Kislak, Jay I., 1922-2018

Jay I. Kislak, businessman, philanthropist, aviator and history enthusiast, was born on June 6, 1922, in Hoboken, New Jersey. He earned his first real estate license while still a high school student at Newark Academy and later earned an economics degree from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. Having served as a naval aviator, after the Second World War Kislak returned to New Jersey to join the real estate business his father, Julius Kislak, had founded in 1906. In 1970, the family moved the business to Miami and continued its work in multifamily and commercial real estate, asset management, and finance.

After relocating to Florida, Jay Kislak developed a passion for history and archaeology and began a more than fifty-year record of collecting and philanthropy focused on the earliest history of the Americas. During his lifetime he amassed a collection of more than four thousand rare books, manuscripts, maps, paintings and archaeological objects all related to either the Pre-Columbian Americas or to the earliest history of Europeans in the New World. The collection ranged widely, from Olmec period ceramics dating from 1000 BCE, to manuscripts from the age of exploration, and on to the founding of the United States.

Kislak over the course of his lifetime held leadership roles in many important historical organizations, including the U.S. Department of State Cultural Property Advisory Committee, the boards of trustees of the National Park Foundation, the Eisenhower Fellowships program, the Florida Historical Society, and the Historical Association of Southern Florida.

Juan Carlos I, the King of Spain from 1975 to 2014, granted Jay Kislak the prestigious Encomienda of the Order of Merit Civil for his contributions to the study of early Spanish history.

In 2004, Jay I. Kislak donated more than 3,000 individual pieces from his collection, including his reference collection, to the Library of Congress. He later founded the Kislak Center for Special Collections at the University of Pennsylvania, the Kislak Center at Miami Dade College, and the Kislak Center at the University of Miami, all dedicated to the study of rare books, manuscripts, and maps related to the history of the Americas. He died on October 3, 2018, in Miami.