History

The Carey Center for Global Good and its related Carey Conference Center are the creations of Wm. Polk Carey-- a uniquely astute and energetic businessman and a generous philanthropist. The Carey corporate motto is “Doing Good While Doing Well”--and encouraging others of means to do good is a vital part of the Center’s mission. For more information, with photos, on the Carey Conference Center and its rich history, please click here.

Mr. Carey did well and did good with gusto during his lifetime. The company he created, W.P. Carey, is worth $12 billion. The good works he created are incalculable. Among the more visible are the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University and the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University—each started with personal donations of $50 million; and the Frances King Carey School of Law at the University of Maryland, started with a personal donation of $30 million.

But before he died on January 3, 2012, Mr. Carey had made many other gifts to individuals and organizations--helping friends, family and the deserving in countless acts of very quiet generosity. With characteristic foresight, Mr. Carey was determined that his philanthropy would continue after his death. He left the bulk of his estate to the W.P. Carey Foundation, which he founded in 1988.

Mr. Carey first came to Rensselaerville, where his Center for Global Good is located, in 1975 to visit his favorite cousin. He never really left. Although Mr. Carey lived on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and traveled the world frequently, he seemed to feel most at home in the little village of Rensselaerville.

The village then and now was a Norman Rockwell picture come to life--just a few streets lined by beautifully restored houses in the Greek revival and federal style; the Ten-Mile creek tumbling down a series of waterfalls from Lake Myostis and rushing through the middle of town; dramatic views of the Catskill Mountains; the town surrounded and protected by a 2000-acre nature preserve and biological field station. Founded in 1787, Rensselaerville had the air of a place that time had forgotten. Indeed, especially after the railroad bypassed it during the 19th century, the town had stopped growing.

Perhaps Rensselaerville’s quiet charm offered Mr. Carey a break from the rough and tumble of his career in real estate and finance. A child of the depression, Mr. Carey had been struggling to succeed in business from his youth. He had grown up in a storied Baltimore family but he was not born to great wealth. He studied at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, then went to work for a series of established New York City investment firms.

For fuller biographies, please link visit this life profile and this article from Forbes.

In 1973 William Carey and his brother, Frank, had started the W.P. Carey firm with a very simple but ultimately very successful concept—buying property from growing firms in need of cash, leasing the property back to them, then selling pieces of the leases to investors.

The company was still in its infancy when Mr. Carey first visited his cousin in 1975—far from the financial and real estate empire that now owns nearly a thousand buildings throughout the world—including a portion of the New York Times headquarters building in New York.

Continuing reading...