Frederick Phineas Rose was an American real estate developer, philanthropist, and member of the Rose family.
Biography
Rose was born in Brooklyn to a Jewish family, one of three sons of Belle and Samuel B. Rose. He was raised in Mount Vernon, New York. His father and his uncle David Rose founded the real estate development company Rose Associates in 1923 and built small apartment buildings in the Bronx and then in Manhattan in the 1930s. He had two brothers, Daniel and Elihu. Rose graduated from Yale University in 1944 majored in civil engineering and then served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Seabees during World War IIAfter the war, he went to work for Rose Associates where he was responsible for design and construction while his brother Daniel was responsible for planning and finances; and his brother Elihu managed the family's apartment houses. The Rose family typically purchased properties with their own money, minimizing the use of debt thus enabling to better weather market downturns. In 1961, they built their first office development, the two-building, 1 million square-foot 280 Park Avenue. Long an opponent of rent control, in the 1990s Rose successfully converted more than 3,000 apartments in Manhattan into condominiums and co-ops. He eventually served as chairman of Rose Associates. The Rose family was one of the most established and prominent real estate families in New York City in the 20th century. In 2006, Rose Associates, managed over 31,000 apartments in New York City including Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.
In the 1940s, he married Sandra Priest whom he met when she was 19 and a student at Vassar College. She returned in mid-life to school and graduated with a B.A. from Manhattanville College and a M.A. in learning disabilities from The College of New Rochelle; she later taught junior high school students in the South Bronx. They had four children: Deborah Rose; Jonathan F. P. Rose, one of the largest developers of affordable and green housing in New York City; Samuel Priest Rose, a professor at the University of Colorado at Denver prior to his death in 1994; and Adam Raphael Rose, the current co-president of Rose Associates. His nephews and nieces include Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; David S. Rose, author of the New York Times best selling books "Angel Investing" and "The Startup Checklist"; and Isabel Rose, author of the 2005 novel The J.A.P. Chronicles which she also adapted into an Off Broadway musical. His granddaughter is artist Rachel Rose. His funeral was held at the Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York.
