Julien J Studley

Mr. Studley originally apprenticed as a diamond cutter and polisher before turning to real estate. Armed only with a high school equivalency diploma (he was later granted an honorary degree by the City University of New York and named chairman of The New School, where he had taken courses in the humanities), he founded Julien J. Studley Inc. in 1954. Mr. Studley was involved in assembling the sites for or renting offices in, among other properties, Citicorp Center (now Citigroup Center) and the Time Warner Center in New York, and the Newseum in Washington. When he sold the company to his partners in 2002 for an estimated $20 million, it had 400 brokers in 25 offices in the United States. Last year, Savills, a real estate firm based in London, bought Studley Inc. for $260 million, with the goal of expanding its presence worldwide. The company was renamed Savills Studley. Mr. Studley also invested in real estate, managing those properties through Studley New Vista Associates. His parents, Max, an engineer, and Marsha, were Jewish immigrants from Poland. With the outbreak of World War II, Mr. Studley, his parents and his younger brother, George, fled first to Nice in Vichy France in 1940, and then to Cuba. He is survived by his wife, Jane; his son, Jacob; his stepson, Ni jun; and two step-grandsons.