The death of Preston Robert Tisch will be the occasion this week for thousands of quiet conversations of appreciation of a man who had an extraordinary impact on the city in which he lived. Born in Brooklyn and a graduate of Erasmus Hall, Bob Tisch, as he was almost universally known, was one of the great businessmen of New York, building, in partnership with his brother Laurence, Loews Corporation. His success landed him a comfortable spot part-way up the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, but if the list ranked the captains of finance and industry by personality rather than net worth, Bob Tisch would no doubt be the most cheerful and modest – and, to use just the right word, most hospitable.

We gained a glimpse of this over the years at his famed “Power Breakfast” at the Regency in Manhattan. Tisch had created thousands of hotel rooms in New York and other cities and was a major owner, and chairman, of the Giants football team. Yet on almost every morning, he could be seen in the dining room of the hotel that was his base of operations, walking among the customers, stopping to converse about the latest deals, the personalities of the city, an event in the news, or family. He created the “Power Breakfast” during the fiscal crisis in the city in the 1970s, as those who would craft a rescue often met at the hotel at the start of the day. But the phrase “Power Breakfast” never quite captured the warmth and democracy of the morning hours in the Regency dining room.

Here one could spy Abraham Foxman, say, at one table, and the Rev. Al Sharpton at another. Union leaders and captains of finance, a former vice president or a cur rent prime minister, dined side by side. An editor of our acquaintance once ended a feud with a senator by encountering him accidentally in Tisch’s breakfast room. At one table might be the schools chancellor earnestly telling a philanthropist about an experiment to improve public education in the city. At the next might be a traveling salesman getting set for the big call of the day, while at the next Henry Kissinger might be expounding on the future of China. At another table might be, as there often was, a newspaper editor nursing his dream for reviving The New York Sun.

As Bob Tisch presided over all this, he sometimes seemed to us like the editor of an op-ed page, though he was certainly more than that. No doubt the ability to run a tight ship while remaining slightly above the fray contributed to his success in business; so did his practical, pragmatic nature and the ability to bring a sense of reality and optimism to every encounter. He was one of the few highly effective men who transcended partisanship. He served both President Reagan and Mayor Dinkins, the former as postmaster general of the United States, the latter as New York’s ambassador to Washington, a title Tisch adored.

Bob Tisch treated people, whether they were rich or poor, up or down, the same, and everybody knew it. He gave generously to charities, particularly Take Back the Field, which reclaimed so many sports facilities for schools in New York. Bob Tisch, like his brother, had a long marriage that produced a family that, even before he fell ill, had begun shouldering his responsibilities, so that even when he is missed in the years to come, the spirit of his institutions and enterprise will live.