Patricia Marshall Tate, a Boston portrait artist who painted some of Massachusetts' most powerful political figures -- including James Michael Curley and Kevin H. White -- died Sunday in a nursing home in Washington, D.C. She was 82.
Mrs. Tate worked for 50 years out of her Beacon Hill studio, creating works that now hang in the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery and in the homes of her subjects.
Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Cardinal Richard Cushing and Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law school professor, also posed for her. The Smithsonian bought her portrait of the architect Walter Gropius in 1984.
Boston Herald Sunday November 22 1936
REAL ESTATE'S RELUCTANT TYCOON: John Lie-Nielson; AN EMPIRE BUILDER WITH A FRUGAL TOUCH By N.R. KLEINFIELD Published: May 5, 1985 N Y Times
ATLANTA—
IN the early 1960's, John Lie-Nielsen, who by then
had already sold highchairs, sorted coins in a bank, sold insurance, run
a dance studio and still only reached his late 20's, decided that there
was big money to be made in real estate. Mr. Lie-Nielsen, at the time,
had small money. In round numbers, he had about $2,000.
He was living in Sacramento, Calif., and he was
looking for a property that he could buy cheap and sell dear. Open-eyed,
he trudged through the ghetto area of the city and came upon a
two-family home in danger of dissolving into a no-family home. ''The
foundation was shot,'' he says. ''The roof was shot.'' He bought it for
$8,500, with $2,000 down.
If he was going to sell it dear, he needed to fix it
up. So he hired all the labor he could afford, which was himself. He
jacked up the house until it was plumb and repaired the foundation. He
glued on a new roof. He rebuilt sinks, learned how to do formica
counters. He worked cheap. ''I was so cheap,'' he says, ''that I would
try to rebuild a toilet when I should have bought a new one.''
A year later, Mr. Lie-Nielsen sold the house for $13,500. ''And so,'' he says, ''I was on my way.''
Two months ago, the Johnstown American Companies, a
real estate enterprise that manages more apartment buildings than any
other company in the country, announced that it was spending roughly
$200 million to buy the Consolidated Capital Companies, one of the
largest fund raisers for real estate investments and a company three
times the size of Johnstown. The combination will mean a real estate
service company boasting sales of about $200 million annually.
Johnstown American is the empire that John
Lie-Nielsen built once he got on his way. It is a company that neither
owns nor develops real estate - areas that Mr. Lie-Nielsen considers too
unsteady for a public company - but has a finger in just about every
other piece of the real estate pie.
THE desk in John Lie-Nielsen's office - in an
industrial complex in the northern reaches of Atlanta - is nearly
chest-high, because it is designed for someone who prefers to be erect.
Mr. Lie-Nielsen is hyperactive. Like a barber, he is usually standing.
When he's on the phone, he paces. His stand-up habits have gotten
contagious. When his secretary comes in to take dictation, she stands
up. Sometimes, Mr. Lie-Nielsen holds stand-up meetings in his office. He
finds they end more quickly.
In appearance, Mr. Lie-Nielsen seems about 35. His
birth certificate says 50. He has strawberry blond hair, wears rimless
glasses and looks as Norwegian as his name sounds. ''I just got a feel
for real estate,'' he says in trying to articulate the reason for his
success. ''I just got a feel for if you buy an undervalued asset and add
some value to it and increase the rent, you could make some profit.''
The core of Johnstown American is managing buildings
- setting and collecting rents, making sure the grass is cut, seeing
that the gurgling toilet in Apt. 4-C is fixed by nightfall. Johnstown
currently manages about 155,000 rental apartment and condominium units
in 30 states, primarily in the Sun Belt. It also manages roughly 145
commercial and industrial buildings, including several shopping malls.
It boasts a network of brokers specializing in commercial and
condominium properties, a mortgage banking unit and a carpet
distributor.
All in all, managing rather than owning properties
can be a sweet business that is relatively immune to economic jolts. But
it is not without a constant stream of migraines. In most parts of the
country (unlike New York City), there is tenacious competition among
owners of apartment buildings for tenants. Managers like Johnstown must
keep a lid on costs. Squeeze the lid too tightly, however, so that the
shrubs get a little brown or that broken sliding door doesn't get fixed
and tenants feel no guilt about moving to Wonderful Acres down the
street. The apartment management market, moreover, is crowded with small
firms. If Johnstown doesn't keep those apartments full, owners can turn
quickly to someone else.
Mr. Lie-Nielsen, though, has other aces up various
sleeves. Besides running Johnstown American, he puts together private
partnerships to buy real estate properties, typically apartments that
are later resold.
The way in which the public and private Mr.
Lie-Nielsen and the nest of Johnstown subsidiaries feed off each other
can get dizzying. For instance, an ideal situation would unfold
something like this: One of the Johnstown brokers gets an exclusive to
sell an apartment complex. The broker picks up the phone and calls John
Lie-Nielsen. He puts together a syndicate and buys it, paying the
Johnstown broker a commission. He calls Johnstown's mortgage company to
arrange a loan. The management subsidiary is hired to manage the
complex. And the place needs some new Johnstown carpeting, of course.
The interlock between the sibling companies has
helped the profit of Johnstown (which is traded on the American Stock
Exchange) to quadruple in the last three years, and Mr. Lie-Nielsen sees
it continuing to rise. In the first six months of the current fiscal
year, ended Feb. 28, earnings climbed to $3.9 million on revenues of
$32.2 million, compared with income of $3.1 million on revenues of $16.6
million in the 1983 period.
Perhaps the most critical ingredient that Johnstown
has is John Lie-Nielsen's imaginative eye. He gives an example of how it
sees: ''There was this property we looked at in Atlanta that was called
the 'Snooty Fox.' The buildings were really ugly. And this ugliness was
exacerbated by their using tones of brown and tan, which highlighted
the ugly architectural aspects of the buildings.
