Richard H. Driehaus, a passionate investor who developed his major faculty coin assortment right into a fortune he needed to defend historic preservation and classical structure, died March 9 at a Chicago hospital. He was 78 years previous.
The trigger was a cerebral hemorrhage, stated a spokeswoman for Driehaus Capital Administration, the place, as chief funding officer and chairman, he had managed property of about $ 13 billion.
Mr.Driehaus (pronounced DREE-house) has restored landmarks within the Chicago space and given town a palace museum celebrating the Golden Age. He additionally set an annual prize of $ 200,000 in his identify for classical, conventional and sustainable structure as a counterweight to the $ 100,000 Pritzker Prize, funded by one other Chicago household, which he thought-about ‘and a validation of recent motives that had been a “homogenized” rejection of the previous.
He has been immersed within the inventory market for the reason that age of 13, took bloody performs on rising dangers, and in 2000 was named Barron’s one of many 25 most influential mutual fund figures of the twentieth century.
Whereas he additionally gained an award for all times success from the American Institute of Architects in 2015 for sponsoring competitions which have produced higher designs, he has by no means formally skilled on this area. However he knew what he favored, and what he disliked.
“I consider that structure ought to be of human scale, type of illustration and particular person expression that displays the architectural heritage of a neighborhood,” stated architect and concrete designer Michael Lykoudis in an interview for the Institute of Classical Structure & Artwork in 2012.
“The issue is that there isn’t a poetry in trendy structure,” he stated in an interview with Chicago journal in 2007. “There’s cash – however there isn’t a feeling, no spirit, no soul. Classicism has energy. It’s a part of our previous and the way we have now developed as human beings and as a civilization. “
Requested if he considers that the buildings designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, for instance, are appropriate, he stated. Architectural register in 2015: “They’re mechanical, industrial, not very human. It’s like my iPhone, which is good, however I don’t need the constructing in that area to appear to be that. ” He added: “Architects construct for themselves and construct for promoting. It doesn’t actually matter what the general public thinks. ”
The primary Richard H. Driehaus Prize, offered by way of the College of Notre Dame Faculty of Structure, was awarded in 2003 to Léon Krier, a designer from Poundbury, the British metropolis mannequin constructed based on the architectural rules of the Prince of Notre Dame. Wales. The primary American winner, in 2006, is South African Allan Greenberg, who redesigned the Treaty Room within the State Division.
In 2012, the opposition of Mr. Driehaus to Frank Gehry’s unique conception for the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington has been credited by many critics for having improved the ultimate conception.
In a press release after the dying of Mr. Driehaus, A. Gabriel Esteban, the president of DePaul College in Chicago, the alma mater of Mr. Driehaus (and recipient of his philanthropic breadth), attributed the success of Mr. it is an uninterrupted want to be taught. “
Mr. Esteban stated that the method of Mr. Driehaus is the lead to a part of his “training in neighborhood parish faculties.” Driehaus himself attributed credit score to the sisters who taught him at St. Margaret’s Catholic Faculty of Scotland in Southwest Chicago. “Along with studying, writing, and arithmetic,” he instructed Chicago journal, “you taught me three issues: You need to proceed to be taught your complete life, you need to be accountable for your actions, and you need to give one thing again to the society “.
Richard Herman Driehaus was born on July 27, 1942, in Chicago to Herman Driehaus, a mechanical engineer for a corporation that made tools for coal mining, and Margaret (Rea) Driehaus. He grew up in a bungalow within the Brainerd neighborhood.
As a result of his father had been rooted in a dying trade, his hopes of transplanting his household into a greater residence had been by no means realized. (Her mom returned to work as a secretary when her husband developed Alzheimer’s in his fifties.) “I knew I might by no means work as laborious as my father and I couldn’t not pay a home as he needed for us, ”Mr. Driehaus stated Philanthropy reviewed in 2012. “What Dad could not do, he needed to do.”
He started elevating cash for the household as a coin collector within the third grade. He then turned to a coin journal, he recalled later, and “seemed on the backside of the submit to see what they had been truly making an attempt to purchase for their very own accounts, moderately than what they needed. obtain on public ”.
Intrigued when he was 13 for a web page in The Chicago American “with firm names, quite a few columns and numbers that present a variety of fractional modifications in small print.” he determined that “this was the trade for me” and he invested the cash he constituted of the supply of The Southtown Economist in shares beneficial by monetary reporters. Shares are tight, educating them to discover the expansion potential of every firm on their very own.
He graduated from the College of Illinois at Chicago, enrolled at Southeast Junior Faculty after which transferred to DePaul, the place he earned a bachelor’s diploma in 1965 and a grasp’s diploma in enterprise administration in 1970. He labored for the financial institution of funding AG Becker & Firm, turning into its youngest portfolio supervisor, and for a number of different firms earlier than beginning its personal, Driehaus Securities, in 1979. It based Driehaus Capital Administration in 1982.
He married when he was about 50 years previous; the wedding resulted in divorce. He’s survived by three daughters, Teresa, Caroline and Katherine Driehaus, and two sisters, Dorothy Driehaus Mellin and Elizabeth Mellin.
“I by no means did something till I used to be 50,” he stated. Driehaus instructed the New York Instances in 2008. “I spent my early years incomes cash for my purchasers. Now I am able to have some enjoyable.”
He did so, staging his extravagant-themed birthday events for lots of of friends at his mansion on Lake Geneva (at a gala, he made his grand entrance on an elephant) and consulting his ardour for assortment.
He began with the decor he offered at a bar referred to as Gilhooley’s, then went into ornamental and artwork nouveau for the Samuel M. Nickerson Palace Monument, a palace he restored because the Richard H. Driehaus Museum. . He additionally amassed a fleet of classic vehicles.
He has given as effectively, many lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} – to DePaul and to Chicago theater and dance teams, Catholic faculties and different organizations typically missed by main philanthropists. And he felt fairly snug being a really massive fish in what he admits was a smaller pond – however extra hospitable.
“In New York, I am simply one other kind of success,” he instructed the Chicago Metropolis Membership in 2016. “You may’t make an impression in New York. However in Chicago you’ll be able to, as a result of it is large enough and it is large enough.” small and folks get alongside fairly effectively ”.
