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(JTA) — Paul Reichmann, a Canadian real estate developer and philanthropist who led the family’s Olympia & York company, has died.<\/p>\n
Reichmann, whose family business developed the Canary Wharf business district in London and New York\u2019s World Financial Center, died last Friday in Toronto. He was 83.<\/p>\n
He and his family lost most of their fortune in the early 1990s during the global real estate slowdown — the company went bankrupt in 1992 — but\u00a0 later were able to recoup some of it.<\/p>\n
The Reichmann family donated up to $50 million a year to yeshivas, synagogues and hospitals around the world, according to The New York Times.<\/p>\n
Olympia & York closed its construction sites on the Jewish Sabbath and Jewish religious holidays, as well as Christian ones. It paid overtime for workers on Sundays.<\/p>\n
Reichmann was born in Vienna in 1930, two years after his family left Hungary. The family later fled to Paris when Germany annexed Austria, and then to Morocco.<\/p>\n
After studying in yeshivas in Britain and Israel, Reichmann worked from 1953 to 1956 as the unpaid educational director of Ozar HaTorah, which runs Jewish day schools.<\/p>\n
He and his wife moved to Toronto in 1957, where he joined the family’s Olympia Tile, which later became Olympia & York.<\/p>\n
The company built nearly 100 buildings in the Toronto area during its first 15 years of operation.<\/p>\n
He purchased eight Manhattan office buildings in 1977 for more than $300 million; 10 years later they were worth $3 billion. In 1980, the company was tapped to build the World Financial Center in New York.<\/p>\n