Legacy of Visionary Entrepreneur Catalyzes NY’s Park Avenue Armory
The family of Wade Thompson, the Wellington, New Zealand native who revitalized the US recreational vehicle industry in the 1980s, has gifted New York City’s Park Avenue Armory with an historic $65 million endowment. “The name of another donor seems likely to enter the lexicon” of NYC’s great cultural patrons writes Randy Kennedy in the July 9, 2015, edition of The New York Times.
In the 1990s Mr. Thompson, a graduate in commerce from Victoria University (’62) and New York University (’64) and co-founder of Ohio-based Thor Industries, the world leader in the manufacture of recreational vehicles, motor homes and buses, began donating a sizable amount of his fortune toward revitalizing the grand 60,000 sq ft Victorian edifice located on Park Avenue and 66th Street on the Upper East Side, into a state-of-the-art exhibition, music, and performance art space. The Thompson Family Foundation’s July 2015 announcement of its $65 million gift toward a programming endowment brings the total amount donated by the Thompson family to the Armory to $129 million, making them by far the institution’s most generous supporter.
Wade Thompson’s 2009 obituary in The Wall Street Journal recorded that the future business titan dreamed of living in New York City since he was a young boy in New Zealand in the late 1940s after seeing photos of the metropolis in old encyclopedias. He ultimately settled in New York in 1967, selling shirts at Brooks Brothers before starting his career in the mergers and acquisitions department at Sperry & Hutchison. He co-founded Thor in 1980 with business partner Peter Orthwein. The company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1986. The value of his holding in Thor at the time of his death exceeded US$500 million. Mr Thompson kept offices at atop Grand Central Station for over three decades.
The Thompson Family Foundation’s programming endowment promises to allow the Armory to increase the number and frequency of performing and visual arts presentation and expand the reach of the organization’s arts education programs for underprivileged NYC public school children. Alan Siegel, director of the Thompson Family Foundation, described the philanthropic gift as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” that would cement Mr. Thompson’s legacy with the Armory.
In recognition of the Thompson family’s commitment to transforming the Armory into one of the Big Apple’s preeminent cultural institutions, the building’s arts program will be renamed the Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory for a 50-year period. The Armory’s president, Rebecca Robertson, said she hoped the institution would become synonymous with the Thompson name. “It feels appropriate to us,” Ms. Robertson said, “the way Whitney or Guggenheim feel to those institutions.” The Thompson family was represented at the endowment by Wade Thompson’s wife of 42 years, Angela, and children Charles A.Y. Thompson and Amanda Jane Thompson Riegel.
Mr Thompson was a passionate fundraiser for cancer cures. His death at the age of 69 came after a 14 year battle with five cancers. The memorial service for Wade Thompson was held in the Park Avenue Amory, now named after him, at which he was portrayed as generous, adventurous, fiscally tight, “fiendishly” detailed, visionary, opinionated, “belligerently honest” and as a man who “achieved the utmost American dream.”
