Joe Kennedy Paid $12.5M for the Building That Made the Kennedy Fortune. Then His Heirs Sold It.

In 1945, Joseph P. Kennedy bought Chicago's Merchandise Mart, once the largest building on the planet, for about $12.5 million, less than half of what it had cost to build. In 1998, his children and grandchildren sold it, together with three other buildings and the company that ran them, for about $625 million. Kennedy was already rich when he bought it. What the Mart did was make the fortune last. For half a century, the Wall Street Journal wrote in 1998, "its rents funded the public lives of his children and grandchildren." This is the story of that building: how it failed the store that built it, Sargent Shriver, the son-in-law who ran it, the costly fix of the early 1990s, the 1998 sale laid out from Vornado's own SEC filings, and who owns it now. Chapters: 0:00 The Merchandise Mart and the Kennedy Fortune 1:35 Building the Merchandise Mart, 1928 to 1930 2:55 The Merchandise Mart in the Great Depression 4:34 Joseph P. Kennedy Buys the Mart in 1945 7:03 Sargent Shriver Runs the Merchandise Mart 9:15 The Kennedy Family's Rent Years 11:06 The Merchandise Mart in the Early 1990s 14:06 The Kennedy Family Sells to Vornado 17:09 The 1998 Closing and the SEC Filing 19:14 Who Owns the Merchandise Mart Today 21:34 The Merchandise Mart at Night Sources: Vornado Realty Trust's 1998 SEC filings and its 2025 annual report; the New York Times (1945 and 1998), the Wall Street Journal (1998), the Chicago Tribune (1987, 1993 and 1998) and Time (1945); PBS American Experience; the John F. Kennedy and LBJ presidential libraries; and Scott Stossel's biography "Sarge". Named sources only. This video covers the family's money, not its politics.