[2][3][4] Kaufmann graduated from Shady Side Academy, a boarding school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

In 1926, Kaufmann commissioned American artist Boardman Robinson to create a series of nine murals for his flagship department store in Pittsburgh on the history of trade, completed with automobile paint.

[citation needed] The architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed his executive offices on the top floor, now installed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England.

[citation needed] Architect Benno Janssen designed several structures for Kaufmann including his Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania, residence (1924–25) known as La Tourelle.

[7] Designed by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935, it is a distinctive country house over the Bear Run waterfalls at the family's Laurel Highlands property southeast of Pittsburgh.

The majority of his and his wife's estate was left to the Edgar J. Kaufmann Charitable Fund, which concentrates efforts on improving the lives of Pittsburgh's residents.