A Story in Development:
The First 100 Years of the
S. L. Nusbaum Realty Company
At the turn of the 20th century, America was on the verge of tremendous innovation and business advances – ranging from the Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903 to Henry Ford’s Model A. Real estate development was no exception. In 1906, Sidney Leon Nusbaum started the S. L. Nusbaum Realty Company in Norfolk, Virginia. Four generations later the business is still thriving, most recently, under the leadership of the late Alan B. Nusbaum, the founder’s great grandson, who followed in the footsteps of his father, Virginius Harding Nusbaum Jr., and his grandfather, Virginius Harding Nusbaum. Due to its strong reputation, the S. L. Nusbaum Realty Company has been able to expand its business throughout Virginia, and into North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Maryland. We are licensed in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.
“We have been blessed with great partners as well as loyal, devoted associates and employees,” says Alan Nusbaum, the fourth generation of Nusbaums to chair this venerable company. “it is my sincere hope that today, the S. L. Nusbaum Realty Company still embodies the same values of integrity and service upon which first was founded. We have always operated on a simple yet powerful premise: When our clients succeed, we succeed.
Sidney L. Nusbaum, the company’s founder and namesake, was a man of vision, enthusiasm, and tremendous energy. In fact, it is safe to say that no single individual had seen, or believed in so strongly, the enormous potential that the City of Norfolk and the region we call Hampton Roads held for this nation and for the world. It was this potential, buttressed by his own faith, that saw him sell his stake in a very successful downtown bookstore to start his company. Little did Sidney know that when he stopped selling history books, he began to author one of his own.
Indeed, history will remember Sidney Nusbaum as a man of vision and perseverance who, along with his son, Virginius Harding “Bee” Nusbaum, was able to lure outside investment into the Greater Norfolk region like no one had done before. They saw something about the region’s potential that many of their contemporaries could only question – but that outside investors would buy. It was a vision that would bring riches to themselves and riches to the entire region, on they would pass from generation to generation, and one that continues to this day. So what did they know? What did they see?
The answer lies in the capacity of determined, visionary people to transform communities. And to make history.
Get your copy of A Story in Development: The First 100 Years of the S. L. Nusbaum Realty Company, by Amy Waters Yarsinske, today at Barnes & Noble
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