James H. Binger, 88; Head of Honeywell, Broadway Theaters

James H. Binger, chairman of Jujamcyn Theatres, one of Broadway’s leading theater chains, and former chief executive of New Jersey’s Honeywell Inc., has died, his family foundation said. He was 88.

Binger, of Minneapolis, died Wednesday night, said Rip Rapson, president of the McKnight Foundation. Rapson didn’t know the cause of death, but said Binger had been in declining health in recent months.

Binger held top executive positions at aerospace and high-tech manufacturer Honeywell, based in Morristown, N.J., from 1961 to 1978, including chairman and chief executive.

His wife, Virginia McKnight Binger, was the daughter of William L. McKnight, a founder of another industrial giant, 3M. She died in 2002.

The Bingers owned five Broadway playhouses -- the St. James, the Al Hirschfeld, the Virginia, the Eugene O’Neill and the Walter Kerr -- and he was on the board of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

The couple founded Jujamcyn Theatres in the 1970s, coining the name from the first letters of the names of their children, Judith, James and Cynthia. The Virginia Theatre is named for Virginia McKnight Binger.

Binger essentially got Jujamcyn as a gift from his father-in-law. The group consisted of two New York playhouses and the Colonial Theatre in Boston. McKnight was having trouble selling it so Binger volunteered to take it and paid the gift tax.

He sold the Boston theater but kept the two New York venues and bought three more to create the third-largest company on Broadway behind the Shubert Organization and the Nederlander Organization.

“My initial purpose really was to take a headache off his shoulders, and see if I could get the theaters to a point where they could be sold for a reasonable sum,” Binger said in a 1987 interview with Associated Press, “but in the meantime, I found it was a fascinating business and money could be made at it.”

He said one of the big differences between running Honeywell and Jujamcyn was that theatrical decisions, such as closing a play, could be made much more quickly than major corporate moves.

Binger also served from 1974 to 1996 on the board of the McKnight Foundation, which his in-laws established in 1953 and which his wife led from 1974 to 1987. It’s the largest philanthropic foundation based in Minnesota.

Binger is survived by son James Binger, daughter Cynthia Binger Boynton, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.