Heights history: From A.T. White to artists … and a spy on Fulton
Brooklyn Heights business leaders fought segregation
By Robert Furman
Most people familiar with Brooklyn Heights history know of Alfred T. White, the great philanthropist who built the Riverside low-income housing and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. But few know he was a Wall Street businessman.
His firm was W.A. & A.T., the W.A. being W. Averell Harriman, son of railroad magnate Ned Harriman who was an active Democrat and later U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union during World War II and governor of New York from 1955 until 1958. White died ice-skating on a pond near the Harriman estate, later Harriman State Park.
White and Harriman were typical of the wealthy of Brooklyn Heights in its great period in the nineteenth century. They were religious businessmen who believed it their obligation to raise the poor and improve their city at a time when government did not pursue these ends.