Joan Kaplan Davidson, Philanthropist Who Championed New York, Dies at 96

Joan Kaplan Davidson, a preservationist and philanthropist who set tasks in movement that upgraded the standard of life in New York City, died on Friday in Hudson, N.Y. She was 96.

Her son John Matthew Davidson confirmed the demise, in a hospital. He didn’t specify a trigger, saying merely that “her heart gave out.”

Ms. Davidson served as chairwoman of the New York State Council on the Arts within the Seventies and as New York State parks commissioner within the Nineteen Nineties. But she made her most lasting mark from 1977 to 1993 as president of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, a basis established by her father, Jacob M. Kaplan, in 1945.

The fund has a modest endowment in contrast with big foundations like Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller. But it has typically been the primary cease for these looking for grants to save lots of buildings, help cultural establishments or restore landmarks in New York.

Under Mr. Kaplan, the muse offered the cash to save lots of Carnegie Hall within the Sixties when nobody else appeared . It additionally created Westbeth, the artists’ housing complicated in Lower Manhattan that grew to become the mannequin for the rehabilitation of commercial buildings all over the place. Under Ms. Davidson, the muse laid the groundwork, and offered a lot of the cash, for the Gracie Mansion Conservancy, fashioned to renovate and protect the mayor’s residence.

Ms. Davidson, who may typically be seen picketing to save lots of an endangered landmark constructing, centered the fund on points associated to the town’s structure, design and high quality of life. She additionally established applications to help the humanities, civil liberties and human rights, in addition to the conservation of pure sources and rural preservation in upstate New York.

“I always thought we were different because we did not just write checks, we stepped in and got involved,” she informed The New York Times in 1997 when the fund celebrated its fiftieth 12 months of offering grants.

Throughout her tenure, she most popular making comparatively small grants, some as little as $1,000 however usually within the tens of 1000’s. “We didn’t give huge amounts of money,” she stated. “To us the point was to use money strategically, to get causes off the ground.”

Joan Kaplan was born on May 26, 1927, in New York City to Jacob and Alice (Manheim) Kaplan. Her father, a rabbi’s son, dropped out of faculty within the eighth grade, made a fortune in South America within the molasses enterprise and later purchased out the house owners of Welch’s Grape Juice. An iconoclastic businessman, he bought Welch’s to a cooperative of his workers in 1956 and centered his consideration on his basis.

Mr. Kaplan, who grew to become desirous about saving Carnegie Hall after the violinist Isaac Stern appealed to him personally, most popular a direct, hands-on method to philanthropy and tended to shun five-year plans and prolonged bureaucratic opinions. Ms. Davidson felt the identical means.

Indeed, she credited her political and philanthropic pursuits, in addition to her working model, to her dad and mom. She adopted her mom’s pursuits in artwork and structure and her father’s involvement in civil rights to the purpose that she was as soon as described by New York Woman journal as “the fiercest funder of the city’s progressive-liberal causes.”

She was raised in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., and acquired a Bachelor of Arts diploma from Cornell University in 1948 and, a 12 months later, a postgraduate diploma in training from Bank Street College of Education in Manhattan. After educating college and writing promoting copy for Macy’s, she moved to Washington, the place in 1953 she married C. Girard Davidson, who had been an assistant secretary of the inside within the Truman administration. They had 4 kids and divorced in 1967.

That identical 12 months the Kaplan Fund joined with the National Endowment for the Arts to start out Westbeth Artists Housing, one of many first tasks supposed particularly to supply houses for artists, within the outdated Bell Laboratories constructing on the nook of West and Bethune Streets in Greenwich Village. Ms. Davidson managed the creation of Westbeth for her father and was its first president.

Opened in 1970, Westbeth was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009 and designated a New York City landmark in 2011.

When Mr. Kaplan retired in 1977, he turned the administration of the muse over to his daughter, who a 12 months earlier had ended her temporary tenure as chairwoman of the New York State Council on the Arts. Mr. Kaplan died in 1987.

Like her father, Ms. Davidson stored an open thoughts when true believers got here to name. When Barry Benepe, an city planner, approached her in 1976 along with his concept for greenmarkets within the metropolis, she instantly supported the idea, seeing it as a means to supply each contemporary produce for metropolis shoppers and monetary underpinning for farmers who may in any other case have been pressured to promote out to builders. Mr. Benepe later estimated that the greenmarkets had saved some 20,000 agricultural acres.

Under Ms. Davidson, the Kaplan Fund additionally offered some $100,000 to publish the 38-page “Juror’s Guide to Lower Manhattan.” The information, itemizing the most effective strolling excursions within the neighborhoods close to the borough’s courthouses, was equipped with out price to jurors in its county courts. “We felt there should be a little bit of a reward for being a juror,” Ms. Davidson defined.

Ms. Davidson gave up the presidency of the Kaplan Fund when Gov. Mario M. Cuomo appointed her New York State commissioner of parks, recreation and historic preservation in 1993. The fund was taken over progressively by her kids and three of their cousins, however she remained lively as president emeritus.

In addition to her son John, Ms. Davidson is survived by three different kids, G. Bradford Davidson, Alice Elizabeth Pickering and Peter W. Davidson; 12 grandchildren; and 5 great-grandchildren. She lived in Germantown, N.Y.

A e-book about Ms Davidson and the Kaplan Fund, “It’s a Helluva Town: Joan K. Davidson, the J.M. Kaplan Fund, and the Fight for a Better New York,” by Roberta Brandes Gratz, was printed in 2020.

Ms. Davidson’s tenure as parks commissioner proved short-lived; it ended when George E. Pataki, a Republican, changed Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, as governor. But she remained concerned in conservation efforts, significantly within the Hudson Valley, the place she had a manor home on the banks of the river constructed by a descendant of Robert Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

To the tip, Ms. Davidson expressed satisfaction in positioning the Kaplan Fund on the heart of New York life whereas different foundations based mostly within the metropolis tended to focus most of their grant making elsewhere.

“The great foundations have the whole world,” she stated in 1997. “We have always just wanted to strike a blow for small, decisive things in a world of mega.”

Ashley Shannon Wu contributed reporting.