''But I saw that it had some redeeming features.
There was a little pond. In advertising, you resort to a bit of puffery.
The pond became a lake. My idea was we call the place 'Lakeside
Villas.' Instead of the brown and tan, you paint it a gray-blue and a
gray so you don't have the contrast and you continue the nautical theme.
My idea was we put some flags out front and we put a wheel - a nautical
wheel - a big, big wheel, on the side of the building. As it turns out,
there was a title problem and we never did the deal. But the seller
asked if he could use some of my ideas. The place is now called Lakeside
Villas and he painted it my nautical colors.''
IT is getting on toward 1:30. Mr. Lie-Nielsen suggests lunch. He further suggests that
George Lane, Johnstown's president, come along. ''We'll go to where
George and I always eat when we have lunch together.''
Denny's is about half-filled when they arrive, so
there's no problem getting a good booth. The food is sort of acceptable,
though Mr. Lie-Nielsen sends his apple pie back because it is not hot
enough. ''As you can see,'' he says, ''we still live frugal.''
Though worth millions, Mr. Lie-Nielsen likes to
stretch a dollar. He and his wife, Pat, moved into a new home just two
years ago, and now none of their four children have to share a bedroom.
He has driven around in an old BMW for years. After a closely contested
battle with his wallet, he splurged for his 50th birthday and bought a
Jaquar.
The company is stingy, too. ''When someone gets an
office, we decorate up to a point,'' Mr. Lane says. ''In my office,
that's my rug on the floor. Those are my leather chairs.'' Mr. Lane used
to have his own company. He met Mr. Lie-Nielsen shortly after he hit
Atlanta, and their companies merged; since then, Mr. Lane has been
instrumental in Johnstown's growth. His view of Mr. Lie-Nielsen?
''John,'' he says ''is your classic Type A workaholic personality.''
John Lie-Nielsen was born in Boston in 1935. His
father, Oistein Lie-Nielsen, was Norwegian and spent most of his life
associated with the sea. His mother, Patricia Marshall Tate, was a
portrait painter. When Mr. Lie-Nielsen was two, his parents divorced and
a custody battle ensued. While it dragged on, he lived with
grandparents in Norway. The father prevailed, but not until his son was
six. He arrived back in this country not speaking a word of English.
His father followed a peripatetic life. After a
timber business in Georgia failed, he moved to Florida and hired himself
out as a yacht skipper. He graduated to racing yachts and now lives in
Maine and builds boats.
John Lie-Nielsen majored in economics at Emory
University in Atlanta. To pay his way, he sold almost everything:
highchairs, cars, photograph albums, ad space. He ran coin machines in
the basement of a bank. When he first got out of college, he sold life
insurance for Aetna, but, as he puts it, ''I didn't really believe in
the product.''
He journeyed to Sacramento and found work in the
personnel department for the state government of California. At the same
time, he started a dance studio with a partner. The venture fizzled and
remains a sore point with him.
At the same time, his interest in real estate grew.
He formed a company called Johnstown Properties. Its single asset was
John Lie-Nielsen. Its second asset was the ghetto house in Sacramento.
Beyond that, he saw it buying and selling rundown buildings until he had
enough money to build a marvelous utopian city that he would call
''John's town.''
In 1966, he moved to San Francisco and eventually
worked as the administrator for the Langley Porter Institute, a state
psychiatric hospital. He learned things that would be applicable to
managing buildings: dealing with occupancy, maintenance, security. He
started buying properties, first alone, then with partners, fixing them
up and reselling them.
In 1972, he joined Consolidated Capital as vice
president of acquisitions. He helped Consolidated make a lot of good
deals for apartments. Johnstown, in turn, got many of the management
contracts.
In 1978, Mr. Lie-Nielsen moved Johnstown to Atlanta,
then a rather depressed market. But he saw boom. Properties were bought
for $15,000 or so per apartment. A few years later, they were sold for
more than double that. And the Atlanta boom extended his vision to a
desire to furnish good shelter everywhere. ''Our goal is to be the
biggest, most profitable real estate manager,'' he says. ''We decided to
really go for it.''
APARTMENTS managed by
Johnstown come in sundry colors and designs. But all
of them are run almost identically. The company has put together six
thick manuals that tell the team on the premises how to do things, down
to the most minute details.
Under ''product preparation,'' for instance, which
expounds on decorating a model apartment, it is mentioned that
''Personalized touches may be added - such as a half-finished letter on a
book or a nightgown draped across the bed. . . An apple pie in the
oven, slowly baking at 200 degrees, lends a warm, homelike aroma.''
Under ''lease renewals and rent increase,'' a
brochure is included to hand to anyone planning to move when the lease
expires. The flyer is entitled, ''What does it really cost to move?''
The sum Johnstown came up with is $1,151, forbidding enough to persuade
many tenants to stay put.
Standing in his office now, Mr. Lie-Nielsen is
studying a map of the Southeast. In one whirlwind tour the next day,
using a rented plane, he plans to visit 23 apartment complexes in five
cities. They are part of a new deal he is patching together. No one
likes to inspect 23 apartment buildings in one day, but Mr. Lie-Nielsen
insists on standing on every property in which he invests.
It's after 8:30 P.M. He phones his wife to say he'll
be home shortly. He locks his office door. The night janitor walks by
and, seeing Mr. Lie-Nielsen, asks, ''You going now?'' ''Yes,'' Mr.
Lie-Nielsen says. ''Well, will you turn off the lights?''
''Okay,'' Mr. Lie-Nielsen says. ''I'll get them.''
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