Forest City Realty Trust
real estate management and development company
Forest City Realty Trust, Inc., formerly Forest City Enterprises, was an American real estate investment trust that invested in office buildings, shopping centers and apartments in the United States. The company was organized in Maryland with its headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio. As of December 31, 2017, the company owned 29 office buildings, 29 shopping centers, and 78 apartment complexes. In December 2018, the company was acquired by Brookfield Asset Management.
History
In 1920, Forest City was founded as a family-owned lumber and household hardware business by siblings Charles, Leonard, Max and Fannye Ratner, immigrants from Poland. Beginning in the 1930s, the company invested in residential garages, apartments, retail strip centers. During World War II, the company manufactured and prefabricated governmental housing.
In 1960, Forest City became a publicly traded company and rebranded itself as Forest City Enterprises.
In 1987, the company sold its retail lumber business to Handy Andy Home Improvement Center.
In 2011, the company sold a 49% stake in a retail portfolio in New York for $172.3 million.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Forest City Realty Trust” as real estate management and development company. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as real estate management and development company. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5468821. VIAF identifies the subject as 165263003. The Library of Congress control number is no2012018644. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2017, 2018, 1920 and 1960.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Forest City Realty Trust”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Forest City Realty Trust primary sources, Forest City Realty Trust archive and Forest research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Forest City Realty Trust” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.