Albert Reichmann, the billionaire patriarch of a real estate dynasty that built the World Financial Center, became the largest private owner of commercial property in New York City. He also began the transformation of London’s derelict Docklands into the Canary Wharf cluster of skyscrapers. He died on Dec. 17 in Toronto, the family’s hometown, at age 93.

Mr. Reichmann and his brothers, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sons of a rabbi, fled Vienna in 1938 as the Nazis were poised to plunge Europe into war. Albert’s mother had helped concentration camp inmates and refugees during WWII, and he followed in her philanthropic footsteps by supporting Jewish schools and religious institutions, primarily in Israel, Hungary, and the former Soviet Union.