James Rouse

James Wilson Rouse (April 26, 1914 – April 9, 1996) was an American businessman and founder of The Rouse Company. Rouse was a pioneering American real estate developer, urban planner, civic activist, and later, free enterprise-based philanthropist. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award, for his lifetime achievements. Early life and education James "Jim" Rouse was born in Easton, Maryland, to Lydia Agnes (née Robinson) and Willard Goldsmith Rouse, a canned-foods broker. His father, a lawyer trained at Johns Hopkins University, once ran for state's attorney for Harford County. When he lost, the Rouse family moved from Bel Air, Maryland, to Easton. Rouse grew up in Easton (then population: 5,000) on a well-to-do street on the edge of town. He was taught at home by his mother until second grade when he transferred to a public school. In 1930, Rouse lost his father to bladder cancer, his mother to heart failure, and his childhood home to bank foreclosure. His brother Bill paid for him to attend the private preparatory Tome School in Port Deposit, Maryland, for a year. Facing money problems and unable to continue at the Tome School, the Rouse family sought a way for him to attend college by appealing to his oldest sister, who had married a United States Navy officer stationed in Hawaii. Rouse declared himself his sister's dependent and, with Navy connections now secured, was thereby able to attend the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa at a greatly reduced cost. Rouse later attended the University of Virginia. He declared his major as political science and waited tables at a local boarding house. Because he was unable to cover the gap between his scholarship and his remaining expenses, he left Charlottesville and moved to Baltimore to try to make it on his own. Career He found a job parking cars at the St. Paul Garage for one year. He later remarked that he got the job even though he could not drive, and had convinced his foreman to teach him rather than fire him. In May 1935, Rouse wrote Millard Tydings, who found him a position with the Federal Housing Administration as a clerk specializing in completing FHA loans to eastern Maryland banks. Although he had only two years of undergraduate college on his transcript, in the 1930s that was enough to qualify for law school.