Charles Austin Needham

1844–1922 (age 78)

Businessman

Biography

Charles Austin Needham spent his life cultivating enterprise with a steady hand and deep regard for the people who kept commerce alive in New York City. As a businessman of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he worked to ensure that opportunities in trade and industry flowed fairly while fostering the prosperity of the communities he served.

He was widely admired for the quiet generosity he extended to civic institutions and charities, and his presence at Green-Wood Cemetery is a touching reminder of the trust he placed in institutions that honor the past while inspiring the future.