Richard Ravitch, a politically savvy, civic-minded developer who helped rescue New York City from bankruptcy and its decaying subways from fiscal collapse, died on June 25 in Manhattan. He was 89.

“Mr. Ravitch never won elective office, but he left an outsize mark on government as one of the backstage wise men recruited to stave off the financial collapse of New York’s Urban Development Corporation in 1975 and, a few months later, of New York City’s overdrawn municipal accounts,” The New York Times said. By rallying public support for inventive means of raising revenue, he was also instrumental in rejuvenating the city’s mass transit system in the 1980s as chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

He retired from the transit agency in 1983, but not from public life. He led a group of investors who restored the ailing Bowery Savings Bank to profitability in two years; was the chairman of a New York City charter revision commission that strengthened ethics and public campaign financing rules, and remained active in Jewish philanthropies.

Mr. Ravitch, who had inherited a construction company, also left his mark on the cityscape with signature apartment projects like Waterside and Manhattan Plaza.