William Greenberg Jr., a baker who sweetened Manhattan, has died at the age of 97.

He used poker winnings to open a modest bakery in 1946 that grew into an artisanal dessert empire, tempting New Yorkers of all ages.

William Greenberg Jr., a baked goods impresario whose fanciful cakes, butter cookies, brownies, Linzer tarts, and sticky buns would exert a strong hold over generations of New Yorkers.

He was an affable redhead at 6 feet 4 inches tall who was raised in the Five Towns area of Long Island, opened his first bakery in Manhattan in 1946, in a narrow storefront on East 95th Street, near Second Avenue, with $3,000 — poker winnings from games he played in the Army. It turned out that Mr. Greenberg was as skilled with cards as he was with a piping gun.

His bakery was a small space with a big name: William Greenberg Jr. Desserts, Inc. By 1971, he had expanded the company to encompass four modest locations, mostly on the Upper East Side, and employ 16 bakers.

William Greenberg Jr. no longer manned the ovens by then; he was the maestro in charge of the cake decorating, working mainly from what became his flagship, at 86th Street and Madison Avenue. He liked an audience as he wielded his frosting gun and often drew a crowd, including children, who would watch after school hoping for free samples.

One regular customer, the famous violinist Itzhak Perlman, who was also a poker buddy of Mr. Greenberg’s, once ordered a cake fashioned in the shape of Ebbets Field, the storied home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, for his wife’s 40th birthday (not an easy creation, given the stadium’s elaborate Romanesque arches).

A Greenberg best seller for New Yorkers of all ages was the garage cake, sculpted to look like a garage outfitted with a fleet of chocolate cars. Yet his personal preference was for more impressionistic, abstract designs that evolved during a cake’s decoration as his muse beckoned.

When asked about his creations, William Greenberg Jr. simply said, “Cakes are second nature to me.”

From a great beginning to a peaceful end, William Greenberg Jr. is now forever “In Heaven with the Stars.”