Jerome Lyle Rappaport

Jerome Lyle Rappaport
Born	(1927-08-17)August 17, 1927 New York City
Residence	Boston, Massachusetts
Nationality	United States
Alma mater	Harvard University
Spouse(s)	Phyllis Rappaport

Jerome Lyle Rappaport^[1] (born August 17, 1927) is a lawyer, developer, political leader, and landlord. who is best known today for his philanthropy in Boston, Massachusetts, and as the general partner of one of the most controversial developments of the urban renewal era, the West End Project from which he created a 48-acre (19 ha) urban neighborhood known as Charles River Park.^[2][3]

New York and Harvard Roots

Rappaport addressing the Harvard Law Forum in 1946.

Born and raised in the Bronx and Manhattan's Upper West Side, being the son of a clothier of Romanian extraction.^[4] Rappaport entered Harvard University at 16 years old and received his Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws at 21 in 1949. He earned a Masters of Public Administration from the Littauer School (today the Harvard Kennedy School) in 1963.^[5]

As a student Rappaport founded the Harvard Law School Forum, which was originally dedicated to the memory of Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. and 102 other Harvard Law School graduates and former students on leave who had died in World War II. The Forum's Friday evening radio broadcasts on WHDH in 1946 garnered positive press and inspired the participation of Harvard's then President, Law school Dean, faculty members and student peers.^[6]

Early Success in Politics

Congressman John F. Kennedy and Congressman Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. of New York pose with Rappaport during a Democratic Party fundraiser at the home of Boston newspaper publisher Harry Harwich in 1952.

In the early 1950s Rappaport quickly emerged as one of Boston's most well-known political leaders.^[7] The peak occurred when Rappaport succeeded Congressman John F. Kennedy in receiving the Massachusetts Jaycees "Distinguished Service" award as Massachusetts' most Outstanding Young Leader for 1952. Kennedy's award was one of many stepping stones on the road to his becoming a United States Senator. Rappaport's acceptance speech in January 1953 was mostly geared towards inspiring wealthier and more seasoned local businessmen to invest everything they could in Boston's then-languishing economic development program, and "to give more time, energy, and thought to community affairs."^[8]

Prior to that his efforts helped John Hynes beat James Michael Curley in the watershed city elections of 1949.^[9] The following year Rappaport started to become a centerpiece of Boston's political reform movement when he created the New Boston Committee (NBC). Rappaport received national attention while Curley's popularity spiraled downward. The NBC reached its highest point when ten of the fifteen elected officials who served the city from 1952 to 1954 had been endorsed by the NBC. After Curley's unsuccessful attempt to dismiss the NBC, as a reincarnation of the so-called "Goo-goos" that he had rallied working-class Bostonians against for years, Curley said that he quit the 1951 mayor's race because it was "imperative that...all the candidates endorsed by the New Boston Committee be defeated."^[10] Six years later, Rappaport was one of the so-called "enemies" Boston's Rascal King aimed to bury through disparaging remarks published in Curley's autobiography, "I'd Do It All Again."^[11]

During this period Rappaport also worked in the John Hynes Administration, established a private law office, and taught a political science class at Boston University.^[12] He earned public praise for creating the short-lived Greater Boston Area Council (GBAC), which indirectly led to the creation of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and Greater Boston's first public television station, WGBH-TV Channel 2.^[13]

Urban Renewal builder

Less than two years after the NBC and GBAC disbanded during the summer of 1954, Rappaport, Seon Pierre Bonan (a Connecticut and New York City-based developer) and Theodore Shoolman (a Boston Realtor whose late father had built The Wang Theatre) began a forty-year business partnership by acquiring the rights to redevelop Boston's West End neighborhood, as part of the national urban renewal program launched by the Housing Act of 1949. After a sixteen-year construction phase the West End Project was ultimately completed. It launched a long era of luxury housing construction in Boston that slowed decades of decentralization. Throughout the 1960s Charles River Park symbolized the critical early successes of the "New Boston" - "proof that higher income families could still be attracted back to the city." ^[14]

Mixed legacy

Rappaport has been commended publicly and received lifetime achievement awards from the American Jewish Committee and Greater Boston Real estate Board for being an accomplished real estate pioneer and industry leader, a generous philanthropist, and one of the principal architects of the New Boston. He received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Suffolk University in 1998, for "his career of outstanding accomplishments and public service and for his role in reshaping the city's West End neighborhood."^[15]

His reputation has also been negatively impacted by a chorus of scholarly and non-scholarly opinions about urban renewal and, in particular, his signature development which resulted from the City of Boston's decision to gentrify a working-class neighborhood. The most widely known book on the subject is "The Urban Villagers," Herbert J. Gans critical analysis of the old area's clearance as an alleged "slum" and the West Enders' displacement from their neighborhood. The West End-Charles River Park experience has been covered thousands of times in books, magazine articles, newspaper columns, and undergraduate and postgraduate papers.

Today, urban planning students are asked to consider if the positive value of the Charles River Park development—consisting of 2,300 units of skyscraper housing, 500,000 square feet (46,000 m²) of retail and office space, 3,400 parking spaces, and an affordable housing building for senior citizens—is outweighed by the destruction of the old West End, and the negative experiences of many whom the City evicted prior to this seminal political, economic and urban planning event.^[16]

Philanthropy

Jerry and Phyllis Rappaport attending an October 2009 event hosted by the Rappaport Center and the Ford Hall Forum.

In 1997 Rappaport and his wife established the Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Charitable Foundation.^[17] It has since donated more than $30 million to efforts focusing on public policy, health, and the arts.^[18] The bulk of the money has gone to the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard Kennedy School, and the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy at Boston College Law School.^[19]

References