Bill Zeckendorf's grandfather started his commercial career in the wigwams of the Indians in Arizona Territory. Bill is an Indian trader by inheritance, predilection and talent Since the Dutch bought Manhattan Island from local Indians for $24 and afew beads, there has been no trader in real estate remotely comparable to Bill Zeckendorf. As a showman he makes P.T. Barnum look like a piker. He has sold coal in Newcastle and esquimau pies at both Poles. His lively imagination, his knowledge of urban growth, steel skyscrapers, assembling, trading and developing lots and lands, his endless aquaintance with tycoons and great names, are proverbial. If only he could be held down by a committee of ingenious businessmen like the one which restrained William Hearst Here is a talent not to be buried, but to be controlled. Incidentally, he is a hell of a nice fellow.
--Robert Moses
William Zeckendori wheels, deals and spiels through his larger than life story in an aniable fashion: he's sort of an original one man conglomerate, a powerhouse plunger, city planner, entrepreneur of building complexes and massive land deals whom Corbusier claimed did more for American architecture than anyone else. Viz. the United Nations, his conception and only one of his many achievements. He also has operated on the principle of boom and bust and when one of his banker-creditors said, "Bill, you look like a million dollars." He quipped, "I'd better. I owe you three million." ... Fortuneminded men win enjoy the book-in the era of corporate think, there have been few flamboyantly high-rising figures quite like Zeckendorf.
--Publishers' Weekly
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"Bill Zeckendorf's interest in architecture was both genuine and intuitive. He often said with relish that he would gladly spend 10% more on good design for he could then make ten times more on his investment. That was in the early 1950's when few, if any, real estate developers actually believed that 'good design is good business.'"
--I.M. Pei
"William Zeckendorf reduced complex real estate to the principles of financial spread, market monopoly and power of personality at a time when the urban environment and redevelopment process still lacked the political pettiness to frustrate and extort those with great plans. Only the mundane mind can endure the discipline of operations in a development world driven by computer accounting and building operations to achieve long term asset enhancement. Zeckendorf was into visionary rather then operations at a time when the reasl estate world was in transition from normalized pro formas to operating cash flows so that his new projects were landmarks and his old portfolios were millstones. The political environment may not permit force of personality to prevail on such a scale again."
--James A. Graaskamp
"Talk about realestate development in New York City or anywhere else and one of the first names to come to mind is Bill Zeckendorf. He had flair, presence, relentless energy and great imagination. He knew how to make a deal and fufill a dream. Also, He was a wonderful man."
--Donald J. Trump
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