F. Trammell Crow (June 10, 1914 – January 14, 2009) was an American real estate developer. Crow is credited for creating several famous real estate projects, including Dallas Market Center, Peachtree Center (Atlanta, Georgia), and San Francisco's Embarcadero Center.[1]
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Crow was born in Dallas, Texas. As a child and later as an adolescent, he earned money through a series of odd jobs, including plucking chickens, cleaning bricks, and unloading boxcars beginning at age 10 until his father, a bookkeeper, forbade it.[1] He was the fifth of eight children who grew up in a rented one-bedroom house off Fitzhugh Street in East Dallas. His father, Jefferson Crow, worked as a bookkeeper for Collett Munger – one of Dallas' early real estate developers who built the Munger Place subdivision. Unable to attend college because of the Great Depression, Mr. Crow worked after high school at odd jobs. In 1933, Crow landed a job as a runner for Mercantile National Bank in Dallas, earning about $13 a week.
After completing Woodrow Wilson High School in 1932, he worked for a Dallas bank and attended night school in accounting at Southern Methodist University. Upon graduation in 1938, he was the youngest CPA in Texas, at age 24. He then worked for three years as a CPA before joining the Navy in 1940. He utilized his background in accounting and was offered a commission auditing the books of defense contractors. After World War II, he remained with the Navy for another year to handle final settlements with the Navy's contractors and then moved back to Dallas. He had no difficulty perceiving the city's growth, and became an agent for North American Van Lines, a moving company. Shortly thereafter, he worked as a wholesale grain merchandiser where he worked to triple the sizes of the warehouses and erect new loading facilities. Once the grain business faded, he switched at the age of 33 to the field of warehouse real estate development believing there was considerable room for growth.[2][3]
Crow built his first warehouse in 1948 and leased it to Ray-O-Vac Battery Co. He put up the building for Ray-O-Vac which proved to be considerably larger than the company needed, leaving Crow to seek out additional tenants. He convinced Decca Records to sign on for the leftover space, and began a career as a "speculative builder." This field was a new concept in property development, in which builders typically designed construction to meet the expressed needs of one specific company, then leased the entire space to that company after the building was in place.[2]
He continued from his start with a single-story warehouse on the banks of the Trinity River in the late 1940s. In parternships with John M. Stemmons he became one of the largest developers in the Trinity River Industrial Park. By the mid-1950s, Crow was Dallas' largest warehouse builder.
His company's skyscrapers – including Dallas' 50-story Trammell Crow Center and the 53-story Chase Tower – reshaped skylines in the 1980s in cities stretching from Charlotte, N.C., to Atlanta, San Francisco and San Diego.
By 1970, Crow had developed Trammell Crow Company into a nationwide organization, another innovation in a field that was, at the time, dominated strictly by local builders.
Forbes in 1971 and The Wall Street Journal in 1986 called Crow the largest landlord in the United States. The Journal said the company he founded was then the nation’s biggest developer.
Crow once had interests in nearly 300,000,000 square feet (28,000,000 m2) of developed real estate, comprising 8,000 properties in more than 100 cities. Crow's holdings were said to be much larger than those of the better-known William Zeckendorf and Donald Trump and include hotels, hospitals, residential developments, and — just as in the early days of the company — warehouses.[2] The Austin Business Journal said in its profile of TCC, "When compared to Trammell Crow, other real estate companies are for the birds."[4] Yahoo! Finance, in an oddly similar metaphor, said in its company profile: "It takes a tough bird to succeed in the real estate business, and Trammell Crow Company is one of the cocks of the walk." Calling the organization "one of the top diversified real estate management companies in the US," the profile estimates that the company manages nearly 550,000,000 square feet (51,000,000 m2) of warehouse, service center, and retail space in the United States and Canada.[5] As of June, 2007, the company was set to grow even further with the scheduled $60 million purchase of the HealthSouth headquarters building in Birmingham, Alabama.[6]
Trammell Crow Company was privately held until it went public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol TCC in 1997. In 2006, Trammell Crow Company was sold to CB Richard Ellis group (NYSE:CBG) for approximately $2.2 billion.
Trammell Crow was an enthusiastic collector of East Asian art. His son Trammell S Crow went to Yale with Alex Kerr, and sometime later after Kerr was more established he became an art purchaser in Tokyo for the Trammell Crow Company at the behest of Crow Senior.[7]
He was inducted as a member of the Woodrow Wilson High School Hall of Fame when it was created in 1989 in connection with celebrating the school's 60th anniversary.
Crow was instrumental in bringing the Republican National Convention to Dallas in 1984. He and his wife Margaret Crow were avid collectors of Asian art, for which they established a museum in Dallas, The Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art, his private museum, is open to the public free of charge. It is located on Flora Street in the Arts District of downtown Dallas. At the time of his death, Trammell Crow was married to his wife of 66 years had six children: Lucy Billingsley, Robert Crow, Harlan Crow, Howard Crow, Stuart Crow, and Trammell S. Crow. Trammell and his wife have sixteen grandchildren and three great grand children.[8]
Late in life, Crow began suffering from Alzheimer's disease.[8] Crow died in his sleep at his ranch near Tyler, Texas, on January 14, 2009.[8][9]