Quiet Giants

In real estate, as in baseball or show business, most participants strive not only to be first in the standings but to let the world know about it. A pair of entrepreneurs named Alexander Di-Lorenzo, 48, and Sol Goldman, 47, are quite different. So quietly that almost nobody knew what was happening, they have become the biggest buyers of real estate in the nation's richest real estate market, New York City. Estimated gross value of their holdings: at least $200 million.

Last week, with $1,250,000 cash and $7,250,000 in mortgages, the pair bought Fifth Avenue's Gotham Hotel from Gotham Realty Co. and its operating lease from hard-pressed William Zeckendorf. They already own the Chrysler Building, the second tallest in the U.S., as well as the Stanhope and Gramercy Park Hotels, the Columbia Pictures Building, and dozens of lesser office buildings, apartments and restaurants. Altogether, they hold title to 450 pieces of real estate, the most important of which are owned by their Wellington Associates.

"I'm a shy guy," explained DiLorenzo, who works behind a buzzer-opening locked door in a semicircular sanctum on the 64th floor of the Chrysler Building. He adds: "We like fast action-some days, if we're dealing with pros, five deals in one day. Knowing the product is what's important. Some people say I have an uncanny mind for next year's values."

The Brooklyn-born son of a mortgage broker, DiLorenzo made his first deal at 17. He borrowed $1,100 to buy a brownstone, which he sold for $3,000. In 1951 he teamed with Goldman, a boyhood pal who was running a wholesale grocery for his ailing father, to buy a 600-unit apartment. DiLorenzo considers it merely "human nature" that his rapid rise led the Government to scrutinize his activities a few years ago. "I had four FBI men following me for some time," he says with a smile. "But they dropped the investigations." Now DiLorenzo and Goldman own the building that houses the Manhattan office of the FBI.

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