Category Archives: Fiorello La Guardia

FDR’s Tammany Society

02 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Federal Hall National Memorial, Fiorello La Guardia, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Robert Moses

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Franklin Roosevelt wrote this letter to the Tammany Society on July 2, 1936. It was read aloud two days later at the Tammany wigwam on 17th Street and 4th Avenue during the Tammany Society’s annual Independence Day celebration.

I came across this letter in my prep for a small talk I hope give on the 4th of July at Federal Hall about the history of Independence Day in New York City. It’s a missive from President Roosevelt to the Tammany Society in the lead-up to Tammany’s annual 4th of July event. When we think of Tammany we immediately think of Boss Tweed. In reality, Tweed was a very small part of Tammany’s long story. The Tammany Society dated back to the 1780s; it was a response to the Society of the Cincinnati, a Revolutionary War organization for officers who fought in the conflict. The organization continued for decades after Tweed’s death and would be at the height of its power in the 1920s and 1930s. Roosevelt himself had taken on, or tried to take on, Tammany in the early 1910s when he was a young state assemblyman, but soon realized the futility and so made his peace with the organization. Governor Roosevelt was there–as was Al Smith, Jimmy Walker, Herbert Lehman and others–when Tammany opened its new wigwam across from Union Square on July 4, 1929.

Now president, Roosevelt did not attend Tammany’s 1936 July 4th event. Instead he attended an Independence Day ceremony at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. It’s a story for another time but it’s funny how the reputations of the Founding Fathers rise and fall in relation to one another, especially Jefferson and Hamilton, who was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati. Right now Hamilton is upland Jefferson is down. In the mid-1930s however the opposite was true. Before he was all done Roosevelt would put Jefferson on the nickel and dedicate the memorial to the philosopher, secretary of state, and third president on the National Mall. Tammany men were more inclined toward Jefferson as well. Jefferson and John Adams both died on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Ironically the Age of Roosevelt accelerated Tammany’s decline.The Society’s influence waned when New Deal federal dollars began pouring in shortly after Roosevelt took office. Men like Fiorello La Guardia and Robert Moses found they could sidestep Tammany and get their funds directly from Roosevelt.

(source/150th Anniversary Celebration, 1786, July 4, 1936)

FDR opens the 1939 World’s Fair

30 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Federal Hall National Memorial, Fiorello La Guardia, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George Washington, Robert Moses

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World’s Fair 1939 first day cover

Yesterday in class we spoke about the opening of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, which opened on April 29, 1939. Robert Moses, Fiorello La Guardia and their associates made certain that the bridge opened in time for the World’s Fair, which began the following day. One of the first to cross the span from the Bronx into Queens was Franklin Roosevelt, who left Hyde Park early that morning eighty years ago today and crossed the Whitestone in his motorcade on the way to speak to 40,000 gathered in Flushing Meadows. The 1939 New York Fair opened when it did to commemorate George Washington’s first inaugural. In a good reminder that the Early American period is not that long ago, and that the ideals for which it stands are still quite fragile, when Roosevelt spoke of his presidential predecessor it was only the sesquicentennial of Washington’s presidency. We are still a work in progress.

Why should I go on when Roosevelt himself put it so well himself? In part he told the gathered eighty years ago today:

“Fortunately, there have been preserved for us many generations later, accounts of his taking of the oath of office on April thirtieth on the balcony of the old Federal Hall. In a scene of republican simplicity and surrounded by the great men of the time, most of whom had served with him in the cause of independence through the Revolution, the oath was administered to him by the Chancellor of the State of New York, Robert R. Livingston. And so we, in New York, have a very personal connection with that thirtieth of April, one hundred and fifty years ago.”

This postcard of the George Washington statue at the 1939 World’s Fair represents the first president as he was taking the oath of office 150 years previously in Manhattan.

 

The Marshall Plan turns 71

03 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Dean Acheson, Fiorello La Guardia, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George C. Marshall, Harry S. Truman, Servicemen's Readjustment Act (GI Bill), WW2

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President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of State George C. Marshall shake hands as the chief executive sees Marshall off on the secretary’s way to the London Conference of Foreign Ministers on 20 November 1947. Marshall had given his Harvard commencement speech advocating aid for Europe five months previously and Truman would sign the bill creating the Marshall Plan five months later.

