Norman Segal Obituary, NYT April 5, 1994

 

Norman Segal 50, a Developer Who was a Patron of the Arts

 

Norman Segal, a Manhattan real-estate d3eveloper and patron of the arts, died on Saturday at New York Hospital. He was 50 and lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

 

The cause was complications of AIDS, said his wife Gail Clott.

 

Mr. Segal was the conceptual creator of, and a partner in several large-scale residential development projects in Manhattan that were completed in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

 

These included the Montana, a twin-towered apartment building that occupies the blockfront on the east side of Broadway between 87^th and 88^th Streets. Another was the Colorado, also a high-rise apartment building on the northeast corner of 80^th Street and Third Avenue. That corner was for decades the site of a Woolworth’s variety store. At Mr. Seal’s initiative, a new Woolworth’s was incorporated in the Colorado.

 

Still another project of Mr. Segal’s was the apartment building at 200 East 87^th Street, which is unusual on that it houses the Dalton School Physical Education Center.

 

Leonard Boxer, a partner of Mr. Segal’s in various undertakings, said that “his talent was that he could conceptualize a residential creation in a difficult site that presented an intellectual challenge to him – and he could somehow come up with a practical structure.”

 

Mr. Segal commissioned a life-size bronze statue of three elderly immigrants sitting on a park bench. The work was in memory of his grandparents, who were immigrants from Central Europe and lived, at the turn of the century, in the neighborhood where the Montana stands. The statue is now in the building’s atrium.

 

Mr. Segal also collected antique musical instruments and provided support for a number of musicians and painters.

 

He was born in the Bronx and grew up in Teaneck, NJ. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Brown University in 1965 and a law degree from Fordham University in 1971. After working for the city and for the Starrett Housing Corporation, he went out on his own.