In 1934, he joined a Detroit real estate firm. By 1937, before he was 30, his real estate work had made him a small fortune of about $50,000. He led a syndicate (along with Ben Tobin and Alfred R. Glancy Jr.) that bought the Empire State Building in 1951 for $51 million, then a titanic sum; he more than doubled his investment when he sold his interest in the building three years later.

In 1953, together with Alfred R. Glancy Jr., Ben Tobin,