Biographical / Historical

Literary, social, and legal historian David Alan Richards (b. 1945), author of The History of the New York Yacht Club (1974),  Skulls and Keys: The Hidden History of Yale's Secret Societies (2017), and several bibliographical studies of Rudyard Kipling, is, by vocation, a real estate lawyer in New York City.

Between 1977 and 1982, while at the firm of Coudert Brothers, Richards brokered the sale of air rights above Tiffany and Company's flagship store at 727 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, to the Trump-Equitable Fifth Avenue Company. This purchase ensured no other developer could erect on the Tiffany site a building taller than 58-story Trump Tower, then under construction next door at 721-725 Fifth Avenue.

Between 2000 and 2013 Richards was a partner in the firm McCarter & English, where he shepherded the 2005 and 2012 donations to the City of New York by CSX Transportation, Inc., the abandoned High Line—an elevated freight railway on Manhattan's west side running from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street—for use as a public park.

For more on Richards's pursuits visit the biographical section of his website.