The "Old Money" Dynasty Who Built Orange County: The Irvines скачать в хорошем качестве

The "Old Money" Dynasty Who Built Orange County: The Irvines

Beneath the coastal gloss of modern Orange County lies the Irvine family, a clan whose discipline, land strategy, and reserved influence built the backbone of this region long before reality shows tried to claim it. -------------------------------- Gain FREE access to secret full-length episodes on wealthy families "too scandalous for YouTube" by joining our newsletter: https://www.substack.com/@oldmoneyluxury -------------------------------- TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Introduction 1:01 Chapter 1: A Ranch That Ruled The County 4:02 Chapter 2: From County Down To California Gold 7:55 Chapter 3: An Heir On Horseback And A City On Paper 12:20 Chapter 4: The Heiress Who Fought And Gave 15:20 Chapter 5: The Billionaire Who Finished The Blueprint -------------------------------- When you picture Orange County—or "the O.C.," if you grew up on early-2000s television—you imagine sunburnt beaches, immaculate shopping plazas, and a level of suburban polish that feels engineered in a lab. Their development playbook shaped the actual ground underfoot in the city that carries their name and helped lift Orange County into one of America's most envied enclaves. Before Orange County became shorthand for luxury SUVs and master-planned calm, it existed as a patchwork of ranchos, the largest of which belonged to the Irvine family. The Irvine Ranch spread across roughly one hundred ten thousand acres, running about twenty-three miles from the Pacific Ocean inland toward the Santa Ana River—nearly one-third of the land that would later be carved into cities, suburbs, and freeways. In nineteen fifty-nine, when the University of California began scouting sites for a new campus, it chose a coastal rise on the Irvine Ranch, anchoring the area's future in higher education as well as real estate. Today the Irvine Company controls well over a hundred million square feet of offices, apartments, shopping centers, hotels, and marinas, with Donald Bren's fortune of roughly nineteen billion dollars as of twenty twenty-five making him the richest real estate developer in the United States. James Irvine was born in eighteen twenty-seven in County Down, in what is now Northern Ireland, leaving for the United States in the mid-eighteen forties and landing in New York with minimal resources. By the late eighteen forties he joined the human tide moving toward California and the Gold Rush, but instead of digging for gold, Irvine became a merchant, supplying miners with food, tools, and equipment for steady income. In eighteen sixty-six, his group acquired Rancho Lomas de Santiago, and the turning point came in September eighteen seventy-six when he bought out his partners for one hundred fifty thousand dollars and took sole control of roughly one hundred ten thousand acres. James Harvey Irvine II was born in San Francisco in eighteen sixty-seven, and in eighteen ninety-four he incorporated the family holdings as the Irvine Company, shifting the estate from a pure family trust into a corporate structure with more flexibility. Los Angeles architect William Pereira began drafting concepts in the late nineteen fifties that combined a university campus with a surrounding city, with each village having its own housing styles, schools, places of worship, and shopping centers. By the twenty twenties, the City of Irvine had grown past three hundred thousand residents, and in twenty twenty-five, real estate research firm Zonda named Irvine the best planned community in the nation. Joan Irvine Smith, born July first, nineteen thirty-three, grew up as the only daughter in the direct line from James Harvey Irvine II, becoming a crucial supporter of the decision to locate the University of California, Irvine on ranch land. In nineteen seventy-seven, Donald Bren joined an investor group that bought the Irvine Company for approximately three hundred thirty-seven million dollars, and by nineteen eighty-three he controlled around eighty-six percent of the stock. Under Bren's leadership, the company's portfolio now spans more than one hundred twenty million square feet of real estate, with roughly fifty-seven thousand five hundred acres—around sixty percent of the historic Irvine Ranch—remaining protected as open space and parkland.