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Eli Broad made his billions building homes, and then he used that wealth and the considerable collection of world-class modern art he assembled with his wife to shape the city around him.
Dogged, determined and often unyielding, he helped push and prod majestic institutions such as Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Museum of Contemporary Art into existence, and then, that done, he created his own namesake museum in the heart of Los Angeles.
With a fortune estimated by Forbes at $6.9 billion, the New York native who made California his home more than 50 years ago flourished in the home construction and insurance industries before directing his attention and fortune toward an array of ambitious civic projects, often setting the agenda for what was to come in L.A.
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It seems unlikely that a home builder whose big claim to fame is carpeting the Southwest with cookie-cutter tract houses would become one of L.A.’s most important architectural patrons. But Los Angeles is the kind of city where the most beautiful road in town is named for a water engineer, so perhaps it shouldn’t be entirely surprising. (See: Mulholland Drive.)
Eli Broad, who died Friday at the age of 87, was a relentless shaper of the L.A. landscape as a developer, insurance magnate, political patron, art collector and power broker. And his influence extended to architecture. Over the course of his life, he helped bring to fruition in whole or in part designs by an array of award-winning international design stars, including Richard Meier, Renzo Piano, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and, most famously, Frank Gehry. Or perhaps most infamously, because Broad’s relationship with Gehry was, well, fractious.
More than a dozen institutions across the US bear his name or imprint, including the Broad Institute for biomedical research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.