"He taught me everything I know," Ed Weiss, C&W vice chairman, tells GlobeSt.com. The pair worked together for nearly three decades. "He was a tough negotiator and very perceptive in business and nuances." Weiss, a top broker in his own right, largely attributes his success to Dowling. "He was a brilliant broker who understood that clients come first." A statement from Cushman called Dowling, "a real estate visionary who helped shape the skylines of America's cities."

During his tenure with Cushman, Dowling, who was the firm's top producing broker 16 times in 20 years, worked with such Fortune 500 companies as General Electric, GTE, IBM, MCI, and Texaco. Even after his retirement, Dowling continued business dealings with C&W as founder and president of Dowling & Co.

A 1959 graduate of Tufts University, Dowling served as director of its Development Corp., a subsidiary company formed to develop real estate in Boston's financial district at South Station. He contributed his knowledge of the real estate world to help secure a development partner for the project and in 1997 he was elected to the Tufts University Board of Trustees.