Fiorello La Guardia

Fiorello Henry La Guardia
99th Mayor of New York City
In office January 1, 1934 – December 31, 1945
Preceded by	John P. O'Brien
Succeeded by	William O'Dwyer
Born	December 11, 1882(1882-12-11) Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York
Died	September 20, 1947(1947-09-20) (aged 64) Bronx, New York
Political party	Republican
Religion	Episcopalian
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Fiorello Henry La Guardia (pronounced /fiəˈrɛloʊ ləˈɡwɑrdiə/; born Fiorello Enrico La Guardia; December 11, 1882 – September 20, 1947) was Mayor of New York for three terms from 1934 to 1945 as a liberal Republican. Previously he was elected to Congress in 1916 and 1918, and again from 1922 through 1930. Irascible, energetic and charismatic, he craved publicity and is acclaimed as one of the three or four greatest mayors in American history. Only five feet tall, he was called "the Little Flower" (Fiorello is Italian for "little flower", diminutive of fiore, Italian for "flower").

La Guardia, a nominal Republican who appealed across party lines, was very popular in New York during the 1930s. As a New Dealer, he supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat. and in turn Roosevelt heavily funded the city and cut off patronage from La Guardia's foes. In 1941, while remaining mayor, he became the national Director of Civilian Defense, but did a mediocre job. Unable to move into national circles, he left office at the start of 1946 and became briefly the director-general of United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

La Guardia revitalized New York City and restored public faith in City Hall. He unified the transit system; directed the building of low-cost public housing, public playgrounds, and parks; constructed airports; reorganized the police force; defeated the powerful Tammany political machine; and reestablished merit employment in place of patronage jobs. He brought in vast sums of federal money^[1].

La Guardia was a domineering leader who verged on authoritarianism but whose reform politics were carefully tailored to reflect and exploit the sensibilities of his kaleidoscopic constituency. He defeated a corrupt Democratic machine, presided during a depression and a world war, made the city the model for New Deal welfare and public works programs, and championed immigrants and ethnics. He succeeded with the support of a sympathetic president. He secured his place in history as a tough minded reform mayor who helped clean out corruption, bring in gifted experts, and fix upon the city a broad sense of responsibility for its own citizens. His administration engaged new groups that had been kept out of the political system, gave New York its modern infrastructure and raised expectations of new levels of urban possibility. He synthesized the human sympathy of Tammany ward-healers with the honesty and efficiency of the good government reformers.

The intemperate mayor was rough on his staffers and left no doubt who was in charge. He lost his intuitive touch during the wars years, when the federal money stopped flowing in, and never realized that he had created far more infrastructure than the city could afford. "La Guardia represented a dangerous style of personal rule hitched to a transcendent purpose," according to Thomas Kessner, La Guardia's biographer. "People would be afraid of allowing anybody to take that kind of power today."^[2][3]

Career

La Guardia was born in Greenwich Village to an Italian lapsed-Catholic father, Achille La Guardia, from Cerignola, and a Triestine mother of Jewish Hungarian origin^[4], Irene Coen Luzzato; he was raised an Episcopalian. His middle name "Enrico" was changed to "Henry" (the English form of Enrico) when he was a child. He lived in Prescott, Arizona, his mother's hometown, after his father was discharged from his bandmaster position in the U.S. Army in 1898.^[5] La Guardia served in U.S. consulates in Budapest, Trieste, and Rijeka (1901–1906). Fiorello returned to the U.S. to continue his education at New York University. During this time, he worked for New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children as an interpreter for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration at the Ellis Island immigrant station (1907–1910).

Marriages and family

La Guardia married twice. His first wife was Thea Almerigotti, whom he married on March 8, 1919. She died of tuberculosis on November 29, 1921, at the age of 26.^[6] He married Marie Fisher in 1929; they adopted two children.

