Neil Petree; Business and Civic Leader

Neil Petree, a key planner of the California freeway system and the driving force behind the Los Angeles Convention Center, has died in a Palm Springs nursing home. He was 93.

Petree, former head of Barker Bros. Corp., died Thursday, his son-in-law, Richard Rifenbark, said.

Petree, a native of Missouri, grew up in San Jose and graduated from Stanford University. He served as president of the Los Angeles-based furniture company from 1938 to 1960 and as chairman of its executive committee from 1960 until his retirement in 1968.

Better known for his civic and cultural leadership in Southern California, Petree once confessed that as a young New York department store executive he felt a strong prejudice against Los Angeles. He said he had resisted efforts by Barker Bros. to lure him here to resurrect its sagging fortunes during the Depression.

Then he went to a Rose Bowl game.

“Before the game, we sat in shirt-sleeves at a picnic lunch,” he told The Times 20 years after he accepted the Barker Bros. presidency. “After the game, I telephoned my wife in Scarsdale (N.Y.). She said her car was stuck in 14 inches of snow . . . (and) we decided that Los Angeles might be a good place to live.”

In the late 1930s, as chairman of the Major Highway Development Committee--a job he claimed he did not have time for--Petree spent five years helping plan the California freeway system. He extended those efforts as president of the Automobile Club of Southern California.

Petree also chaired a Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce committee that was created to locate, finance and build the Convention Center. He served three terms as the center’s president. One of its major halls is named in his honor.

“It seemed ridiculous that we didn’t have a convention center. . . . Even Anaheim had one, and Las Vegas,” said Petree when he accepted an award for creating the often-stalled project at a luncheon in 1971.

Equally interested in cultural efforts, Petree was president of the Hollywood Bowl Assn. Although he claimed he was “dragooned” into chairing an emergency fund-raising committee, he was largely credited with preserving the popular outdoor concert amphitheater during a difficult financial period in the early 1950s.

Petree also served as a director, president and chairman of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Assn. and as a director of the Music Center Performing Arts Council.

Petree was president of the California State Chamber of Commerce, the Los Angeles Central City Assn., Los Angeles United Crusade and the Stanford University Alumni Assn.

Among his many awards were the Distinguished Citizen Award from the Los Angeles City Council in 1967 and a Los Angeles Town Hall Award in 1968.

His early business career included merchandising positions at Weinstock-Lubin Co. in Sacramento and at Hale Bros. in San Francisco. He was vice president at Lord & Taylor and president of James McCreery & Co., both in New York. He also served as president of W & J Sloane Inc., after it was acquired by Barker Bros.

Studying to become a lawyer like his father, Petree moved into business as a Stanford undergraduate in 1916, when he set up shop in his Delta Tau Delta fraternity house, selling ginger ale, cigarettes and candy bars on credit. At the same time, he worked as an Associated Press correspondent and had a laundry and cleaning agency, netting a total of $360 a month.

Petree interrupted his education during World War I, first driving an ambulance, later flying for the French for five cents a day, and finally switching to the U.S. Air Corps as a pursuit pilot.

Petree is survived by his daughter, Gina Rifenbark, four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.