Articles and News

New York, NY—Richard Anthony (Tony) Goldman, the real estate visionary instrumental in the revitalization of formerly downtrodden neighborhoods like Soho in New York City and South Beach in Miami, died September 11 at age 68. The cause of death was heart failure. Goldman’s wife, Janet (nee Ehrlich), is highly regarded in the jewelry industry and by trade and consumer fashion editors for her showroom Fragments, which has been a launch pad for many innovative designers, such as Moritz Glick, Nam Cho, Annie Fensterstock, and dozens more.

The same eye that Janet Goldman applies to jewelry, her late husband applied to architecture. It was during a walk in the area around New York’s Houston Street in 1976 that Goldman noticed the imposing but distinctive cast-iron architecture of the buildings in the area, and realized the vast—but empty—factory lofts would make very desirable living spaces. He bought and renovated 18 buildings in the neighborhood, while next to the scruffy artists’ taverns in the area he opened chic new restaurants to attract a more well-heeled crowd.

Nine years later, Goldman did the exact same thing along a seedy stretch of Miami Beach, where crumbling Art Deco hotels held whispers of a grand past and a hint of a potential future in the right hands. Goldman gradually bought up 18 of those, too, renovated them, and, while he wasn’t the catalyst in the revitalization of South Beach, he was an early force driving the development of it. Because of his efforts in New York and Florida, as well as in Philadelphia and the Wall Street area of Manhattan, he received the Louise du Pont Crowninshield Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2010 for lifetime achievement.

Goldman was born in Wilmington, DE, to a single mother. Though adopted and raised by Tillie and Charles Goldman, a wealthy New York couple, he later reunited with his biological parents, Shirley and Ray Meyers, who married after Ray’s deployment in WWII. His biological parents had three other children, all of whom were welcome in Goldman’s life, Janet told the Miami Herald. Tony Goldman himself also was a Vietnam War-era US Army veteran.

Read the New York Times’ obituary here. Read the Miami Herald obituary here.

Top photo: Miami Herald