President Harry S. Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act on this date in 1948. Better known as the Marshall Plan after the Secretary of State who helped bring it to fruition, the initiative was one of the great successes of the Cold War. In April 1948 Europe was entering its fourth spring of peace, such as peace was; if you were living in Italy, Greece, Eastern Europe, or many other locales at the time you might have seen things differently. The most immediate crisis after V-E Day was relocating displaced persons and feeding the starving. Much of the latter task fell to Fiorello H. La Guardia, the former mayor of New York City who took the job of Director General of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in spring 1946 and worked his characteristically indefatigable schedule for nine brutal months until resigning in poor health and passing on in September 1947.

Great as the work of La Guardia and his staff of almost 25,000 workers was, it was apparent that their endeavors were insufficient on their own and that a longer term strategy was necessary. On 5 June 1947, now two full years after the war’s end, Secretary of State George Marshall gave the Harvard University commencement address in which he laid out the case for an assistance plan to aid Europe. He called for a policy not to aid any particular country per se but a policy “against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos” more generally. The Soviets themselves could have participated had they wished. Events moved quickly after that, with bipartisan support coming from both houses of Congress. The bill passed 69-17 in the Senate and 329-74 in the House. All that was left was for Truman to sign the measure into law on 3 April 1948.

People often take initiatives such as the Marshall Plan for granted, in large part because they were conceived so well and executed so efficiently that we take their benefits for granted. Men like Truman, Marshall, Dean Acheson, and the late Franklin Roosevelt understood the mistakes of the First World War. They had seen the Bonus Army in Washington and the rise of Hitler and fascism in Europe. That is why they created such measures as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (GI Bill) and Economic Recovery Act (Marshall Plan). We would do well to remember just how difficult it is to execute good policy. It is extraordinarily difficult to solve problems well, and all too easy to undo good diplomacy through arrogance, carelessness, and ignorance.

(image/National Archives and Records Administration)

 

A little Sunday reading

17 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by in 23rd (106th) New York State National Guard Regiment, Fiorello La Guardia, Memory, Monuments and Statuary, New York City, Robert Moses

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The New York City Mayor’s Committee on Permanent War Memorial’s official rendering for the unrealized enduring monument.

Here is a little something to read over the remainder of one’s weekend: my piece at Roads to the Great War about the temporary Victory Arch built in Madison Square in the winter of 1919. This is the article I was alluding to last week when I posted the pictures of the return of the 27th Division. I have always found it interesting the way civic leaders built such ornate edifices knowing they would be used hard for a few short months or years and then torn down. Almost all of the facilities built for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago for instance, were temporary assemblies built not of marble or granite but timber and plaster of Paris. The White City in all its majesty appeared poised to stand for centuries when in reality its wood and plaster would not have withstood more than one or two Chicago winters. At least we have the stories and photographs to remember them by.

Enjoy your Sunday.

(image/New York State Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections)

 

La Guardia & FDR, October 1936

16 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by in Fiorello La Guardia, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Herbert H. Lehman, New Deal, Robert Moses

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Fiorello La Guardia and Franklin Roosevelt break ground on the “tube” connecting Manhattan and Queens one month prior to the 1936 national election. Members of Local 184 made Roosevelt an honorary member during the ceremony. After this long day, Roosevelt traveled north of the city to his home in Hyde Park. New Deal funds totaling $58,000,000 in 1930s dollars went into building the tunnel, which opened one month ahead of schedule in October 1940. Roosevelt was the first to drive across.

I wish the image quality were higher but there is surprisingly little documentation of this historical moment. Here we see Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and President Roosevelt at the groundbreaking for what we now call the Queens–Midtown Tunnel. The photograph is from the 3 October 1936 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the day after the groundbreaking. I was not aware until I began co-teaching this course in January of the size and scope of the infrastructure projects built in New York City under the New Deal. Of course I was aware of such efforts as refurbishing Civil War battlefields, tidying parks, planting trees, building small-scale restrooms and picnic areas along byways. But large scale infrastructure is something on a whole other magnitude.

Municipal leaders outside Gotham believed the fix was in between Roosevelt and La Guardia. That is understandable given that Roosevelt had previously been the governor of New York and that he and Eleanor still owned a house on East 65th Street. The reality though was that New York City and State entered the New Deal process earlier than most locales because men like Herbert Lehman, Robert Moses, and Fiorello La Guardia were ready from the outset with plans. As the 1930s went on other municipalities caught up in real dollars.

