Mr. Schwartz was a city councilman for 20 years. His eight years as Council president were marked by an ironfisted rule. He set the course of virtually every piece of legislation, dominated the Democratic caucus, and controlled most of the political patronage.
Mr. Schwartz's career began to unravel in a suite of the Barclay Hotel in January 1980, when he met with two men who said they represented an Arab "sheikh" purportedly interested in building a hotel in Philadelphia.
At that meeting, filmed and tape-recorded by the FBI, Mr. Schwartz agreed to use his influence to expedite the project and in return was paid $30,000.
"We got five or six members [of City Council]," Mr. Schwartz boasted to the FBI agents posing as the sheikh's representatives. "You tell me your birthday. I'll give them to you for your birthday."
Mr. Schwartz - one of more than a half-dozen local officials caught in the FBI Abscam sting - was convicted of conspiracy and extortion. The term Abscam came from the first two letters the FBI's fictitious company and the word scam.
After a long legal battle, he began serving a one-year, one-day federal prison sentence in 1985.
"I make no excuses for his conduct," former Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said yesterday. She worked for Mr. Schwartz in the early 1970s, when he was Council president.
Noting all he had done for the city, she added: "It would be a pity if the only thing he would be remembered for is Abscam."
Mr. Schwartz, whose career began with a stint in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in the 1950s, cut a distinguished figure with tailored suits and neatly styled, graying hair in his later years that earned him the nickname "the Silver Fox."
