Arthur Rubloff was one of a kind.
A dandy by way of Duluth. A visionary real estate developer who helped change the face of Chicago but who would have removed a lot of its character if allowed his way. A collector of art and political favors. Gruff in person but the easiest of touches, handing out crisp dollar bills to kids on the street and checks for millions to hospitals, museums and universities.
In headlines he was “Arthur the Magnificent” and “Colossus of real estate development.” In person, he was a lanky figure in English suits, bowler hat and cane; his bespectacled, owlish face was instantly recognizable, whether to shoppers at his Evergreen Park mall or passersby on the avenue he coined “the Magnificent Mile.”
Yet 21 years after Rubloff’s death, at age 83 on May 24, 1986, memories of the man resonate faintly. Younger Chicagoans may know no more of him than that his name appears on ads for real estate firms he founded and is inscribed on buildings and halls around the city.
“Old-timers like myself remember him,” said Paul Green, the Arthur Rubloff professor of policy studies at Roosevelt University. “The young kids, the gentrifying, latte-drinking, cell phone-using ones, don’t have any idea who Rubloff was.”
Even Green’s contemporaries may not realize how much Rubloff has done for Chicago since his death. The Arthur Rubloff Residuary Trust, established by Rubloff’s will, distributed $100.4 million between 1988 and last December to 23 charities, all handpicked by the tycoon and most serving this area.
But the trust is almost out of assets and is winding down. Those overseeing it — who themselves are getting up in age — worry that Rubloff will be forgotten once the checks stop.
“If you put a gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you how I met him. But for 50 years, I took care of him,” said Dr. Edward Newman, 86, Rubloff’s doctor, close friend and a trustee of his trust since its inception. “He was a man of strong determination. Things were either all black or all white. There was no gray.”
Newman, fellow trustee Vince Gavin, 65, and trust lawyers Harry Rosenberg, 78, and Austin Hirsch, 58, recently gathered at a downtown club to share Rubloff stories. They even prepared a dossier of testimonials from trust beneficiaries attesting to all the good Rubloff’s largess achieved, particularly here.
“Arthur used to say, ‘I made my money in Chicago; I’ll leave it here,'” said Newman.
With little notice, the trust has doled out funds to support, among other things, the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s first “Ring” cycle, a pool for a kids camp in Algonquin, a “green” residence hall for St. Xavier University students, and that Green-held professorship and student financial aid at Roosevelt. It also has helped advance the higher education of survivors of police officers, firefighters and paramedics killed in the line of duty.
“Arthur was a wonderful character,” said Ralph Scheu, president of The Hundred Club of Cook County, a non-profit that assists such survivors and on whose board Rubloff long sat. “Since he had no formal education of his own, he was interested that our kids would have the opportunity to get as good an education as if their fathers or mothers were still alive.”
Scheu and other friends of Rubloff’s remember well the legend of Chicago’s King Arthur. It was a rags-to-riches tale of a son of Russian-Jewish immigrants who fled Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range as an adolescent, eked out a living at odd jobs, and by age 28 established Arthur Rubloff & Co., in Chicago.
He went on to participate in major projects in this city and others. Though he collaborated with others and customarily took minority financial positions in deals, he habitually took the majority of the credit.
“So, what can I tell ya? I’m a creative developer,” Rubloff told Chicago magazine in 1981. “I did North Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile. Nobody helped me. I built Sandburg Village. Saved the Near North Side, that’s what I did. Everybody was against it. You don’t think anyone would have ever come up with the North Loop redevelopment project if I hadn’t started it or planned it? Not in a hundred years!”
(His North Loop plan, which made preservationists weep because it called for razing landmark structures, foundered after his good friend Mayor Richard J. Daley died in 1976.)
Nobody could dispute Rubloff’s generosity.
He was lauded late in life for multimillion-dollar gifts to Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago.
But he was a stalwart for many charities, United Cerebral Palsy Association of Greater Chicago among them. Starting in the1950s, Rubloff would co-host with Chicago Sun-Times columnist Irv Kupcinet an annual local telethon for United Cerebral Palsy.
“What wasn’t raised on that night, Arthur would go into his pocket for,” Gavin recalled. “I remember sitting with him in his car with Kup, and he said, ‘We are not going to be $300,000 short. I’ll make it up. Don’t worry about it. We’ll always reach our goal.'”
