Born in
Detroit,
Michigan, Stevens was educated at
The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in
Wallingford, Connecticut. He was about to enter
Harvard University but his father's financial difficulties ended his plan. He attended the
University of Michigan for a year before dropping out. He then worked on a Ford assembly line and at a gas station during the
Depression. In 1934, he joined a Detroit real estate firm. By 1937, before he was 30, his real estate work had made him a small fortune of about $50,000. He led a syndicate (along with
Ben Tobin and Alfred R. Glancy Jr.) that bought the
Empire State Building in 1951 for $51 million, then a titanic sum; he more than doubled his investment when he sold his interest in the building three years later. In 1953, together with Alfred R. Glancy Jr.,
Ben Tobin, and H. Adams Ashforth, he founded
Unico Properties to develop a 10-acre
University of Washington site in central
Seattle. In politics, he made a mark as chairman of the Democratic Party's finance committee in 1956. He produced more than 100 plays and musicals over his career, including
West Side Story,
Bus Stop, and
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In 1971, he received
Special Tony Award for his body of work. He became known for introducing plays by such adventurous writers as Harold Pinter, Arthur Kopit and Tom Stoppard. Stevens was the General Administrator of the
Actors Studio as well as one of the producers of the Playwrights Company, a member of the board of the American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA), and one of the members of a Broadway producing company he founded in 1953 with Robert Whitehead, and Robert Dowling. In 1961, he was asked by President
John F. Kennedy to help establish a
National Cultural Center, and became Chairman of Board of Trustees of what was eventually named the
Kennedy Center from 1961 to 1988. In 1965, he received an appointment from President
Lyndon Johnson as first Chairman of the National Council on the Arts later named the
National Endowment for the Arts. In 1986, Stevens was inducted into the
American Theater Hall of Fame. On January 13, 1988, Stevens was presented with the
Presidential Medal of Freedom by President
Ronald Reagan. In 1988, he was also awarded the
National Medal of Arts. ==Personal life==