Joseph Hermann Hirshhorn

Joseph Hermann Hirshhorn (born August 11, 1899 in Mitau ; † August 1, 1981 ) was an American entrepreneur, financier and art collector.

Hirschhorn was born in 1899 in the town of Mitau , Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire ), the twelfth of thirteen children into a Jewish family. At the age of six, he emigrated to the United States with his widowed mother . In the USA he later had his name changed to Joseph Herman Hirshhorn.

Hirshhorn began his first professional career at the age of 14 as an office boy on Wall Street . Three years later, in 1916, he became a stockbroker and earned $ 168,000 that year. A clever investor, he sold his Wall Street investments two months before the stock market crash of 1929 and realized $ 4 million in cash in profit. Hirshhorn made his fortune in the mining and oil business. In the 1930s, he turned much of his attention to gold and uranium mining in Canada, and in 1933 he set up an office in Toronto .

In the 1950s, he and geologist Franc Joubin were primarily responsible for the "Big Z" uranium deposit in northeastern Ontario and the subsequent establishment of the town of Elliot Lake. Hirshhorn Avenue, a residential street in this city, is named after him. By the time he sold the last of his uranium holdings in 1960, he had made over $ 100 million in cash out of the uranium business.

From 1961 to 1976 Hirshhorn lived in a three-story Norman castle- style building on 22 acres (89,000 m²) on the summit of Round Hill, a 170 m high hill in Greenwich , Connecticut .

literature

• Hyams, Barry, 1979, Hirshhorn, Medici from Brooklyn: A biography . Dutton, ISBN 0-525-12520-5 .

Web links

• The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution