David Rockefeller: Difference between revisions

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David Rockefeller, Sr.
Born	(1915-06-12) June 12, 1915 (age 101) New York City, New York USA
Occupation	philanthropist
Net worth	US$2.9 billion
Spouse(s)	Margaret "Peggy" McGrath 1940-1996 (Her death)
Children	David, Abby, Neva, Peggy, Richard, Eileen

David Rockefeller, Sr. (born June 12, 1915) is the current patriarch of the Rockefeller family. He is the youngest and only surviving child of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and the only surviving grandchild of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil. His five siblings were Abby, John D. III, Nelson, Laurance and Winthrop.

Early life

Rockefeller was born in New York City and grew up in a nine-story mansion at 10 West 54th Street, the then-largest private residence in the city . The home contained rare, ancient, medieval and Renaissance treasures collected by his father — with some, such as the Unicorn Tapestries, held in an adjoining building at 12 West 54th Street. On the seventh floor was his mother Abby's private modern art gallery. The mansion was subsequently donated by David's father as a site for the sculpture garden in his wife's name and memory, now part of the complex that is the Museum of Modern Art.

He spent much time as a child at the vast family estate of Pocantico (see Kykuit), where, in his memoirs, he recalls visits by powerful associated of his father, including General George C. Marshall, the adventurer Admiral Richard Byrd (whose Antarctic expeditions had been funded by the family), and the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh.^[1] Summer vacations were spent at the Eyrie, a vast 100-room mansion in Seal Harbor on the southeast shore of Mount Desert Island, in Maine, along with a large retinue of servants, French tutors and governesses. The mansion was demolished by the family in the early 1960s.

Rockefeller attended the experimental Lincoln School, at 123rd Street in Harlem, the brainchild of Abraham Flexner, who had been structured the institution after the educational philosophy of John Dewey. The school opened in 1916 and was operated by the Teachers College at Columbia University, with crucial funding in its early years from the Rockefellers' General Education Board, a philanthropic educational institution later rolled into the Rockefeller Foundation.

In 1936, he graduated cum laude from Harvard University, doing his senior thesis on Fabian socialism. He did a postgraduate year in economics at Harvard and then a year at the London School of Economics, which had strong links to the family through his father and the family-run Rockefeller Foundation. It was at this time he first worked briefly in the London branch of what was to become the Chase Manhattan Bank. It was at the LSE he first met John F. Kennedy (although he had earlier been his contemporary at Harvard) and briefly dated Kennedy's sister Kathleen.^[2] In 1940 he received his Ph.D. from the family-created (1889) University of Chicago; his dissertation was entitled: "Unused Resources and Economic Waste".

In that year, in order to gain experience in government service, he became secretary to New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia for eighteen months in what is known as a "dollar a year" public service position. Although the mayor was at pains to point out to the press that he was only one of 60 interns in the city government, his working space was, in fact, the vacant office of the deputy mayor.^[3]

He then served as assistant regional director of the United States Office of Defense, Health and Welfare Services, from 1941 to 1942. In 1943 he enlisted in the war effort and entered Officer Candidate School; he was ultimately promoted to captain in 1945. During World War II he served in North Africa and France (he spoke fluent French) for military intelligence and set up political and economic intelligence units, while also serving for seven months as an assistant military attaché at the American Embassy in Paris. During this period he would call on family contacts and Standard Oil executives for assistance, establish contacts of his own, and come to highly regard the invaluable potential of "networking".^[4]

Joining the family business

After the war he took up work in the family office, the two floors of Rockefeller Center know as the the Room 5600. With his brothers, he reorganized the family's myriad business and philanthropic ventures. The men kept regular "brothers' meetings" where they made decisions on matters of common interest and reported on noteworthy events in each of their lives. David served as secretary to the group, making notes of each meeting. It has been subsequently reported via a family history that these notes would serve as excellent source material for researchers, but it will be some time before the notes are released to the public.^[5] One notable early decision was making a major investment in Nelson's Latin American developmental organization, the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC), as well as investing in fifty start-up companies of his brother Laurance's venture capital firm Venrock Associates.^[6]

Career at the Chase Bank

In 1946, Rockefeller became the family's first and only banker when he joined the staff of the longtime family-associated Chase National Bank ("the Rockefeller Bank"). The chairman at that time was his uncle Winthrop Aldrich, the son of the powerful U.S. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, and the brother of Rockefeller's mother, Abby Aldrich. Chase National subsequently became the Chase Manhattan Bank in 1955, and is now called JPMorgan Chase.

