The last Rockefeller Republican?

Something is missing in our civic culture. Recent events make plain the loss of civility and the increasingly quaint notion of service before self. In December, we were deprived of a quintessential New Yorker, one whose career, values and vision embodied our imperiled vital center.

Bob Douglass was a prodigy who more than fulfilled his promise. In 1970, not yet 40, he was the second most powerful man in New York state government, a gubernatorial enabler with a taste for innovation and the status of a surrogate son. What Douglass learned in Albany under Nelson Rockefeller he applied across four decades at the nexus of government and business. As founding chairman of the Alliance for Downtown New York, and a former chairman of the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, he oversaw the continent’s largest self-taxing business improvement district. More recently, he was instrumental in the neighborhood’s post-9/11 renaissance.

With his Dartmouth degree and Arrow Collar Man looks, the bluest of blue chip lawyers, Douglass might have stepped out of a Louis Auchincloss novel. Neither a developer nor a dealmaker, he left it to others to build shimmering towers; his interest was in building a sense of community. That he cared about New Yorkers as much as New York was demonstrated in his organization’s annual compensation review. Armed with a list of every employee, their title and salary, Douglass expressed wonderment at how salaried workers could afford to live in the city. His solution was to go through the list as required – and then revisit those with the smallest paychecks.

The colleague to whom he broached this unconventional idea feigned surprise. “Aren’t you a Republican?” she asked him. Douglass’ face brightened, “But I’m a Rockefeller Republican.”

The political breed to which he alluded was in fact less ideological than temperamental. Infused with mid-century optimism, it was grounded in Rockefeller’s buoyant belief that problems were merely disguised opportunities. From 1965 to 1972, first as Rockefeller’s Albany counsel and, later, his secretary and chief deputy, Douglass was present at the creation of a vastly expanded state university, the original World Trade Center and Battery Park City. He promoted environmental initiatives to rescue the Hudson River and restore New York Harbor; drafted the Taylor Law to combat public employee strikes; and helped establish the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to streamline urban transit.

Later came the Urban Development Corporation, daringly empowered to override local opposition to low-income housing and its mostly black and brown constituency. On April 9, 1968, Rockefeller attended the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral in Atlanta, though not before securing assurances the state Legislature would enact the Urban Development Corporation before he returned. That afternoon it was Bob Douglass’ unpleasant task to inform his boss the Assembly had reneged on its promise. Late into the night Douglass pressured recalcitrant lawmakers to change their votes. Where moral suasion failed, other incentives – the loss of patronage jobs, the specter of a Rockefeller-backed primary challenge – were employed. Shortly before midnight, the Assembly reversed itself and passed the Urban Development Corporation 86-45.

In later years Douglass burnished his establishment credentials through stints at Chase Bank and the Rockefeller family law firm Milbank. But he never forgot the prolific creativity of Albany in the ’60s, and he never surrendered to the cynical view that because there were many things government did badly, there was nothing it could do well. With David Rockefeller’s blessing, Douglass explained to both sides how government and the private sector might collaborate to bring new luster to lower Manhattan. As the city’s traditional financial hub, it had operated five days a week, with scant regard for the amenities that contribute to around-the-clock vitality.

Douglass took the lead in reimagining a residential neighborhood as diverse in population as in its cultural enticements. In an award-winning 2009 study covering some 23 blocks between the rebuilt World Trade Center and Battery Park, Douglass and his Downtown Alliance brain trust challenged the status quo. What if a new structural deck were built over the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel plaza, they asked, and what if a vertical park and “green” bus depot occupied the new ground? What if pedestrian access was simplified, even as restored streets reconnected neighborhoods and new residential buildings flanked a commons-like Greenwich South?

When he died, at a time when urban optimism is in short supply, few news accounts failed to mention Douglass’ well-earned nickname of Mr. Downtown. But he was more than that. A true expediter of possibility, Bob Douglass showed us how cities can be made livable, and city dwellers encouraged to live as usefully as Douglass himself. His passing reminds us of what his life demonstrated – that “what if?” is a far better governing philosophy than “what’s in it for me?”

Richard Norton Smith is an American historian and author. His most recent book is “On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson Rockefeller.”