The People's City: A History of the Influence and Contribution of Mass Real Estate Syndication in the Development of New York City

The People's City is a vivid chronicle of builders and visionaries who used their own money in combination with the public's - mass real estate syndication - to build residential and commercial areas out of slums. The People's City asserts that mass real estate syndication, although in partial existence at the turn of the twentieth century, came into a distinctly recognizable form in the 1920s, with the emergence of the New York real estate developer Fred F. French and his 'French Plan'. This book traces the origins of mass real estate syndication prior to analyzing the principal buildings financed under the French Plan - the Fred F. French Building, Tudor City and Knickerbocker Village. The People's City subsequently presents how mass real estate syndication endured, evolved, and adapted through the post-World War II era, with the likes of Lawrence A. Wien and Harry Helmsley, to the present day, with the publicly traded 'Real Estate Investment Trusts' (REITs) and the ever more popular 'Tenant-in-Common' (TICs) programs. The People's City highlights how the mass public has had, since the start of the twentieth century, the opportunity to own footholds in some of the finest residential and commercial properties in Manhattan, something which had been generally perceived as the province of the very wealthy. Anyone who has any interest in the colorful people and ideas that dramatically influenced the development of New York City will be delighted with Alexander Rayden's thorough and well-researched study.