Musician Lou Reed dies at 71

Lou Reed

Musician and guitarist Lou Reed, the front man for the 1960s band the Velvet Underground as well as a solo artist, has died.

Reed, who was born to a Jewish family, died Oct. 27. He was 71. He had a liver transplant in May after years of alcohol and drug abuse; reports attributed his death to liver disease.

Born Lewis Allan Reed in Brooklyn, N.Y., he became influential in rock by blending art and music in New York in the

1960s through the Velvet Underground’s collaboration with pop artist Andy Warhol. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll of Fame in 1996.

Reed quit the band in 1970 and focused on his solo career, which featured the 1973 hit song “Walk on the Wild Side.”

He visited Israel five years ago with his musician wife Laurie Anderson during her world tour.

Reed reportedly was coy about his Jewish roots. He was quoted as saying, “My God is rock ’n’ roll” and “The most important part of my religion is to play guitar.” — jta

Canadian real estate mogul Paul Reichmann

Paul Reichmann, a Canadian real estate developer and philanthropist who led the family’s Olympia & York company, died Oct. 25 in Toronto. He was 83.

Reichmann’s family business developed the Canary Wharf business district in London and New York’s World Financial Center.

He and his family lost most of their fortune in the early 1990s during the global real estate slowdown — the company went bankrupt in 1992 — but later were able to recoup some of it.

The Reichmann family donated up to $50 million a year to yeshivas, synagogues and hospitals around the world, according to the New York Times.

Olympia & York closed its construction sites on Shabbat and Jewish religious holidays, as well as Christian ones. It paid overtime for workers on Sundays.

Reichmann was born in Vienna in 1930, two years after his family left Hungary. The family later fled to Paris when Germany annexed Austria, and then to Morocco.

In 1953, after studying in yeshivas in Britain and Israel, Reichmann worked for three years as the unpaid educational director of Ozar HaTorah, which runs Jewish day schools.

He and his wife moved to Toronto in 1957, where he joined the family’s Olympia Tile, which later became Olympia & York. The company built nearly 100 buildings in the Toronto area during its first 15 years of operation.

Reichmann purchased eight Manhattan office buildings in 1977 for more than $300 million; 10 years later they were worth $3 billion. In 1980, the company was tapped to build the World Financial Center in New York. — jta