Robert H. Levi, business leader, philanthropist and a patriarch of Baltimore's downtown redevelopment, died Friday of heart failure at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
The former president of the Hecht Co. department stores and retired vice chairman of Mercantile-Safe Deposit and Trust Co. was 79.
His activities and interests, which included being a founder of the influential Greater Baltimore Committee, helped change not only the landscape of the city where he grew up, but left an impact on the visual and performing arts, as well.
Many of those offering tributes yesterday, as word of his death spread, commented not only on his institutional contributions, but on his helping many individuals, as well.
"Bob was a true visionary, whose concerns and commitment were dedicated to the vitality of the city of Baltimore and the state of Maryland," said Calman J. Zamoiski Jr., president of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. "There is nobody in this
community who will be missed more."
"The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was a major beneficiary of his attention and generosity," Mr. Zamoiski said, adding that the orchestra will dedicate a concert March 2 to Mr. Levi, a former director of the BSO.
The Baltimore Museum of Art also benefited from Mr. Levi's interest in the arts. He and his wife of 55 years, the former Ryda Hecht, assembled and donated a collection of contemporary sculpture for the Ryda and Robert H. Levi Sculpture Garden, which opened at the BMA in 1988.
"He did not believe in taking from the city. He said that we were very fortunate and should give back to the city," Mrs. Levi said.
H. Furlong Baldwin, chairman of Mercantile and a man who has known Mr. Levi for 40 years, said "he was always raising money. . . . He had an incredible sense of responsibility of putting something back in the pot. Many younger men in downtown Baltimore learned this from him."
Mr. Levi retired from Mercantile in 1985, but that didn't necessarily slow him down. "Retirement meant he came to work every day," Mr. Baldwin said.
Before starting what would be a second career at Mercantile, Mr. Levi worked 33 years for the Hecht Co., starting as a salesclerk in the basement of a Washington, D.C., store. During World War II, he served as a lieutenant, senior grade, in the Coast Guard.
In 1955, at 40, Mr. Levi became president of the Hecht Co., then Maryland's largest retail business. He also helped orchestrate the merger of Hecht's with the May Department Stores Co. in the 1950s.
During that time, Mr. Levi became involved in helping form the Greater Baltimore Committee, a business group that celebrated its 40th anniversary Jan. 12.
"He was at the heart of creating the Greater Baltimore Committee," said commercial real estate developer James W. Rouse, another of the six men involved in founding the GBC. "It took us two years."
The fledgling GBC set about arranging business support for such city projects as the Civic Center, which is now called the Baltimore Arena, as well as the Charles Center and Inner Harbor redevelopment areas, the Jones Falls Expressway and Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Mr. Levi was a past chairman of the GBC.
"I considered him a great business leader," said former governor and Baltimore mayor William Donald Schaefer, whose political career was on the ascendancy in the late 1950s and who would deal many times with the GBC. "He was well-, well-respected, a philanthropic individual."
But Mr. Levi knew about adversity, too.
"I was a Depression-affected child, something no one can understand who didn't live through it," Mr. Levi said in a 1974 Sun Magazine article. "My father and his brother ran a clothing manufacturing business, and the Depression hit it hard.
"I had to change from Friends school to City College. . . . By the time I was 16, I was working in a summer camp and making selling trips for the business all the way up to Maine."
At City College, Mr. Levi took accelerated courses and was captain of its champion lacrosse team for two years before he graduated in 1933. In 1960, his alma mater elected him to the City College Hall of Fame.
After high school, Mr. Levi went to the Johns Hopkins University on a scholarship, where he majored in economics and also played lacrosse. "It was his No. 1 sport. . . . All his life, you would see him at lacrosse games at Hopkins," said Senior U.S. District Judge Frank A. Kaufman, who knew Mr. Levi from the time when both were preschoolers.
Mr. Levi was a former vice chairman of the Hopkins board of directors and also was an emeritus trustee of Johns Hopkins Hospital.
In the 1950s, he was president and head of Sinai Hospital's building campaign and oversaw its move from Monument Street to its current location at Greenspring and Belvedere avenues, making it the only general hospital at the time in the northwest sector of Baltimore.
He also was a trustee and treasurer for Walters Art Gallery, a trustee at Goucher College, director of Associated Jewish Charities and director of the Federal City Council and the National Capital Downtown Committee in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Levi was involved in Washington's downtown renewal, Judge Kaufman said.
"He enjoyed a quiet leadership role without headlines," he said.
Mr. Rouse said, "Whether he got note or credit, didn't matter to him. He wasn't after attention."
But honors came, anyway, among them:
The Commander Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, Washington's Man of the Year Award in 1966, a silver medal of merit by the U.S. Treasury Department, the Heritage Award for TTC Exceptional Service by the Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association, membership in the Central Maryland Business Hall of Fame, an Entrepreneur of the Year Award and an honorary degree of doctor of humane letters from the Johns Hopkins University.
"He was a helpful friend to a great many people," said Walter Sondheim, 86, another of the GBC's founders and a man who also has long been active in efforts to revitalize downtown Baltimore.
Mr. Levi lived in Lutherville at the time of death, at the home he shared with his wife for the past 53 years.
Services were to be held at noon today at Temple Oheb Shalom, 7310 Park Heights Ave.
In addition to his wife, survivors include two sons, Alexander Hecht Levi of New York City and Richard Hecht Levi of Washington; a daughter, Sandra Levi Gerstung of Baltimore; a brother, Dr. J. Elliot Levi of Baltimore, and five grandchildren.
The family requests that memorial donations be made to the Robert H. Levi Scholarship Fund at the Johns Hopkins University.