Over the past quarter century Nathan Berman has developed a savant-like mastery of a peculiar trade in New York City property development: converting out-of-fashion office buildings into residential towers.
Berman, now 63, a child of Holocaust survivors, emigrated with his family from Ukraine when he was 14, and took a meandering path to real estate. He worked for years as an art dealer, specializing in the works of Russian émigrés, before dabbling in property in the 1990s.