This image we see here, grainy as it is, was taken about one month prior to the 1936 national campaign in which Roosevelt ran for re-election against Al Landon. La Guardia was a Progressive Republican supporting Roosevelt. Both men understood the power of publicity and the photo op. Roosevelt’s radio address was broadcast nationally. More than 100,000 people, many of them schoolchildren, turned out on 2 October 1936 to see Roosevelt speak, Mayor La Guardia, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, and Senator Robert F. Wagner also sharing the stage. (Earlier the same day this photo was taken La Guardia and Roosevelt together attended Game 2 of the Yankees-Giants World Series at the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan, a game the Yankees won 18-4.) While many did not realize it at the time–though given his political instincts Roosevelt almost certainly did–the 1936 presidential election sealed the coalition of conservative white Southern Democrats, blue collar trade unionists, rural populists, African-Americans, and ethnic voters that largely held together until the tumult of the 1960s.

Snow day

04 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by in Fiorello La Guardia, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Robert Moses

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What is one to do when arriving at work and finding it closed for a snow day? Go to Panera Bread and get a little reading and work done.

This was me at 8:45 this morning after I got to work and discovered that my college was closed for the day.

When I arrived I pulled on the door to find it locked; then, I went around the corner to another entrance where the special officer told me of the snow day and closing. At first I was irritated with myself while retracing my steps down the street. So I went to Panera Bread, where I had a coffee and did some class work for 75 minutes before going to Trader Joe’s and stocking up on some things. The book here is Mason B. Williams’s City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York. As the title suggests the book examines the relationship between the American president and New York City mayor during the Great Depression and Second World War. I am about 1/3 of the way through and it is becoming one of those books that takes me in a different direction.

Co-teaching this course with its focus on Robert Moses over the Spring term has been a revelation; there are so many threads to pursue and I am learning something new literally every day.

Washington’s Birthday 1928

17 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by in Alfred E. Smith, Brooklyn, Charles Loring Brace, Fiorello La Guardia, George Washington, Memory, Theodore Roosevelt Sr (Father)

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New York governor Al Smith reviewed the Kings County Volunteer Firemen’s Association on Washington’s Birthday in 1928 in the leadup to the presidential race.

I was reading a good-natured online debate the other between a couple of people arguing the merits and demerits of American holidays. One of the running threads–indeed, the instigation of the discussion–was the idea of President’s Day itself. Some were averring that the holiday we are observing this weekend is now a second-tier observance, which is tough to argue against. It was not always the case however. President’s Day began as George Washington’s Birthday, and is still legally considered as such in many of the fifty states. Up until around the Second World War however Washington’s Birthday was still considered one of our most prestigious holidays, ranking below Christmas and Easter and on par with the 4th of July. It makes sense that Americans would have two secular holidays–one in winter and the other in summer–of such consequence. From the early days of the Republic through the mass immigration of the early twentieth century these holidays gave Americans a shared narrative. The 4th of July is still part of that narrative, but Washington’s Birthday–or even the more general “President’s Day–not so much.

Some of the men assembled to speak at Brooklyn Borough Hall were in their 90s. Later that day Governor Smith and Congressman Fiorello La Guardia spoke at the Brace Memorial Newsboys’ Lodging House in Manhattan.

Here above we see a moment during which Washington’s Birthday was still very much part of our cultural fabric. In 1928 Governor Alfred E. Smith visited Brooklyn to review the organization of retired Kings County firemen. From the steps of Borough Hall he watched the procession of men, some in their 90s, as they hailed the man everyone knew would run for the presidency that coming November. The Eagle, whose offices were adjacent to Borough Hall, noted that “Only the Roman candles and fireworks of the old political campaigning [were] missing.” It was not just Brooklynites; firemen had come from throughout Long Island, Manhattan, and as far away as Philadelphia and Delaware to see and hear Smith.

The governor had been coming to this event throughout the 1920s. He had come down from Albany for a few days to appear at several events; after speaking to and lunching with the retired firemen in Brooklyn, Smith returned to Manhattan and dined at the Brace Memorial Newsboys’ House on William Street. Lodging houses like the one Smith spoke at on Washington’s Birthday 1928 dated back to the days when Charles Loring Brace and Theodore Roosevelt Sr. created them prior to the Civil War. There with Smith at the lodging house was U.S. Congressman Fiorello La Guardia. Smith’s message to the 1,200 assembled hardscrabble lads was to accept that life is difficult even under the best of circumstances. The governor and presidential aspirant understood difficulty, having been born a slum kid on the Lower East Side and toiling in the Fulton Fish Market before becoming a Tammany man and starting his rise.

(images/Brooklyn Daily Eagle)