George Delacorte; Founder of Dell Book Publishing

George T. Delacorte, the outspoken founder of Dell Publishing Co. and a philanthropist whose gifts became Central Park landmarks, has died at his 5th Avenue apartment. He was 97.

Delacorte, who kept another residence in North Palm Beach, Fla., died in his sleep Saturday, his son, Albert, said.

Delacorte grew up in New York and raised a family of six children. He developed a special attachment to Central Park and, even in his 90s, liked to walk the Manhattan park where ironically he and his second wife were mugged in 1985. He was knocked to the ground and his wife was stabbed in the hand by robbers who ran off with a mink coat and $200.

His gifts to the park include the bronze Alice in Wonderland statue he donated to the city in 1959, a fixture at the north end of the Conservatory Pond. He intended it as a memorial to his deceased first wife, who liked to read the Lewis Carroll book to their children.

Other park gifts are the Delacorte Theater, now home to the summer Shakespeare in the Park festival, and the animated Delacorte Clock at the Children’s Zoo.

“I like whimsical things,” he once said of the clock, which Delacorte recruited a sculptor from Italy to fashion.

But his philanthropy was not limited to Central Park. Delacorte also built the majestic fountains at City Hall and Columbus Circle, along with the geyser at the tip of Roosevelt Island. The 400-foot geyser provoked outrage as well as admiration.

Its giant jet threw polluted water from the East River into the air, forcing him to chlorinate it. But the chlorine harmed nearby trees that residents had planted to improve their view, producing further complaints.

Delacorte said he liked to see something for his money, and refused to serve on boards of museums, schools or hospitals.

“I hate hospitals,” he once said. Asked once whether he had thought about helping the poor with the $350,000 he spent to build the Roosevelt Island fountain, he said: “People are poor because they’re dumb or because they’re lazy. If you feed them you just keep them in the same strata.”

He founded Dell Publishing in 1921 at age 28. He began by publishing such pulp magazines as “Cupid’s Diary,” “Inside Detective” and the satirical, highly successful magazine, “Ballyhoo.” The magazine was wrapped in a new invention called cellophane and carried the admonition: “Read a fresh magazine.” It sold 4 million copies.

He later added comic books, including many based on such cartoon characters as Mickey Mouse, Woody Woodpecker, Pluto and Bugs Bunny. He sold more than 30 million every month.

After World War II, Dell became a major publisher of paperback books. In 1963, he formed Delacorte Press, which published hard-cover editions of books by Kurt Vonnegut, Danielle Steele, Irwin Shaw, James Clavell and others. Their books were then printed in paperback by Dell.

Delacorte, a 1913 graduate of Columbia University, also presented several large gifts to his alma mater over the years. He gave more than $4 million to establish the Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism, a training ground for budding magazine writers, editors and publishers.

He retired from Dell in 1976, when the company was sold to Doubleday & Co. He was named to the Publishers Hall of Fame the same year.