought 1,500 acres of land through a donation from the philanthropist to establish Heckscher State Park , which opened in 1929. The New York Philharmonic has been performing its summer concerts in the now very popular recreation area since the 1970s. In Germany, the foundation established the Heckscher Clinic in 1929, a clinic for child and adolescent psychiatry in Munich.

Heckscher settled east of New York, in Suffolk County on Long Island in Huntington , where he built Heckscher Park , in which he set up the Heckscher Museum of Art , which he built and donated works of art .

Heckscher is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx , New York City.

progeny

• Antoinette. She married the British aristocrat Oliver Sylvain Baliol Brett, 3rd Viscount Esher, the son of Reginald Brett, 3rd Viscount Esher .
  • The couple's daughter, Sylvia, married the last Raja of Sarawak , Charles Vyner Brooke .
  • The third child was the British-American painter Dorothy Brett .
• Another grandson was the journalist and author August Heckscher .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Heckscher, August. In: Deutsche Biographie (accessed February 12, 2017).
2. ↑ Heckscher Clinic turns 80 - “Society's seismographs”. Interview by Martin Thurau with Franz Joseph Freisleder . Süddeutsche Zeitung of May 17, 2010 (accessed February 12, 2017).