Armand G. Erpf

Armand Grover Erpf (December 8, 1897 – February 2, 1971) was an American investment banker, philanthropist, and art collector. He was a senior partner at Loeb, Rhoades & Co., chairman of the Executive Committee of the Crowell-Collier Publishing Company, and helped finance the New York magazine.

Early life and education Erpf was born in New York City to Bartholomew Erpf and Cornelia von Greiner on December 8, 1897. He graduated from Columbia College with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1917.

Career Erpf began his career as assistant secretary for the Suffern Company, a company that imports manganese ore. In 1919, he became an officer and part owner in 1919 of C. E. Erpf & Co. crude rubber brokers.

He went to Germany in 1923 to conduct a survey of textile enterprises in Saxony, and in 1924 he joined a management engineering firm as statistician.

In 1933, Erpf joined Loeb, Rhoades & Co. and became general partner in 1936. Under his financial guidance, Crowell-Collier went from the verge of bankruptcy to making a $4 million profit in five years' time. Erpf encouraged the company to use its profits from the sales of Collier's Encyclopedia to purchase Macmillan Inc. in 1960, Brentano's bookstores, Berlitz School of Languages, and Berlitz Publications in quick procession, turning it into one of the nation's largest publishers. In this capacity, Erpf played a significant role in the creation and financing of the Columbia Lectures in International Studies,

With the demise of the New York World Journal Tribune in 1967, the predecessor of the New York magazine fell into financial hardships. Erpf stepped in with financial assistance and helped Clay Felker resume the publication. Felker credited him as the "financial architect" of the magazine.

For his interest in the arts and letters combined with a successful business career, Time magazine called him "Wall Street's closest approximation of Renaissance man" in 1962. In 1968, a gigantic maze consisting of 1680 feet of stone pathways and brick walls eight feet high at two hundred feet in diameter was built, with a seven-foot bronze Minotaur and a seven-foot bronze of Daedelus and Icarus in two central chambers. According to Christie's, it was the largest labyrinth built since classical antiquity.

His art collections were donated to the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art after his death.

Personal life Erpf was married twice. His first marriage in 1928 ended in divorce, and his second marriage was to Susan Stuart Mortimer, a New York artist, in 1965. The couple had two children, Armand Bartholomew (Tolomy) and Cornelia Aurelia Erpf. His son, Tolomy Erpf, is a hedge fund manager and owns the Oceanus villa with his sister Cornelia on Mustique, where British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent his New Year holiday with his then-partner, Carrie Symonds, in 2020.

He died of a heart attack on February 2, 1971, while working in his office at 42 Wall Street, leaving an estate worth $8 million. He lived at 820 Fifth Avenue and on a 500-acre estate in Arkville, New York.