José Antonio Ferré Aguayo (September 12, 1902 – September 15, 1990) was a Puerto Rican businessman, industrialist and government official. He was a brother of

Luis Ferré Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archai ...

, who served as

Governor of Puerto Rico The governor of Puerto Rico ( es, gobernador de Puerto Rico) is the head of government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and commander-in-chief of the Puerto Rico National Guard. The governor has a duty to enforce local laws, to conv ...

, and

Isolina Ferré '' Sor'' Isolina Ferré Aguayo (5 September 1914 – 3 August 2000) was a Puerto Rican Roman Catholic religious sister. Known as the "Mother Teresa of Puerto Rico", she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her humanitari ...

, the "

Mother Teresa Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu, MC (; 26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), better known as Mother Teresa ( sq, Nënë Tereza), was an Indian-Albanian Catholic nun who, in 1950, founded the Missionaries of Charity. Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu () was ...

of Puerto Rico". Ferré was also the father of

Maurice Ferré Maurice Antonio Ferré (June 23, 1935 – September 19, 2019) was an American politician who served six terms as the Mayor of Miami. Ferré was the first Puerto Rican-born United States mayor and the first Latino Mayor of Miami. He was an un ...

, a former six-term mayor of

Miami, Florida Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at th ...

Early life and education

Ferré was born in Ponce and the son of Cuban born Antonio Ferré Bacallao. After attending Morristown-School (now Morristown-Beard School) in

Morristown, New Jersey Morristown () is a town and the county seat of Morris County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original c ...

in Boston, Massachusetts in 1924. Ferré later served on the board of trustees of the school alongside

Edward Kennedy Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Massachusetts for almost 47 years, from 1962 until his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic ...

. He earned his master's degree in business administration from the

University of Miami Patti and Allan Herbert Business School University of Miami Patti and Allan Herbert Business School, also known simply as Herbert Business School, is the academic business school at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. The school was founded in 1929 and offers undergradu ...

Industrial development

During the years following

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, Ferré grew his wealth by purchasing bankrupt glass, cement, and carton factories. At one point, his family empire owned 80 corporations in Puerto Rico, the United States, Venezuela, and Panama. In 1965, Ferré's real estate company, the Ferré Florida Corporation, financed the construction of the 30-story

New World Tower 100 Biscayne, formerly known as New World Tower and 100 Biscayne Tower, is a thirty-story skyscraper in the Central Business District of Greater Downtown Miami, Florida, United States. 100 Biscayne also owns an adjacent 12-story mechanical parki ...

in the

Central Business District A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the " cit ...

in Miami. At the time, the building, which cost $6 million to construct, stood as the tallest in Florida. Its construction represented part of a broader effort to revitalize Miami.

Legacy

In 1990, U.S. Representative

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (; born Ileana Carmen Ros y Adato, July 15, 1952) is a politician and lobbyist from Miami, Florida, who represented from 1989 to 2019. By the end of her tenure, she was the most senior U.S. Representative from Florida. She ...

from

Florida's 27th congressional district Florida's 27th congressional district is an electoral district for the U.S. Congress and was first created in South Florida during 2012, effective January 2013, as a result of the 2010 Census. The first candidates ran in the 2012 House electi ...

honored the legacy and impact of Ferré during remarks on the floor of the

U.S. House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together the ...

. The tribute recognized Ferré's vision and industrial pursuits.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ferre, Jose 1902 births 1990 deaths 20th-century Puerto Rican businesspeople 20th-century American businesspeople Burials at Cementerio Católico San Vicente de Paul Boston University School of Management alumni University of Miami Business School alumni Morristown-Beard School alumni