Sheldon Solow, a Manhattan real estate developer who built a commercial and residential empire over a half-century, died Nov. 17 in Manhattan. He was 92.

The son of a Brooklyn bricklayer, Mr. Solow built scores of high-end rental structures, including his signature Solow Building at 9 West 57th Street, a 50-story office tower whose front-and-back glass facades are steep concave slopes. Since the early 1970s, it has been one of the city’s most distinctive edifices.

Mr. Solow, who was self-taught in fine art appreciation, according to the New York Times, amassed one of the city’s notable private collections of Renaissance and modern art, with works by van Gogh, Joan Miró, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Balthus, Picasso, Matisse, Botticelli. Giacometti, Morris Louis and Mark Rothko, as well as Egyptian antiquities and African art.