Early political career

Elected to Congress

La Guardia became Deputy Attorney General of New York in 1914. In 1916, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he had a reputation as a fiery and devoted reformer. As a congressman, LaGuardia represented an ethnically diverse slum district in East Harlem and, although barred from important committee posts because of his political independence, he was a tireless and vocal champion of Progressive causes.^[7]

La Guardia took office on March 4th, 1917 but soon was commissioned in the United States Army Air Service rising to the rank of major in command of a unit of Ca.44 bombers on the Italian-Austrian front in World War I. La Guardia resigned his seat in Congress on December 31st, 1919 to serve as President of the New York City Board of Aldermen from 1920-1922.

La Guardia was re-elected to Congress on in 1922 and served for five terms from March 4th, 1923 to March 4th, 1933. ^[8]

Fiorello LaGuardia between two Italian officers in front of a Ca.44, circa 1918

President of the Board of Aldermen

In 1919, La Guardia was chosen to run as the Republican candidate for the office of President of the New York City Board of Aldermen. His Democratic opponent was Robert L. Moran, an Alderman from the Bronx who had succeeded to that office in 1918 when Alfred E. Smith, who had been elected President in 1917, became Governor ^[9] Michael “Dynamite Mike” Kelly, commander of New York’s Third “Shamrock” Battalion, also joined the race on the ticket of the Liberty Party. Tammany Hall looked with alarm upon Kelly’s entrance into the campaign and tried to persuade him to withdraw his candidacy and throw his support behind Mr. Moran. When he refused, Tammany went to the New York Supreme Court and successfully sued to keep Kelly’s name off the ballot.^[10] When Election Day arrived, over 3,500 of Kelly’s supporters wrote his name on the ballot.^[11] This number was sufficient to defeat Moran, who lost to LaGuardia by only 1,363 votes.^[12]

Return to Congress

"Fio" La Guardia (as his close family and friends called him) won a seat in Congress again in 1922 and served in the House until March 3, 1933. Extending his record as a reformer, La Guardia sponsored labor legislation and railed against immigration quotas. In 1929, he ran for mayor of New York, but was overwhelmingly defeated by the incumbent Jimmy Walker. In 1932, along with Senator George Norris (R-NE), La Guardia sponsored the pro-union Norris-La Guardia Act. In 1932, he was defeated for re-election to the House by James J. Lanzetta, the Democratic candidate (1932 was not a good year for Republican candidates like La Guardia, and the 20th Congressional district was shifting from a Jewish and Italian-American population to a Puerto Rican population).

Champion of the progressive movement

As a congressman, LaGuardia was a tireless and vocal champion of progressive causes, from allowing more immigration and removing U.S. troops from Nicaragua to speaking up for the rights and livelihoods of striking miners, impoverished farmers, oppressed minorities, and struggling families. A goad to the era's plutocrats and their enablers in government, LaGuardia fought for progressive income taxes, greater government oversight of Wall Street, and national employment insurance for workers idled by the Great Depression.^[13]

Mayor of New York

As a Republican La Guardia had to support Harding in 1920; he had to be silent in the 1928 campaign although he favored Al Smith, a Democrat. In 1929, he lost the election for mayor to incumbent Democrat Jimmy Walker by a landslide.^[14] In 1932, he lost his House seat to James J. Lanzetta, a Democrat, but Walker and his Irish-run Tammany Hall were forced out of office by scandal and La Guardia became the reformers' candidate in 1933.

Agenda

La Guardia came to office in January 1934 with five main goals^[15]:

• Restore the financial health and break free from the bankers' control.
• Expand the federally-funded work relief program for the unemployed.
• Ending corruption in government and racketeering in key sectors of the economy
• Replace patronage with a merit-based civil service, with high prestige
• Modernize the infrastructure, especially transportation and parks

He achieved most of the first four goals in his first hundred days, as FDR gave him 20% of the entire national CWA budget for work relief. La Guardia then collaborated closely with Robert Moses, with support from the governor Democrat Herbert Lehman, to upgrade the decaying infrastructure. The city was favored by the New Deal in terms of funding for public works projects.