He started as an assistant manager (the lowest officer rank) in the Foreign Department, which financed international trade in a number of commodities, such as coffee, sugar and metals; it also maintained relationships with more than 1,000 correspondent banks throughout the world. He worked his way up through the ranks (but was never a teller and never made a loan), becoming president in 1960. He was chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan from 1969 to 1980 and chairman until 1981. He was also, as recently as 1980, the single largest individual shareholder of the bank, holding 1.7% of its shares.^[7]

The Chase was primarily a wholesale bank, dealing with other prominent financial institutions and major corporate clients such as General Electric (which had, through its RCA affiliate, leased prominent space and become a crucial first tenant of Rockefeller Center, rescuing that major project in 1930). The bank also is closely associated with and has financed the oil industry, having longstanding connections with its board directors to the successor companies of Standard Oil, especially Exxon Mobil. It was only through the 1955 merger that the bank shifted significantly into consumer banking.

In 1954, Rockefeller became chairman of the committee charged with deciding the location of the bank's new headquarters. The following year his decision to erect the building in the Wall Street area was accepted; it was subsequently seen as a decision that directly revived the City's downtown financial district. In 1960 the headquarters was completed under his direction at One Chase Manhattan Plaza, on Liberty Street in downtown Manhattan, directly across from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. At 60 stories, it was at that time the largest bank building in the world; it also had, five floors below ground, the largest bank vault then in existence.

The Chase Bank's principal competitor — then and now — was National City Bank of New York (later First National City Bank), now Citibank, a division of the holding company Citigroup. Ironically, National City had a long association with the Rockefeller family through James Stillman, a director of the Bank, and David's great-uncle William Rockefeller, Standard Oil's finance manager, who was recruited to the Bank's board by Stillman from 1884 onwards. The Bank then became enriched by its association with the Standard Oil empire, to the point where it was nicknamed the Oil Bank.^[8]

When Stillman and William Rockefeller's children later intermarried they became the Stillman Rockefellers and a descendant, James Stillman Rockefeller, subsequently became chairman of Citibank from 1959, at about the same time as David became Chase president in 1960.

In the 1960s Rockefeller and other businessmen formed the Chase International Advisory Committee (IAC) — which in 2005 consisted of twenty-eight prominent and respected businessmen from 19 nations throughout the world, many of whom were his personal friends; he was subsequently to become chairman until he retired from that position on the IAC in 1999. After the J. P. Morgan merger, this committee was renamed the International Council, and contains prominent figures such as Henry Kissinger, Riley P. Bechtel (of the Bechtel Group), Andre Desmarais, Lee Kuan Yew and George Shultz, the current chairman. Historically, prominent figures on the IAC have included Gianni Agnelli (a longtime associate, who spent thirty years on the Committee), John Loudon (Chairman of Royal Dutch-Shell), C. Douglas Dillon, David Packard and Henry Ford II.^[9]

Under his stewardship the Chase spread internationally and became a central pillar in the world's financial system, including being the leading bank for the United Nations. It has a global network of correspondent banks that has been estimated to number about 50,000, the largest of any bank in the world. A notable achievement was the setting up of the first branch of an American bank at One Karl Marx Square, near the Kremlin, in the then Soviet Union, in 1973. This was also the year Rockefeller traveled to China, resulting in his bank becoming the National Bank of China's first correspondent bank in the United States.

In November 1979, while chairman of the Chase Bank, Rockefeller became embroiled in an international incident when he and Henry Kissinger, along with John J. McCloy and Rockefeller aides, persuaded President Jimmy Carter through the United States Department of State to admit the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, into the United States for hospital treatment for lymphoma. This action directly precipitated what is known as the Iran hostage crisis and placed Rockefeller under intense media scrutiny (particularly from The New York Times) for the first time in his public life.^[10]

Rockefeller has also for many years hosted annual luncheons at the family's Westchester County Pocantico estate for the world's finance ministers and central bank governors, following the annual Washington meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.^[11] These luncheons were held in its playhouse. These regular meetings were also attended by the other internationalist in the family, John D. Rockefeller III, until his death in 1978.

Political Associations

In a private capacity Rockefeller has worked with every United States president since Eisenhower, at times serving as an unofficial emissary on high-level diplomatic missions (an "ambassador without portfolio"). In addition, he has acted as spokesman for the U.S. business and financial community and the New York City business community to United States Presidents on several notable occasions, notably the occasion of New York City's budgetary crisis of 1975.^{[citation needed]} President Jimmy Carter offered him the positions of United States Secretary of the Treasury and Federal Reserve Chairman but he declined both positions, preferring a private role (recommending Volcker instead as Fed Chairman, who was subsequently appointed). Another offer he declined was from his brother Nelson, who offered to appoint him to Robert Kennedy's Senate seat after Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, a post Nelson also offered to their nephew Jay Rockefeller.^[12] On account of his personal, political, and professional connections and his family name, Rockefeller has been able to act as bridge to various interests around the world–even controversial leaders such as Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, Mikhail Gorbachev and Saddam Hussein.

In Henry Kissinger, Rockefeller found a political operative with an international and domestic perspective similar to his. They first met in 1954, when Kissinger was appointed a director of a seminal Council on Foreign Relations study group on nuclear weapons, of which David was a member.^[13] The relationship developed to the point that Kissinger was invited to sit on the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Rockefeller consulted with Kissinger on numerous occasions, as for example in the Chase Bank's interests in Chile and the threat of the election of Salvador Allende in 1970,^[14] and fully supported his "opening of China" initiative in 1971 as it afforded banking opportunities for the Chase Bank.^[15]

Though a lifelong Republican and party contributor, like his father in the dynastic line, he is a committed member of the moderate "Rockefeller Republicans" that arose out of the political ambitions and public policy stance of his brother Nelson. In 2006 he teamed up with former Goldman Sachs executives and others to form a fund-raising group based in Washington, Republicans Who Care, that supported moderate Republican candidates over more ideological contenders.^[16]

Rockefeller also reportedly has connections to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). As well as knowing Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles — who was an in-law of the family ^[17]- since his college years,^[18] it was in Room 3603 in Rockefeller Center that Allen Dulles had set up his WWII operational center after Pearl Harbor, liaising closely with MI6 which also had their principal U.S. operation in the Center.^[19] He also knew and associated with the former CIA director Richard Helms, as well as Archibald Roosevelt, Jr., a Chase Bank employee and former CIA agent, whose cousin was the CIA agent, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., involved in the Iran coup of 1953.^[20] Also, in 1953, he had befriended William Bundy, a pivotal CIA analyst for nine years in the 1950s, who became the Agency liaison to the National Security Council, and a subsequent lifelong friend.^[21] Moreover, in Cary Reich's biography of his brother Nelson, a former CIA agent states that David was extensively briefed on covert intelligence operations by himself and other Agency division chiefs, under the direction of David's "friend and confidant", CIA Director Allen Dulles.^[22]

As a result of his history of international work, he possesses a famous Rolodex in his office in Room 5600, which he started in the 1940s. It is described as a unique, massive four-foot-by-five-foot gold wheel contraption, containing up to 150,000 entries of the most powerful people in the world.^[23]

Policy Groups

Throughout his life, Rockefeller has participated in and even created a number of policy groups aimed at responding to domestic and international concerns. In 1947, Rockefeller was invited to join the board of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; serving on the board were such figures as Algier Hiss, John Foster Dulles (chairman), Dwight D. Eisenhower and the president of IBM, Thomas J. Watson. He accepted the prestigious appointment and was subsequently instrumental in relocating the Endowment's headquarters to a site opposite the new United Nations headquarters building, with a Chase Bank branch on the ground floor.^[24] In 1967, he formed The Business Committee for the Arts, Inc. (BCA), which is a national not-for-profit based in New York that established the annual Business in the Arts Awards, awarded to businesses who have formed exemplary partnerships with the arts community; this organization is co-sponsored by Forbes Magazine.^[25]In 1979, he formed the Partnership for New York City, which is another not-for-profit membership organization consisting of a select group of two hundred CEOs ("Partners") from New York City’s top corporate, investment and entrepreneurial firms. They are elected annually and committed to working closely with government, labor and the nonprofit sector to enhance the economy and maintain New York City’s position as the global center of commerce, culture and innovation. Through its roster of blue-chip corporations, Rockefeller sits at the core of a network of the most powerful and influential businessmen and women in corporate America.^[26] In 1992, he was selected as a leading member of the Russian-American Bankers Forum, an advisory group set up by the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to advise Russia on the modernization of its banking system, with the full endorsement of President Boris Yeltsin.^[27]

