Who We Are:

Emil Muller

July 22, 1904 – November 25, 1989

 

Described by those who knew him best as rugged, determined, ambitious, visionary, pioneering, fiercely independent, and willing to take an unpopular stance if he felt it right, Emil exemplified the self-made man. The products of his work can be seen all around Rochester. Through the foundation that bears his name, the region will continue to benefit from his hard work and his generosity. 

 

One of five children in a rural farming family, Emil saw a better life for himself and took charge of his destiny. He left his home in Switzerland in 1926 at age 22. Against the advice of his father and with $100 from his aunt, he booked passage on a ship bound for New York on what was to be the first leg of an around-the-world adventure. Lacking funds to travel further, he took the train to visit a cousin in Rochester. 

 

Emil worked hard to achieve his dream of a better life. He found work as a peach picker at a Titus Avenue farm, a landscape gardener, and a Sibley’s cleaner, before beginning his construction career as an apprentice carpenter. He worked on mastering English. Though conversant in German, French, and Italian, Emil was quick to tell that when he first arrived his English was limited to four words: coffee, milk, and pineapple pie. 

 

Spending his days toiling as a carpenter and his nights at the Evening School of The Rochester Anthenaeum & Mechanics Institute (the forerunner of Rochester Institute of Technology), by 1932 Emil earned a diploma in Architectural Drafting. On January 30, 1933, after dedicated study, he became a US citizen. It was in that monumental year that he also started his own construction company. Building homes by day and continuing at the Evening School, he earned an Industrial Management diploma in 1935. In the early 1940s he expanded his business to include FHA low-income housing projects in Elmira and Niagara Falls, low-rent veterans housing at Fernwood Park in Rochester to address the severe housing shortage for returning World War II veterans and their families, and later, to the first apartment project in Penfield, Lost Mountain Manor.

 

He had a remarkable sense of the land. He sized up large parcels quickly and envisioned the perfect construction plan whether for single family homes, apartments, or commercial buildings. Foreseeing the increased demands for suburban shopping amenities, including plentiful parking, he built his first important shopping plaza at Twelve Corner’s in Brighton in 1942. Confident in this new model as the way of the future, he turned his focus almost exclusively to shopping center construction. His forward-thinking focus and pioneering approach made him one of the most successful shopping plaza builders and renowned plaza experts in the nation. Emil developed, built, owned, and managed over twenty plazas. About half were in the Rochester area where he constructed Westgate (Gates), Panorama (Penfield), Town and Country (Geneva), Irondequoit, and Northgate (Greece), which in 1953 was the first major suburban shopping center in Monroe County, with others in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

 

He had a remarkable love of the land. Not only did he work hard on the land, he played hard on it amassing thousands of acres, much in the Honeoye Valley, to support his passion for all things outdoors - horseback riding, hiking, canoeing, farming, and hunting. He felt that hunting was part of his life. He learned to shoot as a young boy and by the time he completed three-years conscription with the Swiss Army, was an expert marksman. He traveled the world on big game hunting expeditions, returning with trophies that adorned his home and office. His love of the outdoors nurtured his conservation interests and he made numerous gifts of land to different organizations, including The Nature Conservancy, so that others could enjoy the land as he did.

 

Emil's philanthropic interests extended to other important community institutions and charitable efforts in Rochester and in his Swiss hometown. He was instrumental in RIT’s acquisition of the land upon which the campus now sits. He served on Highland Hospital’s Board and contributed generously toward its cardiac unit. He served as a member of the Rochester Museum and Science Center Board, chaired the building committee for its Strasenburg Planetarium, and donated the Somaini Sculpture that stands in front of the building. His philanthropic efforts live on in the foundation that bears his name.