Ethnic politics

La Guardia was elected mayor of New York City on an anti-corruption "Fusion" ticket in 1933, which gave a winning coalition comprised of regular Republicans (mostly middle class Germans in the outer boroughs), a minority of reform-minded Democrats, some Socialists, a large proportion of middle class Jews, and the great majority of Italians. The Italians had been loyal to Tammany; their switch proved decisive.^[16] He governed in an uneasy alliance with New York's Jews and liberal (WASPs), together with Italian and German ethnics^[17].

La Guardia was not an orthodox Republican. He also ran as the nominee of the American Labor Party, a union-dominated anti-Tammany left-wing group that supported Franklin D. Roosevelt for president beginning in 1936. La Guardia supported Roosevelt, chairing the Independent Committee for Roosevelt and Wallace with Senator George Norris during the 1940 presidential election.

La Guardia was the city's first Italian-American mayor, but was not a typical Italian New Yorker. He was a Republican Episcopalian who had grown up in Arizona, and had a Triestine Jewish mother of Hungarian origin^[18] and a Catholic-turned-atheist Italian father. He reportedly spoke seven languages, including Hebrew, Croatian, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Yiddish. La Guardia was also a very active Freemason.

Fiorello La Guardia statue at LaGuardia Place in Greenwich Village, NYC

Crime

La Guardia loathed the gangsters who brought a negative stereotype and shame to the Italian community^[19]. His first action as mayor was to order the chief of police to arrest mob boss Lucky Luciano on whatever charges could be found. La Guardia then went after the gangsters with a vengeance, stating in a radio address to the people of New York in his high-pitched, squeaky voice, "Let's drive the bums out of town." In 1934, La Guardia went on a search-and-destroy mission looking for mob boss Frank Costello's slot machines, which La Guardia executed with gusto, rounding up thousands of the "one armed bandits", swinging a sledgehammer and dumping them off a barge into the water for the newspapers and media. In 1936, La Guardia had special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, a future Republican presidential candidate, single out Lucky Luciano for prosecution. Dewey led a successful investigation into Luciano's lucrative prostitution operation, eventually sending Luciano to jail with a 30-50 year sentence. The case was made into the 1937 movie 'Marked Woman', starring Bette Davis.

La Guardia proved successful in shutting down the burlesque theaters, whose naughty shows offended his puritanical sensibilities.^[20]

Public works

La Guardia's admirers credit him for, among other things, restoring the economic lifeblood of New York City during and after the Great Depression. He is given credit for many massive public works programs administered by his powerful Parks Commissioner Robert Moses and employed thousands of voters. The mayor's relentless lobbying for federal funds allowed New York to develop its economic infrastructure.

To obtain large-scale federal money the mayor became a close partner of Roosevelt and New Deal agencies such as CWA, PWA and WPA, which poured $1.1 billion into the city 1934-39. In turn he gave FDR a showcase for New Deal achievement, helped defeat FDR's political enemies in Tammany Hall (the Democratic party machine in Manhattan). He and Moses built highways bridges, and tunnels, transforming the physical landscape of New York City. The West Side Highway, East River Drive, Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Triborough Bridge, and two airport now were all built during his mayoralty.

He succeeded in creating major commercial airports (Floyd Bennett Field, and later LaGuardia Airport) within city limits.

1939

1939 was a busy year, as he opened the New York World's Fair at Flushing Meadow, Queens, opened New York Municipal Airport #2 in Queens (later renamed Fiorello H. La Guardia Field), and had the city buy out the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, thus completing the public takeover of the subway system. When the newspapers went on strike he read the funny papers on the radio.

Reform

Responding to popular disdain for the sometimes corrupt City Council, La Guardia successfully proposed a reformed 1938 City Charter that created a powerful new New York City Board of Estimate, similar to a corporate board of directors.

Germany

He was an outspoken and early critic of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. In a public address in 1934, La Guardia warned, "Part of Hitler's program is the complete annihilation of the Jews in Germany." In 1937, speaking before the Women's Division of the American Jewish Congress, La Guardia called for the creation of a special pavilion at the upcoming New York World's Fair "a chamber of horrors" for "that brown-shirted fanatic"^[21].