On the world stage, influenced by the globalist perspective of his father, Rockefeller involved himself in a number of policy organizations focused on improving international relations. Rockefeller began a lifelong association with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) when he joined as a director in 1949, the youngest member appointed to that position yet. He would later become head of the nominating committee for future membership and after that much the chairman of this influential foreign policy think-tank.^[28] In 1965, Rockefeller and other senior businessmen formed the Council of the Americas to stimulate and support economic integration in the Americas. The Council subsequently played a key role in the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).^[29] In 1992, at a Council sponsored forum, Rockefeller proposed a "Western Hemisphere free trade area", which subsequently became the Free Trade Area of the Americas in a Miami summit in 1994. His and the Council's chief liaison to President Bill Clinton in order to garner support for this initiative was through Clinton's chief of staff, Mack McLarty, whose consultancy firm Kissinger McLarty Associates is a corporate member of the Council, while McLarty himself is on the board of directors.^[30]

Displeased with the failure of the Council on Foreign Relations to include Japan, Rockefeller helped found the Trilateral Commission in July 1973. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor under Carter and fierce advocate for international cooperation, became the inaugural United States director. (The two had discussed forming the organization at a Bilderberg Group meeting in Belgium in 1972.)^{[citation needed]} Perhaps the most important aspect of the Commission is their commitment to facilitating high-level international dialogue. In 1989, to cite just one instance, Rockefeller visited the then-USSR with a high-powered Commission delegation that included Henry Kissinger, former French President Giscard d'Estaing, former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, and William Hyland, editor of the CFR's prestigious journal Foreign Affairs. In their meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, the delegation sought and received an explanation on how the USSR would integrate into the world economy. The information gained helped guide the international response to the USSR's dissolution.^[31]

The Commission came under media scrutiny^{[citation needed]} when it was later disclosed that Carter appointed 26 former Commission members (who must resign before taking up government positions) to senior positions in his Administration. Moreover, it also came out that Carter himself was a former Trilateral member.^{[citation needed]} (The Clinton Administration, by contrast, had close to a dozen Commission members, including Clinton himself; both Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush were also Trilateralists).^[32] Addressing this and other claims proffered by traditional media, far-left and -right academics, and some conspiracy theorists, in Rockefeller's 2002 autobiography "Memoirs" he wrote: "For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

Wealth

His net wealth is estimated at 2.2 billion dollars, ranking him among the 300 richest people in the world.^[33] Initially, most of his wealth had come to him via the family trusts that his father had set up, which were administered by Room 5600 and the Chase Bank. In turn, most of these trusts were held as shares in the successor companies of Standard Oil, as well as diverse real estate investment partnerships, such as the expansive Embarcadero Center in San Francisco, which he later sold for considerable profit, retaining only an indirect stake. In addition, he is or has been a partner in various properties such as a 4,000-acre (16 km²) resort development in the Virgin Islands and a cattle ranch in Argentina, as well as a 15,500-acre (63 km²) sheep ranch in Australia.^[34]

Another major source of asset wealth is his formidable art collection, ranging from impressionist to postmodern, which he developed through the raising of his mother Abby and her establishment, with two associates, of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1929. He is not a collector of most modern art himself but, as chairman and honorary chairman, has never hindered MoMA's acquisition of the newer works. He has donated many works to MoMA over the decades and more will go there after his death.^[35]

Family patriarch

Following the deaths of his brothers, Winthrop in 1973, John D. III in 1978, Nelson in 1979, and Laurance in 2004, David became sole head of the family (with the important involvement of his son, David Jr.), and hence of Room 5600, the family office based on the 56th floor of the landmark GE Building in Rockefeller Center.

