John J. Emery, Jr.

John Josiah Emery Jr. (January 28, 1898 — September 24, 1976) was an American real estate developer including of the Carew Tower (1931) in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the time the tallest building west of the Alleghenies, and the Netherland Plaza Hotel, opened at the same time. He was a major figure in the city's cultural life for more than four decades. Early life Jack Emery was born in New York City on January 28, 1898. He was the son of John Josiah Emery Sr. (1835–1908), a real-estate millionaire, and Lela (née Alexander) Emery (1867–1953), daughter of General Charles T. Alexander, of Washington. Among his siblings was Audrey Emery, who married the impecunious Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia; Lela Emery, who married first Capt. Alastair Mackintosh (second husband of Constance Talmadge) and secondly Hély, the Marquis de Talleyrand; and Alexandra, who married Benjamin Moore and Robert Gordon McKay. His paternal grandfather was Thomas Emery, who was born in Bedford, England and settled in Cincinnati in 1832. His maternal grandparents were General Charles Tripler Alexander and Julia (née Barrett) Alexander of St. Paul, Minnesota and Bar Harbor, Maine. He was raised on the East Coast and in Europe, after his mother married, as her second husband, the Hon. Alfred Anson, a British stockbroker living in New York City, in 1912. Anson was the seventh son of Thomas Anson, 2nd Earl of Lichfield and Lady Harriett Georgiana Hamilton (the eldest daughter of James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Abercorn). As a child and young man, his family moved each year between their houses in New York City (5 East 68th Street), Bar Harbor, Maine (The Turrets, now owned by The College of the Atlantic), Palm Beach (where his mother owned several houses) and Paris and Biarritz, France (where his mother owned a large house, later converted into a school). Emery prepared at Groton for Harvard, where his education was interrupted by World War I when he served as an ensign in Naval Aviation. After he returned from War, he received his BA degree, cum laude, in 1920. He spent one year at Harvard Law School and then went to Trinity College, Oxford, where received a diploma in Economics in 1922.