His first project was a freestanding bridal shop in Detroit. In 1950, recognizing the growth of the middle class in post-war America, Alfred decided to start his own real estate business. Shopping mall pioneer Alfred Taubman (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage) He later returned to the university on the GI Bill, and studied art and architecture but never graduated from there, transferring to night school at Lawrence Tech to be closer to home and starting a job at an architecture firm. He graduated high school and went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor but World War II interrupted his education and he enlisted in the Army. He apparently started working at age 9 and got his start in retail at age 11 working at Sims department store after school. Taubman grew up in Detroit during the Depression. He was also a strong supporter of stem cell research. In all, Taubman had given away more than $250 million to charity, including millions to Detroit-area schools. The school's college of Architecture and Urban Planning bears his name, as does the research institute at the medical school. A University of Michigan dropout, he was the largest donor in the school’s history, having pledged $56 million to the University of Michigan in 2012 on top of $142 million he’d already given.
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