The legendary office, once known as the Office of the Messrs Rockefeller, after shifting from Standard Oil headquarters at 26 Broadway in 1933, changed its name over the decades and is known formally today as Rockefeller Family and Associates. It is the family seat for the handling of all the family's affairs, with hundreds of staff advisors and assistants assisting on the taxation, legal, accounting, real estate, investment and personal and philanthropic interests of all the members of the six-generation clan, numbering an estimated 150 direct blood relatives.

In addition, the prominent longtime Rockefeller-associated law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy (with John J. McCloy being the last named partner), located in the JP Morgan Chase headquarters building at One Chase Manhattan Plaza, has served as the family's longterm private legal advisors (and also serves as legal counsel for the Chase Bank) since the days of David's father. Historically, it has always had one or two senior representatives located within the family office.

David ensured that selected members of the fourth generation, known generically as the cousins, also became directly involved in the family's institutions, including Room 5600 and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the principal foundation established in 1940 by the five brothers and their one sister. They also became involved in their own philanthropic organization, formed in 1967 and primarily established by third-generation members, called the Rockefeller Family Fund.

The collective power of the cousins was demonstrated in the mortgaging and subsequent sale in 1989 of Rockefeller Center to Mitsubishi Real Estate, in order to free up part of the family fortune to invest in more lucrative investments, which gave the burgeoning family members a greater share of the available income. The members have spread from New York and are now far more diverse in their interests. Nevertheless, overall family and institutional cohesion has been maintained to a remarkable degree (more so than any other late 19th century wealthy family).^[36] This cohesion is crucially maintained through ritual annual meetings held in June and December of each year at the "Playhouse" on the family estate at Pocantico (see Kykuit).

In 2000, Rockefeller presided over the final sale of Rockefeller Center to Jerry Speyer's Tishman Speyer Properties, along with the Crown family of Chicago, which ended the more than 70 years of direct family financial association with the landmark New York complex. It later turned out that he had a long association with Jerry Speyer through the Museum of Modern Art, so there was still an enduring partnership in operation, though not directly financial in nature.^[37]

In 2003, he served as "honorary member" of the Jury for the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition. This was appropriate as he had created and chaired the original Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association in 1960 that had initiated the Center, along with major backing from his brother, Nelson Rockefeller, who was the New York Governor at the time, as well as with the New York power broker at the time, Robert Moses.^[38]

Rockefeller has always limited his giving to institutions directly or indirectly related to the family; for example, in 2005, at age ninety, he gave $100 million to the Museum of Modern Art and $100 million to Rockefeller University, two of the most prominent family institutions; as well as $10 million to Harvard and $5 million to Colonial Williamsburg. In 2006, he pledged $225 million to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund upon his death, the largest gift in the Fund's history. The money will be used to create the David Rockefeller Global Development Fund, to support projects that improve access to health care, conduct research on international finance and trade, fight poverty, and support sustainable development, as well as to a program that fosters dialogue between Muslim and Western nations.^[39] Rockefeller donated $100 million to Harvard University in 2008.^[40] The New York Times estimated in November, 2006 that his total charitable donations amount to $900 million over his lifetime, a figure that was substantiated by a monograph on the family's overall benefactions, entitled The Chronicle of Philanthropy.^[41]

His Memoirs were published in 2002, the only time a member of the six-generation clan has written an autobiography (royalties from the book go to charities that assist AIDS orphans and other needy children in South Africa). Notably, it was over ten years in the writing, with many personal staff in Room 5600 involved, including the family historian who supervised the project, Peter J. Johnson, as well as Fraser P. Seitel, a former head of public affairs at the Chase Bank and one of the premier public relations professionals in America. Seitel is the author of the acclaimed textbook The Practice of Public Relations, and a senior counselor for the leading public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, a division of WPP, one of the world's largest communication services companies.^[42]

Wife and children

He married Margaret "Peggy" McGrath on September 7, 1940; (b. September 28, 1915 - d. March 26, 1996, aged 80), she was the daughter of a partner in a prominent Wall Street law firm. They had six children:

