Over the years, Mr. Kravitz's projects totaled nearly 15 million square feet.
Best known as the developer of one of the largest shopping centers in the country, King of Prussia mall, which opened in 1962, Mr. Kravitz also had been heralded in development circles for bringing discount department stores into
malls. Many developers thought the concept wouldn't work.
"He did some of the very first shopping center development, not only in Pennsylvania but throughout the country," said Albert Sussman, a member and former executive vice president of the International Council of Shopping Centers.
"He had a vision far ahead of most people. He saw the opportunities that existed in the shopping center business right away and went with it."
Quiet and bespectacled, with an athlete's build and an easy smile, Mr. Kravitz had started out at University of Pennsylvania with ambitions of becoming a dentist.
A summer job selling real estate changed the course of his life.
Mr. Kravitz quit school and sold his books and dental instruments. Entering the real estate business in 1922, he started his own development company under the name of Morris A. Kravitz Inc. in the early 1930s.
He started small, working on leases for gas stations and supermarkets. But success followed his projects. Eventually he moved to 1616 Walnut St., in elegantly furnished offices with a marble-walled reception area.
In 1949, Mr. Kravitz undertook his first shopping center. The Manoa Shopping Center, on West Chester Pike in Havertown, Delaware County, became one of the area's first suburban-shopping-strip malls.
It was only a beginning. An assortment of other shopping centers came afterward, in the areas near Philadelphia, New Jersey, Baltimore and Harrisburg.
