hospitalitystyle.com

Trammell Crow, one of America's largest real estate developers and landlords, has died at age 94. In addition to developing and managing millions of square feet of commercial real estate under the Trammell Crow brand, Crow founded and headed the Wyndham Hotel Co. As recounted in a story in the November/December 2008 issue of Hospitality Style, Crow also played a pivotal role in the early history of Wilson Associates, which has grown into one of hospitality's top-tier architecture design firms.

According to Crow's obituary in The New York Times, when Fortune magazine named him to the United States Business Hall of Fame in 1987, it called Crow "one of the most innovative developers in history." The traditional way of developing real estate was to use other people's money to build a building, depreciate it, sell it and then use the profits to start the process all over again with another building. But Mr. Crow's formula was to hold on. "You can get rich selling real estate," he often said, "but you can only get wealthy by owning it."