1. David Rockefeller, Jr. (b. July 24, 1941) — Vice Chairman, Rockefeller Family & Associates (the family office, Room 5600); Chairman of Rockefeller Financial Services; Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation; former Chairman of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Rockefeller & Co., Inc., among many other family institutions.
2. Abby Rockefeller (b. 1943) — The eldest and most rebellious daughter, she was drawn to Marxism and was an ardent admirer of Fidel Castro and a late 1960s/early 1970s radical feminist^[43] who belonged to the organization Female Liberation, later forming a splinter group called Cell 16.^[44] An environmentalist and ecologist, she was an active supporter of the women's liberation movement.
3. Neva Rockefeller Goodwin (b. 1944) — Economist and philanthropist. She is Director of the Global Development and Environment Institute; Trustee and Vice Chair of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Director of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.
4. Peggy Dulany (b. 1947) — Founder of the Synergos Institute in 1986; Board member of the Council on Foreign Relations; serves on the Advisory Committee of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.
5. Richard Rockefeller (b. 1949) — A physician and philanthropist; chairman of the United States advisory board of the international aid group Doctors Without Borders; Trustee and Chair of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
6. Eileen Rockefeller Growald (b. 1952) — Venture philanthropist; Founding Chair of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, established in New York City in 2002.

Margaret died in 1996. As of 2002, David had ten grandchildren: (by David) Ariana, Camilla; (by Neva) David, Miranda; (by Peggy) Michael; (by Richard) Clay, Rebecca; (by Abby) Christopher; (by Eileen) Danny and Adam.

Residences

Rockefeller's principal residence is at "Hudson Pines", on the family estate in Westchester County, New York. He also has a Manhattan residence at East 65th Street, as well as a country residence (known as "Four Winds") at a farm in Livingston, New York (Columbia County), where his wife raised Simmenthal beef cattle. He also maintains a summer home on Mount Desert Island off the Maine coast.

The Kykuit area of the family estate is the location of The Pocantico Conference Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) — set up by David and his four brothers and one sister in 1940 — which was created when the Fund leased the area from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1991. Known as the Playhouse, it provides a setting where the Fund and other nonprofit organizations and public sector institutions can bring together people of diverse backgrounds and perspectives to engage in critical world issues.^[45]

Awards

• Presidential Medal of Freedom (1998);
• U.S. Legion of Merit (1945);
• U.S. Legion of Honor (1945);
• U.S. Army Commendation Ribbon (1945);
• Italian Order of Merit;
• Order of the Sun, Peru;
• Order of the Cedar, Lebanon;
• Order of the Crown (Belgium);
• National Order of Ivory Coast;
• Order of the Aztec Eagle, Mexico;
• Order of the Southern Cross, Brazil;
• Order of Francisco de Miranda, Venezuela;
• Order of Humane African Redemption, Liberia;
• Medal of honor of the St. Nicholas Society;
• Charles Evans Hughes award NCCJ, (1974);
• George C. Marshall Foundation Award (1999);
• Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy (2001);
• Scroll of Honor of the Municipal Art Society;
• The Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur (2000);
• Duncan Phillips Medal from The Phillips Collection;
• C. Walter Nichols Award, New York University (1970);
• Grand Cordon, Order of Sacred Treasure, Japan (1991);
• Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit, Germany;
• Order of the White Elephant and Order of the Crown (Thailand);
• World Brotherhood Award, Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1953);
• Award of Merit from the American Institute of Architects (1965);
• Honorary degree, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (2006);
• Medal of Honor for City Planning, American Institute of Architects (1968);
• World Monuments Fund's Hadrian Award (For preservation of Art and Architecture) (1994);
• National Institute of Social Sciences Gold Medal Award (1967 — awarded to all 5 brothers);
• United States Council for International Business (USCIB) International Leadership Award (1983);
• The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award: "In recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York" (1965).

David Rockefeller awards and study programs

• The David Rockefeller Studies Program, the primary think tank at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York;
• The Centennial David Rockefeller Award for Extraordinary Service at Rockefeller University;
• The David Rockefeller Fellows Program at the Partnership for New York City (PFNYC) (From 1989);
• The David Rockefeller International Leadership Award;
• The David Rockefeller Lecture of the Business Committee for the Arts (BCA) (From 1997);
• The David Rockefeller Award of the Museum for Modern Art (MoMA) (awarded annually for contributions to Culture and the Arts) (From 1997);
• The David Rockefeller Bridging Leadership Awards (annually by the Synergos Institute: University for a Night — Rockefeller first honoree in 2003).