La Guardia's sister, Gemma La Guardia Gluck, was arrested by the Germans in a roundup of Jews in Hungary in 1944. She was held under privileged conditions at Ravensbrück concentration camp and released after the war. ^[22]

Courts

According to Try and Stop Me by Bennett Cerf, La Guardia often officiated in municipal court. He handled routine misdemeanor cases, including, as Cerf wrote, a man who had stolen a loaf of bread for his starving family. La Guardia insisted on levying the fine of ten dollars. Then he said "I'm fining everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a city where a man has to steal bread in order to eat!" He passed a hat and gave the fines to the defendant, who left the court with $47.50.^[23]

World War II

In 1941, during the run-up to American involvement in World War II, President Roosevelt appointed La Guardia as the first director of the new Office of Civilian Defense (OCD). The OCD was the national agency responsible for preparing for blackouts, air raid wardens, sirens, and shelters in case of German air raids. The government knew that such air raids were impossible but the goal was to psychologically mobilize many thousands of middle class volunteers to make them feel part of the war effort. La Guardia remained Mayor of New York, shuttling back and forth with three days in Washington and four in the city in a poor effort to do justice to two herculean jobs. After Pearl Harbor in December 1941 his role was turned over to full-time director of OCD, James M. Landis. La Guardia's popularity slipped away and he ran so poorly in straw polls in 1945 that he did not run for a fourth term.^[24]

Unemployment ended and the city was the gateway for military supplies and soldiers sent to Europe, with the Brooklyn Navy Yard providing many of the warships and the garment trade provided uniforms. The city's great financiers, however, were less important in decision making than policy makers in Washington, and very high wartime taxes were not offset by heavy war spending. New York was not a center of heavy industry and did not see a wartime boom as defense plants were built elsewhere^[25]

FDR refused to make him a general and was unable to provide fresh money for the city. By 1944 La Guardia was frantically juggling the books to pay the city's bills. His successors realized that New York City could not support his fabulous infrastructure and high wages and pensions for teachers, police and city workers without borrowing more and more until it faced bankruptcy, which came in 1975^[26].

Later life and death

The grave of Fiorello LaGuardia

La Guardia was the director general for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in 1946.

A man of short stature, La Guardia's height is sometimes given as 5 feet 0 inches (1.52 m). According to an article in the New York Times, however, his actual height was 5 feet 2 inches (1.57 m).^[27]

He became a member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity.

He died of pancreatic cancer in his home at 5020 Goodridge Avenue, in the Riverdale section of the Bronx at the age of 64 and is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.^[28]

Legacy

Historians have recognized La Guardia as the greatest mayor in American history, and perhaps the greatest in New York City, but some experts match him with Rudy Giuliani).^[29]

Memorials

The footstone of Fiorello LaGuardia

• LaGuardia Airport, the smallest of New York's three major currently operating airports, bears his name; the airport was voted the "greatest airport in the world" by the worldwide aviation community in 1960. La Guardia ordered construction of the airport after his TWA flight arrived at Newark, which is in the neighboring state of New Jersey. His airline ticket had an arrival city that read "New York"; the landing in Newark instead outraged him and caused him to order the plane to fly to Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field. Not long after, the city voted to build a new airport in La Guardia's name.
• The United States Postal Service honored him with a 14¢ postage stamp.
• LaGuardia Place, a street in Greenwich Village which runs from Houston Street to Washington Square, is named for La Guardia; there is also a statue of the mayor on that street.
• La Guardia loved music, and was famous for spontaneously conducting professional and student orchestras. He once said that the "most hopeful accomplishment" of his administration as mayor was the creation of the High School of Music & Art in 1936, now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.^[30]
• In addition to LaGuardia High School, a number of other institutions are also named for him, including LaGuardia Community College.
• He was the subject of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical Fiorello!.
• La Guardia Bridge in Prescott, Arizona on North Montezuma Avenue.
• In 1940, La Guardia received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York".
• Rehov LaGuardia (LaGuardia Street) is a major road and the name of a highway interchange on the Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv, Israel.
• "Ulica Fiorella La Guardije" (Fiorello La Guardia Street) is the name of a street in Rijeka, Croatia. La Guardia served in the U.S. consulate in Rijeka during the period before World War I when the city was under Austro-Hungarian rule and was known under its Italian name Fiume.
• On Staten Island, Masonic lodge #1130 at 236 Main Street is named after him.
• He got passed the laws to ban pinball machines as gambling devices around 1939, and many photos exist of him destroying the games prohibition-style, with sledge hammers or in large fires. The laws stayed on the books until 1976.

