The head of one of the oldest and richest real estate clans in New York, Bill Rudin is the chief executive of Rudin Management.

The Rudin real estate dynasty first took shape in 1898 when Bill Rudin's great grandfather, a Polish Jewish immigrant named Louis Rudinsky, bought an apartment building at 153 East 54th Street, a property that remains in the Rudin portfolio to this day. The next generation of Rudins, which included Bill's grandfather Sam, incorporated the family's real estate assets into Rudin Management in 1924, and started to slowly acquire apartments in the Bronx and, later, office buildings in Midtown. But the Rudins' holdings really ballooned under the stewardship of Bill's father, Lewis Rudin, a major behind-the-scenes political player who famously helped bail the city out of the fiscal crisis during the '70s. Lew both increased the firm's presence in midtown and gave it a footprint in the financial district. Bill, himself, joined Rudin Management shortly after graduating from NYU in 1979, and was appointed president in 1993. Today, the company has millions of square feet of space under its control. The Rudins have developed a few big-ticket buildings since Bill took over the firm, most notably the Reuters Building at 3 Times Square, and they've converted several others, such as 55 Broad Street, which is now tailored toward tech companies. But they generally acquire property sparingly, opting instead to milk revenue out of the properties they've owned for decades.

Although he lacks the political influence that his father once commanded, Bill has tried to carry on Lew's tradition of civic-mindedness. He's the chairman of the Association for a Better New York, a federation of business leaders, labor officials, and politicians that his father founded in 1973. (The group's logo is an apple and Rudin frequently fastens apple pins to the lapels of people he meets.) In the aftermath of Sept 11th, Rudin suggested to his friend Jane Rosenthall that downtown movie premieres would be a good way to revive lower Manhattan, an idea that gave rise to the Tribeca Film Festival. [Image via Getty]