Publications

• Unused Resources and Economic Waste, Doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago Press, 1941;
• Creative Management in Banking, "Kinsey Foundation Lectures" series, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964;
• New Roles for Multinational Banks in the Middle East, Cairo, Egypt: General Egyptian Book Organization, 1976;
• Memoirs. New York: Random House. 2002. ISBN 0-679-40588-7. 

Bibliography

• Memoirs, David Rockefeller, New York: Random House, 2002.
• David: Report on a Rockefeller, William Hoffman, New York: Lyle Stuart, 1971. (The only existing biography)

Significant mentions:

• The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of America's Greatest Family, John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988.
• The Rockefeller Conscience: An American Family in Public and in Private, John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992.
• The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer 1908-1958, Cary Reich, New York: Doubleday, 1996.
• Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family, Bernice Kert, New York: Random House, 1993.
• Those Rockefeller Brothers: An Informal Biography of Five Extraordinary Young Men, Joe Alex Morris, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953.
• The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty, Peter Collier and David Horowitz, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1976.
• The American Establishment, Leonard Silk and Mark Silk, New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1980.
• American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission, Stephen Gill, Boston: Cambridge University Press, Reprint Edition, 1991.
• The Chase: The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., 1945-1985, John Donald Wilson, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1986.
• Wriston: Walter Wriston, Citibank, and the Rise and Fall of American Financial Supremacy, Phillip L. Zweig, New York: Crown Publishers, 1995.
• Paul Volcker: The Making of a Financial Legend, Joseph B. Treaster, New York: Wiley, 2004.
• Financier: The Biography of André Meyer; A Story of Money, Power, and the Reshaping of American Business, Cary Reich, New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1983.
• Continuing the Inquiry: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996, Peter Grose, New York: Council on Foreign Relations: 1996.
• Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy, Laurence H. Shoup, and William Minter, New York: Authors Choice Press, (Reprint), 2004.
• Cloak of Green: The Links between Key Environmental Groups, Government and Big Business, Elaine Dewar, New York: Lorimer, 1995.
• The Shah's Last Ride, William Shawcross, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.
• Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York City's World Trade Center, Eric Darton, New York: Basic Books, 1999.
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Robert Caro, New York: Random House, 1975.
• The Rich and the Super-Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today, Ferdinand Lundberg, New York: Lyle Stuart; Reprint Edition, 1988.
• Interlock: The untold story of American banks, oil interests, the Shah's money, debts, and the astounding connections between them, Mark Hulbert, New York: Richardson & Snyder; 1st edition, 1982.
• The Money Lenders: Bankers and a World in Turmoil, Anthony Sampson, New York: Viking Press, 1982.
• The Chairman: John J. McCloy — The Making of the American Establishment, Kai Bird, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

See also

• Chase Manhattan Bank
• Council of the Americas
• Kykuit — The Rockefeller family estate (Pocantico)
• Rockefeller Brothers Fund
• Rockefeller Center
• Rockefeller Foundation
• Rockefeller University
• Trilateral Commission

Notes

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: David Rockefeller

• The Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC): Selected Biography Contains an overview of his life, achievements and membership in organizations.
• An Entrepreneurial Spirit: Three Centuries of Rockefeller Family Philanthropy This monograph (pdf, 2005) contains a history and philosophy of Rockefeller philanthropy, organized by the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA), set up by various family members in 2002.
• Rockefeller Brothers Fund Official Web site Details the regular conferences held by the Fund at the family estate of Pocantico.
• Partnership for New York City (PFNYC) Web site: The Founder Brief biographical details on the PFNYC Web site, originally founded and chaired by Rockefeller in 1979.
• CFR Web site — Continuing the Inquiry: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996 Contains details of both David's and the Rockefeller Foundation's long associations with the Council.
• The Height of Ambition, New York Times (NYT) article of September 8, 2002, detailing the original idea for the World Trade Center from Rockefeller, with the involvement of Robert Moses and Nelson.
• Born to be Mild A review of Memoirs in the New York Times.
• The Power and the Privilege A review of Memoirs in Business Week.
• Turning 90, a Rockefeller Gives the Presents; Millions to University and the Museum of Modern Art June, 2005, NYT article stating that Rockefeller's total benefactions over his lifetime amount to more than half a billion dollars (since acknowledged as amounting to about $900 million).

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