American Folk Figure, Businessman. A highly successful millionaire real estate magnate. Established himself, in his early years, as purchasing, owning and building many fine buildings in New York City. As a young man, Edward graduated from Columbia University in New York City and toured Europe. he was an amazing artist and drew many cartoons and drawings as amusement for his friends and family. In the early 1900's went into the real estate business with his father. In the early years of his business, he had built 3 white marble buildings on the Upper West Side, that are preserved to this day, which sport his initials EWB and family crest in the corners. In 1915 Edward married Nelle Adele Lowen of New York City and they adopted 2 young girls. They had a palatial home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan which occupied the two top floors of an apartment building he owned with a roof garden and a pond with a row boat. Their home had 7 rooms of Chinese imported furnishings, a music room with an exotic bird aviary, a large dining room with an Italian fountain several imported bedroom furnishings and servants' quarters. It was pictured in many newspapers and magazines. Their marriage ended in divorce in Paris in 1924. Much of the furnishings of their home he sold off. Edward had sponsored a baseball team and a college fund for Native Americans. He enjoyed giving gifts out to young children at Christmas time. He later become known for his controversial attempt to adopt another young girl, Mary Loise Spas, who turned out to be an adult and the adoption was annulled. After which in 1926 he met and married a 15-year-old Frances Belle Heenan, with the consent of her parents, he was 52. This became the center of a hugely sensational scandal in the 1920s, especially the separation trial. The news media at the time dubbed her "Peaches" to his "Daddy" (a nicknamed he received early in life by requesting to adopt a young girl to be a companion to her daughter Dorothy). He had two chauffeured peacock blue Rolls-Royces with his family's coat of arms on the side. In 1934, he saw his daughter, Dorothy married in New York City. He died later that same year. After his death his multimillion-dollar real estate empire went through several years of court battles with claimants to his estate.