Maryland Renames Law School After Donation

On Monday afternoon, the W. P. Carey Foundation plans to announce that it will give $30 million to the University of Maryland School of Law, which is in Baltimore. It will be renamed the Francis King Carey School of Law, after Mr. Carey’s grandfather, an 1880 graduate.

“It’s time to think about the future of Baltimore, a great city with a great history,” said Mr. Carey, the 80-year-old founder of W.P. Carey & Company, a corporate real estate financing firm. “The law school is now in the first tier. I’m looking forward to a joint J.D.-M.B.A. program, where it will be one big great happy family, giving people the best education imaginable, in Baltimore.”

He envisions a program linking the Carey School of Law with the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business — named for Mr. Carey’s great-great-great-grandfather after a $50 million gift from the Carey Foundation in 2006.

Baltimore institutions are not the only ones to bear the Carey name. There is also the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, so named after a $50 million gift from the Carey Foundation in 2002.

Mr. Carey’s relationship with Arizona State stems from the university’s decision decades ago to name a building after his grandfather John Armstrong.

“They didn’t ask the family for a dime, and I thought that was nice,” Mr. Carey said.

Later, the university also gave Mr. Carey an honorary degree.

“That was nice, too,” he said. “I accepted it, and we got acquainted.”

Then, impressed by the university, he made his gift to the business school.

Mr. Carey says his family has long believed in the importance of education. His grandmother Anne Galbraith Carey founded the Gilman School, the nation’s first country day school, in Baltimore in 1897. Recently, Mr. Carey contributed $10 million for the renovation of Carey Hall there, and he cut the ribbon when the work was completed in 2007.

Mr. Carey attended Princeton University (“I cut too many classes, too many chapels, and I resigned before someone could ask me to leave”) and the University of Pennsylvania (“My brother got me in”). He professed fondness for both institutions (“I do care about Princeton, and plan to do something for it as soon as I get around to it”).

Phoebe Haddon, dean of the University of Maryland’s law school, said Mr. Carey’s gift came as a “wonderful” recognition of its stature and strong interdisciplinary programs.

“We’ve spent much of the last six months talking about his vision and our vision for developing our law and business program,” she said. “We’re very interested in developing a program with the Carey School at Hopkins.”

Mr. Carey’s company owns more than 875 buildings in 15 countries, including part of The New York Times Building in Manhattan.

Mr. Carey said he planned to give the bulk of his fortune to his family foundation, for philanthropic purposes.

“I don’t believe in having my family be rich,” he said. “They don’t need a lot of fancy cars to drive around. My goal is to make the foundation a billion, and then after it’s a billion, I might be old enough to think about passing on.”