Francis Kellogg, who died Thursday at 89, was a businessman and fixture of New York society who served as an ambassador responsible for refugees in the Nixon and Ford administrations.

His most visible impact on the city came in 1954, when he oversaw the shuttering of the main New York branch of Wanamaker’s, the venerable Philadelphia-based department store that had a landmark, two-block presence on Broadway between Eighth and 10th streets. Kellogg continued to operate a smaller satellite Wanamaker’s oriented toward meeting traders’ needs in the financial district that was said to be among the most profitable stores of its type in the country. It too closed, in 1983.

Kellogg went on to run various retail operations, as well as corporations with international interests in minerals and petroleum. In 1970, he joined the Nixon administration, first as a delegate to various international conferences, and then as a special assistant to the secretary of state for refugee and migration affairs. Among the first challenges he faced was coordinating American and U.N. aid to refugees from a civil war in east Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Kellogg handled the American response to a group of Cuban refugees temporarily housed in Spain who were seeking permanent asylum in America; he also managed the transshipment of Russian Jews through Austria en route to Israel, more than 70,000 individuals in all.

Kellogg grew up in New York City and Bar Harbor, Maine; his father was general manager of the Electric Storage Battery Company of Philadelphia, and the family had philanthropic interests in the Metropolitan Museum and the New York Botanical Garden. Kellogg prepped at Choate and Phillips Exeter, and was a member of the Princeton class of 1940.

Enlisting in the Army, he served with the Field Artillery Transportation Corps, and at the end of the war briefly was a member of the Office of Strategic Services. A short biography issued by his office states, “For a number of years, simultaneously with his other activities, Kellogg was on special assignment with the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Kellogg came to Wanamaker’s through his 1942 marriage to Fernanda Wanamaker Munn, great-granddaughter of the department store’s founder. In 1946, Kellogg joined the Wanamaker board, and then became vice president of the New York operation. After the main New York store was shuttered in 1954, Kellogg became CEO of the national department store. He eventually divested the company’s department store holdings and went into minerals, petroleum, and port operations, renaming the company International Mining Corporation. He left this and other business directorships in 1970 to join the Nixon administration.

Starting in the early 1960s, Kellogg expanded his involvement in philanthropic organizations, and served as vice president of the International Rescue Committee. He was also one of the founders of the World Wildlife Fund, and served as the organization’s president from 1973-78.

He was an avid raiser of miniature Dexter cattle and exotic fowl at his Bedford, N.Y., farm, but unlike some WWF members, his wife had more interest in hunting than he did. A 1961 profile of Mrs. Francis Kellogg in the New York Times found her freshly back from an African safari on which she “bagged 30 trophies, including a lion, leopard, kudu and buffalo.” Kellogg went in for sailing, and raced in the Long Island Sound, as well as in seven Newport Bermuda Races, the Round Gotland Race in the Baltic, and others.

Kellogg and his wife were divorced in 1971, and he subsequently was remarried to Mercedes Tavacoli, a Persian beauty with ties to the Iranian royal family. That marriage ended rather spectacularly in 1986, when Tavacoli abruptly left Kellogg for the Texas oil billionaire Sid Bass.

Kellogg’s final government post was as chief of protocol for the U.S. mission to the United Nations in 1976, a position that allowed him to meet 90 heads of state.

After leaving government service, Kellogg served as a director of the Charles A. Lindbergh Fund, and oversaw the issuance of several commemorative coins on behalf of the UNICEF International Year of the Child. He became interested in Thai silk and carvings, and founded the Thai Support Foundation to help create an export market for such goods. Whenever Queen Sirikit of Thailand came to America, Kellogg would serve as her chief of protocol.

Francis Leonard Kellogg

Born January 3, 1917, in New York City; died April 6 at his Park Avenue apartment; survived by his daughter, Fernanda Kellogg Henckels, who is president of the Tiffany Foundation, and his son, Christopher Gage Kellogg of Palm Beach, Fla., a retailer, and three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.