Walter H. Shorenstein (February 15, 1915 – June 24, 2010)Dennis McLellan (June 26, 2010)
"Walter H. Shorenstein dies at 95; Democratic Party fundraiser and San Francisco real estate mogul"
''Los Angeles Times''. was an American billionaire real estate developer and investor. His company,

Shorenstein Properties Shorenstein is a real estate investment company based in San Francisco that owns interests in of office space throughout the United States. The company has sponsored twelve closed-end real estate funds, with total equity commitments of $8.8 bill ...

, owned 130 buildings totaling at least of office space at the time of his death. He at one point owned 25% of the commercial office space in the City of San Francisco, including the iconic Bank of America Building.

Early life

Shorenstein 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 1915 in Glen Cove, New York, son of a clothier. His uncle, Hyman Schorenstein, was a political "kingmaker" in New York during the early 20th century, and ancestor to a number of New York politicians. In 1934, he graduated from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

. In 1941, he enlisted in the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...

Career

Upon his discharge from the Air Force, Shorenstein moved to San Francisco with savings of $1,000. He worked as a commercial real estate broker, becoming a partner at Milton Meyer and Co., a firm he bought in 1960 upon its founder's death and renamed after himself. He and others attributed his success in business to "street smarts". In 1993, Shorenstein helped an investor group purchase the

San Francisco Giants The San Francisco Giants are an American professional baseball team based in San Francisco, California. The Giants compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Founded in 1883 as the New Y ...

baseball team thus preventing the franchise from moving to Florida.

Philanthropy and political activities

Shorenstein became active politically and was a significant fundraiser for the Democratic Party. He was a major donor to civic and charitable causes, as well as higher education. He was prominent in the Jewish-American political and philanthropic community. In honor of his daughter who died of cancer in 1985, Shorenstein founded the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy — renamed the

Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy is a Harvard Kennedy School research center that explores the intersection and impact of media, politics and public policy in theory and practice. Among other activities, the center or ...

in 2014 — at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

's Kennedy School of Government. He also endowed the Walter H. Shorenstein Forum for Asia Pacific Studies at Stanford University. In 1993, he and Mikhail Gorbachev established the

Gorbachev Foundation The Gorbachev Foundation (russian: Горбачёв-Фонд, ''Gorbachyov-Fond'') is a non-profit organization headquartered in Moscow, founded by the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1991 and began its work in January 1992 ...

in San Francisco. In 1994, President

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

appointed him as a member of the Board of Directors of the

Corporation for National and Community Service AmeriCorps (officially the Corporation for National and Community Service or CNCS) is an independent agency of the United States government that engages more than five million Americans in service through a variety of stipended volunteer work prog ...

, a position he filled until 2007.

Family

In 1945, Shorenstein married Phyllis Finley of

Wellington, Kansas Wellington is a city in and the county seat of Sumner County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 7,715. History 19th century Wellington was platted in 1871 and named for the Duke of Wellington. It w ...

. She met her husband while working as a volunteer ambulance driver at

Travis Air Force Base Travis Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base under the operational control of the Air Mobility Command (AMC), located three miles (5 km) east of the central business district of the city of Fairfield, in Solano County, California ...

, where Shorenstein was stationed during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

.Kathleen Teltsch (June 24, 1994)
"Phyllis Shorenstein, 76, Patron Of Asian Arts in San Francisco"
''The New York Times''. Phyllis converted to

Judaism Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in t ...

. Mrs. Shorenstein had a heart ailment and died in 1994 at the age 76 in San Francisco. They had three children: *

Joan Shorenstein Joan Shorenstein (1947 – March 10, 1985) was an American journalist for ''The Washington Post'' and producer for CBS News. She died of cancer in 1985 at the age of 38. Early life Shorenstein was born in San Francisco as one of three children ...

(born 1947), his eldest daughter, a producer for the

CBS Evening News The ''CBS Evening News'' is the flagship evening television news program of CBS News, the news division of the CBS television network in the United States. The ''CBS Evening News'' is a daily evening broadcast featuring news reports, feature st ...

and ''

Face The Nation ''Face the Nation'' is a weekly news and morning public affairs program airing Sundays on the CBS radio and television network. Created by Frank Stanton in 1954, ''Face the Nation'' is one of the longest-running news programs in the history ...

'', died of cancer in 1985. She was married to journalist Michael Barone. *

Carole Shorenstein Hays Carole Shorenstein Hays (born September 15, 1948 as Carole J. Shorenstein) is an American theatrical producer. Biography Shorenstein was one of three children born to real estate developer Walter Shorenstein and Phyllis Finley. Her father was ...

(born 1948), a Broadway producer with whom he established three major theaters in San Francisco: the Orpheum, the Curran and the

Golden Gate The Golden Gate is a strait on the west coast of North America that connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. It is defined by the headlands of the San Francisco Peninsula and the Marin Peninsula, and, since 1937, has been spanned by t ...

. * Douglas W. Shorenstein (born 1955) was chairman and chief executive of

. In 2010, he was appointed Chairman of the

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (informally referred to as the San Francisco Fed) is the federal bank for the twelfth district in the United States. The twelfth district is made up of nine western states—Alaska, Arizona, California, ...

Board of Directors. He died of cancer in 2015."Douglas W. Shorenstein Designated Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Board of Directors; Patricia E. Yarrington Designated Deputy Chair for 2011"
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. July 23, 2010.

Awards and honors

*1991: Golden Plate Award of the

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet ...

*1997: University of Southern California’s Real Estate Hall of Fame *1997: Democratic National Committee’s Lifetime Achievement Award *1998: Bay Area Council’s Business Hall of Fame *2013: Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) establishes the Walter Shorenstein Fellowship in Media and Democracy

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shorenstein, Walter 1915 births 2010 deaths American billionaires American real estate businesspeople Philanthropists from New York (state) 20th-century American Jews People from Glen Cove, New York Businesspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area American landlords Shorenstein family 20th-century American philanthropists 21st-century American Jews Members of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service