Julian Harris Ruslander, a Pittsburgh native and longtime corporate attorney who presided over the creation of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper and helped develop the United Jewish Federation's foundation, died Wednesday at his Naples, Fla., home of a stroke. He was 89.

Mr. Ruslander, second in a three-generation run of family attorneys, was a managing partner in one of the city's largest law firms, Berkman Ruslander Pohl Lieber & Engel. The firm is now known as Klett Rooney Lieber and Schorling.

His father, S. Leo Ruslander, a well-known Pittsburgh trial attorney during the first half of the 20th century, started the firm in 1920. After his son graduated from Pitt law school and returned from U.S. Navy duty during World War II, the firm was known as Ruslander & Ruslander.

Over the years, such legal luminaries as Jerome Bernard Lieber, Allen Berkman, Robert Engel and Frank J. Pohl joined the firm, which at its peak in the 1980s had about 70 lawyers.

But its lucrative municipal bond practice suffered a major blow in 1988 when a former partner pleaded guilty to a single felony count for failing to notify authorities of criminal activity. The next year, in a marketing effort to distance the firm from the incident, the names of Berkman and Mr. Ruslander, who had retired, were dropped from the name. Mr. Ruslander, however, remained a senior counsel to the firm for several years.

Mr. Ruslander's behind-the-scenes work was critical to the development of the United Jewish Federation's foundation and the Jewish Chronicle, two of Pittsburgh's Jewish community's essential organizations today.

He was an early chairman of the foundation's endowment committee in the late 1960s during a time when there was little community interest in making legacy or planned gifts to it. By about 1974, Mr. Ruslander helped the endowment quadruple to nearly $5 million. Today, the endowment is more than $100 million.

"I think it was some of those seeds that Julian planted that helped us achieve some of the endowment success we've had recently," said Harvey Sloan, chief operating officer and senior vice president of the federation.

In 1962, Mr. Ruslander guided the federation's purchase of the city's struggling Jewish newspapers -- the Jewish Criterion and the American Jewish Outlook -- and the subsequent formation of an independent nonprofit corporation that became known as the Jewish Chronicle.

Mr. Ruslander was known as a reserved man, one whose youth was tempered by the deaths of a brother and a sister, and whose first marriage ended with the death of his wife from cancer at age 34. His second wife also died, and a son, John, died in 1999.

In 1989 he married Peggy Hughes and until the couple moved to Florida five years ago he continued indulging three of his loves: golf, poker and travel. By 2000, however, he was unable to play golf, even though the couple lived on a golf course. Mr. Ruslander had to content himself with watching approach shots to the fifth green.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, S. Lee II, of Parkesburg, Chester County; a daughter, Peggy Ruslander-Deery, of Scottsdale, Ariz.; a stepdaughter, Lee Ann Freeman, of Naples, Fla.; eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Visitation is tomorrow from noon to 1 p.m. at Rodef Shalom Congregation, 4905 Fifth Ave., with services following. Burial will be at West View Cemetery.

Contributions can be made to Pittsburgh Vision Services, 300 S. Craig St., Pittsburgh 15213.