David Rockefeller - Early Life

Early Life

Rockefeller was born in New York City and grew up in a nine-story house at 10 West 54th Street, then the largest private residence in the city. The home contained rare, ancient, medieval and Renaissance treasures collected by his father — with some, such as the Unicorn Tapestries, held in an adjoining building at 12 West 54th Street. On the seventh floor was his mother Abby's private modern art gallery. The house was subsequently donated by David's father as a site for a sculpture garden in his wife's name and memory, now part of the Museum of Modern Art.

He spent much time as a child at the family estate Kykuit, where, in his memoirs, he recalls visits by powerful associates of his father, including General George C. Marshall, the adventurer Admiral Richard Byrd (whose Antarctic expeditions had been funded by the family), and the aviator Charles Lindbergh. Summer vacations were spent at the Eyrie, a 100-room house in Seal Harbor on the southeast shore of Mount Desert Island, in Maine. The house was demolished by the family in the early 1960s.

Rockefeller attended the experimental Lincoln School at 123rd Street in Harlem. The school was the brainchild of Abraham Flexner, who had structured the institution after the educational philosophy of John Dewey. It opened in 1916 and was operated by the Teachers College at Columbia University, with crucial funding in its early years from the Rockefellers' General Education Board, a philanthropic educational institution later rolled into the Rockefeller Foundation.

In 1936, Rockefeller graduated cum laude from Harvard University. He did a postgraduate year in economics at Harvard and then a year at the London School of Economics. It was at the LSE that he first met John F. Kennedy (although he had earlier been his contemporary at Harvard) and briefly dated Kennedy's sister Kathleen. During his time abroad, Rockefeller briefly worked in the London branch of what was to become the Chase Manhattan Bank. Having returned to the United States to complete his graduate studies, in 1940 he received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. His dissertation was entitled Unused Resources and Economic Waste.

After completing his studies in Chicago, he became secretary to New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia for eighteen months in a "dollar a year" public service position. Although the mayor pointed out to the press that Rockefeller was only one of 60 interns in the city government, his working space was, in fact, the vacant office of the deputy mayor.

From 1941 to 1942, Rockefeller then served as assistant regional director of the United States Office of Defense, Health and Welfare Services. After war broke out, he enlisted in the war effort and entered Officer Candidate School in 1943; he was ultimately promoted to captain in 1945. During World War II he served in North Africa and France (he spoke fluent French) for military intelligence setting up political and economic intelligence units. For seven months he also served as an assistant military attaché at the American Embassy in Paris. During this period, he would call on family contacts and Standard Oil executives for assistance, establish contacts of his own, and come to value the potential of networking.