Robert Tishman

Robert Valentine Tishman (April 7, 1916 – October 11, 2010) was an American real estate developer who was head of the family-owned firm Tishman Realty & Construction until it was disestablished in 1977, and was one of the two founding partners of Tishman Speyer, which was formed in 1978 and became one of the largest owners and builders of office buildings in the United States. His father David Tishman headed the family firm of Tishman Realty & Construction. The firm had been established in 1898 by his grandfather Julius Tishman, who used the proceeds of his department store in upstate New York to build a six-story tenement building on the Lower East Side. In June 1941, he married the former Phyllis Gordon, who had attended Wellesley College and the New York University School of Law, in a ceremony held at the Lombardy Hotel and officiated by Rabbi Nathan A. Perilman of Temple Emanu-El. During World War II, Tishman served on a United States Navy destroyer in the Pacific Ocean. At the time of his death, Tishman Speyer was working as construction manager of a building at 510 Madison Avenue and was project manager of One World Trade Center, the tallest structure in the city. In his obituary in The New York Times, Speyer said Tishman worked every day in the firm's offices until two years before his death. After his death, a named professorship was established in his honor at the Cornell Tech campus in New York City.