The Rockefeller Foundation
Standard Oil money turned into the world's largest philanthropy — and the model the World Health Organization was built on.
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Chartered in 1913, it was the world's largest philanthropic enterprise by the 1920s. Its International Health Division became the model for the WHO, and the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Health drew on its work too.
What to look for
- 420 Fifth Avenue — its current home, after earlier stints at 26 Broadway and inside Rockefeller Center's GE Building
- The 1909 founding stake: 73,000 Standard Oil shares worth $50 million, signed over by Rockefeller Sr.
- Its New York charter, approved May 14, 1913, with John D. Rockefeller Jr. as first president
A private foundation office, legally independent from Rockefeller University and Rockefeller Center — not a public museum.
The Rockefeller Foundation is one of 38 sights worth the detour in New York, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the New York pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in New York
- Statue of LibertyFrance's gift to the U.S.: a crowned, robed woman raising a torch over New York Harbor, long read as a welcome to immigrants arriving by sea.
- Empire State BuildingRide up to the 86th- or 102nd-floor deck and look straight down on Midtown Manhattan.
- World Trade Center & 9/11 MemorialTwo reflecting pools now sit in the exact footprints where the Twin Towers stood until September 11, 2001.
- Wall StreetUnder 2,000 feet of pavement that stands in for all of American finance — named for a wall that hasn't existed since 1699.
- The Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art)1.5 million works under one roof, from Sumerian stone to modern American rooms — a day here barely scratches it.
- Central ParkThe most visited urban park in the US — an estimated 42 million visits a year — built by hand on the razed land of a Black settlement, Seneca Village.