In the 1970s, Gavin was a police sergeant heading the security detail for the first Mayor Daley. With Hizzoner’s blessing, he would drive Rubloff on Saturdays to Evergreen Plaza in Evergreen Park. The mall was a favorite project of Rubloff’s. Opened in 1952, it was one of the nation’s first regional shopping centers.
While there, Rubloff would pass out dollar bills to youngsters and buy gifts for friends.
“I would question him sometimes, ‘Why are you giving these people money?’ But it made him feel good. He had so little when he grew up,” said Gavin, who later managed Evergreen and is now an official with Navy Pier.
“Arthur had a quirk in his system,” Newman said. “He could never receive. He had to give, constantly had to give.”
For his will, Rubloff retained Harry Rosenberg.
“I’ll never forget the day he called me up. He said, ‘Harry’ — I had never met the man — ‘I just fired my lawyer. You’ve been recommended. When can we get together?'” recalled Rosenberg, a partner here at Reed Smith Sachnoff & Weaver.
Rubloff left an estate valued at $101 million. His will provided for his second wife (his first wife, to whom he was married 40 years, died in 1974, and he had no children of his own) and some others. The bulk of the estate, valued at $63.25 million, went into the trust. The main assets: minority interests in three real estate ventures.
“Frequently, when you do a charitable trust, you create a foundation, and you give the trustees or directors of the foundation discretion how to distribute the money,” Rosenberg said. “Arthur did not want that.”
Rubloff chose 23 diverse charities as beneficiaries and assigned them from 2 percent to 20 percent shares in future trust distributions.
As money came into the trust, it was apportioned to the 23. The principal instruction was that the funds be used “for purposes that otherwise the organization might not have accomplished.”
The trust’s main assets were minority stakes in Evergreen Plaza and in two Manhattan apartment buildings. The assumption was that the interests would be sold and the trust terminated in 10 years. Instead, it took 20 years.
Austin Hirsch, a Reed Smith partner who handles the trust’s business affairs, said delays were caused by disputes with partners, litigation, New York rent-control laws and conversions to co-op and condos.
He said the final properties were sold in 2006, and the trust was officially terminated that May. Less than $1 million is being held back should claims arise against the trust. The cash left is to be distributed in 2009.
The shares in the $100.4 million distributed to date have, among other things, helped the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago resettle Jews from the former Soviet Union; the Field Museum build and endow an exhibition on evolution; and the American Heart Association educate minority communities about the risks of stroke.
United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Chicago put up buildings in Tinley Park, Villa Park and Highland Park that serve people with disabilities.
Paul Dulle has led that charity since 1993. From what he has heard about Rubloff, Dulle believes the man would have loved how the charity leveraged his money by getting others to donate land for the buildings.
“I didn’t know Arthur,” said Dulle. “I wish I had.”
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cstorch@tribune.com
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Where the money went
Arthur Rubloff’s will established a charitable trust for the benefit of 23 charities. Rubloff himself assigned percentage interests in the trust to each charity; those shares determined how much each would receive from trust distributions. By last year, the 23 had shared in $100.4 million in distributions.
Beneficiary (percentage share in trust)
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago (20.0)
United Cerebral Palsy Association of Greater Chicago (7.8)
Field Museum (5.6)
American Heart Association (5.0)
Lyric Opera of Chicago (5.0)
Metropolitan Family Services (5.0)
National Conference for Community & Justice (5.0)
Roosevelt University (5.0)
Brandeis University (3.0)
Temple Sholom of Chicago (3.0)
American Cancer Society (2.8)
St. Xavier University (2.8)
The Hundred Club of Cook County (2.8)
Anti-Defamation League Foundation (2.8)
American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science (2.8)
American Society for Technion — Israel Institute of Technology (2.8)
Chicago Loop Synagogue (2.8)
Corning Museum of Glass (2.8)
Museum of Science and Industry (2.8)
Chicago Community Trust (2.8)
Civic Federation (2.8)
Jewish Theological Seminary (2.8)
Loyola University Chicago (2.0)
Source: Arthur Rubloff Residuary Trust
