Lewis Solon Rosenstiel (July 21, 1891 – January 21, 1976) was the founder of
Schenley Industries
Schenley Industries was a liquor company based in New York City with headquarters in the Empire State Building and a distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. It owned several brands of Bourbon whiskey, including Schenley, The Old Quaker Company, Cream ...
, an American
liquor company, and a philanthropist. The
Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award is named after him and the
Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science
The Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS ) is the University of Miami's academic and research institution for the study of oceanography and atmospheric sciences.
Founded in 1943, the University of Miami's Rosenstiel Schoo ...
at the
University of Miami
The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, i ...
is named after him and his wife.
Early life and career
Rosenstiel was born to a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family in
Cincinnati
Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...
,
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
, the son of Elizabeth (née Johnson) and Solon Rosenstiel.
He attended University School and Franklin Prep. He then went to work at his uncle's business, Susquemac Distilling Company in
Milton, Kentucky
Milton is a home rule-class city along the south bank of the Ohio River in Trimble County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 597 at the time of the 2020 Census, making it the largest city in Trimble County. The Milton-Madison Bridge ...
. Rosenstiel organized Schenley Products Company in the 1920s. The company bought numerous distillers, including one in Schenley, Pennsylvania, that had licenses to produce medicinal whisky. In 1933, when
Prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcohol ...
ended, Schenley Distillers Company was formed as a publicly owned company. (The name was changed to Schenley Industries in 1949.) Schenley became one of the largest liquor companies in the United States. It was one of the "Big Four", which dominated liquor sales, and included
Seagram
The Seagram Company Ltd. (which traded as Seagram's) was a Canadian multinational conglomerate formerly headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. Originally a distiller of Canadian whisky based in Waterloo, Ontario, it was once (in the 1990s) the ...
,
National Distillers
Jim Beam is an American brand of bourbon whiskey produced in Clermont, Kentucky, by Beam Suntory. It is one of the best-selling brands of bourbon in the world. Since 1795 (interrupted by Prohibition), seven generations of the Beam family have be ...
, and
Hiram Walker. Rosenstiel retired from Schenley in 1968 and it was acquired by Israeli financier
Meshulam Riklis
Meshulam Riklis ( he, משולם ריקליס; 2 December 1923 – 25 January 2019) was an Israeli financier and businessman.
Early years
Born in Istanbul to a Russian-Jewish family, Riklis grew up in Tel Aviv, and attended the Herzliya Hebrew ...
. The company was sold to
Guinness in 1987.
In February 1971, a Congressional investigator testified Lewis Rosenstiel participated in a bootlegging "consortium".
Relationship with Roy Cohn and J Edgar Hoover
Rosenstiel was a friend of attorney
Roy Cohn, and together they formed the organization American Jewish League Against Communism. Cohn was eventually
disbarred based on his attempt to fraudulently name himself co-executor of Rosenstiel's will by forcing a dying, semicomatose Rosenstiel to sign a
codicil that Cohn falsely claimed was related to Rosenstiel's divorce. The incident happened in 1975, and Cohn was disbarred shortly before his death in 1986.
Rosenstiel was also friends with
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
director
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation ...
, and was the primary contributor to the J. Edgar Hoover Foundation.
Personal life
Rosenstiel was married five times: to Dorothy Heller,
Leonore Cohn (niece of
Harry Cohn, founder of
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...
), Louise Rosenstiel, Susan Kaufman and
Blanka Wdowiak. His daughter, Louise, married
Sidney Frank
Sidney E. Frank (October 2, 1919 – January 10, 2006) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He became a billionaire through his promotion of Grey Goose vodka and Jägermeister.
Early life, family, education
Frank was born to a Jewish ...
, who well after her death in 1973, became a billionaire creating the vodka
Grey Goose and through guerilla marketing of the German cordial,
Jägermeister
( , ; stylized Jägermeiſter) is a German digestif made with 56 herbs and spices. Developed in 1934 by Wilhelm and Curt Mast, it has an alcohol by volume of 35% ( 61 degrees proof, or US 70 proof). The recipe has not changed since its creation ...
. His second wife. Lee, married Walter Annenberg, was on the board of the Metropolitan Opera, and led the influential Annenberg Foundation. His divorce from his fourth wife changed the divorce laws in the U.S. His fifth wife,
Blanka A. Rosenstiel, took over the Rosenstiel Foundation following his death in 1976.
His first wife, Dorothy Heller, contributed the funds which Rosenstiel used to start Schenley Industries. Rosenstiel's mother's family were Disraelis; when they bought the Johnson trading post in Ohio, they changed their name to Johnson.
Rosenstiel died in early 1976, in
Miami Beach.
Conyers Farm
Rosenstiel had purchased in 1936 the 1,481 acre estate of Edmund C. Converse, the first president of Banker's Trust. Conyers Farm was one of "the great estates of America" and located in Greenwich CT
Farm
A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used ...
It was larger than Central Park and Prospect park combined. The main house had 52 rooms. It was bought by the paper magnate Peter Brant in 1980 and developed into 95 10-acre sites, sold to celebrities such as Vince McMahon and Ron Howard.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosenstiel, Lewis Solon
1891 births
1976 deaths
Alcohol in the United States
American drink industry businesspeople
Drink distillers
Businesspeople from Cincinnati
Jewish American philanthropists
20th-century American businesspeople
20th-century American philanthropists
20th-century American Jews