In popular culture

• In the radio show Fibber McGee and Molly, the mayor of the fictitious town of Wistful Vista was named "LaTrivia" as a nod to La Guardia. Mayor LaTrivia was played by Gale Gordon. When La Guardia died the Fibber McGee and Molly Show had just two weeks left of its 1947 summer vacation. Out of respect, they quietly suspended the character of LaTrivia, and had Gale Gordon play a new character for the 1947-48 season named "Foggy Williams", a weatherman. Foggy Williams' last appearance was on June 1, 1948 and Mayor LaTrivia returned after the show's 1948 summer vacation, again played by Gordon.
• While searching for "Maybe Dick the Wailing Whale" Rocky and Bullwinkle meet "Fiorello LaPompadour" the Mayor of Submurbia.
• In Ghostbusters II, Mayor Lenny of New York mentions to one of his aides that "I spent an hour last night in my bedroom talking to Fiorello LaGuardia, and he's been dead for forty years."
• In The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, he is depicted as one of the leaders of the opposition against president Charles Lindbergh.
• In The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell, he is portrayed by Phil Arnold.
• In the 1974 film The Taking of Pelham 123, the Mayor's wife sarcastically calls her husband "a regular Fiorello La Guardia" after he dithers over paying the ransom of $1m.
• Tom Bradby's latest novel Blood Money is set in New York during the 1929 Mayoral election, and LaGuardia is mentioned frequently as the candidate unwanted by the corrupt incumbent and his supporters.
• In the Crimson Skies series, which is set in an alternate history of the 1930s, La Guardia is the president of the Empire State, a nation composed of the former states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
• In the timeline of Robert Heinlein's utopian novel "For Us, the Living" – written in 1939 but only published posthumously in 2003 – La Guardia is elected President in 1951 and serves two terms as a militant reforming president, effectively nationalizing the banking system and instituting a system of Social Credit.
• In the song "NYC" from the musical Annie, Oliver Warbucks refers to him in the line "What other town has the Empire State, and a mayor five foot two?"
• In the 1992 movie My Cousin Vinny, Vincent Gambini (played by Joe Pesci) gives his full name as "Vincent LaGuardia Gambini."

See also

• La Guardia Commission, a study on the effects of marijuana in U.S. society
• New York City mayoral elections for votes in 1929, 1933, 1937 and 1941.
• La Guardia and Wagner Archives

Further reading

• Bayor, Ronald H. Fiorello La Guardia: Ethnicity and Reform. (1993). 213 pp.
• Brodsky, Alyn. The Great Mayor: Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of the City of New York. (2003). 530 pp. popular biography; excerpt and text search
• Capeci, Dominic J. "From Different Liberal Perspectives: Fiorello H. La Guardia, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and Civil Rights in New York City, 1941-1943," The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 62, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 160-173 in JSTOR
• Caro, Robert. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. (1973) excerpt and text search
• Garrett, Charles. The La Guardia Years: Machine and Reform Politics in New York City. (1961).
• Hecksher, August III. When La Guardia Was Mayor: New York's Legendary Years. (1978).
• Jeffers, H. Paul. The Napoleon of New York: Mayor Fiorello La Guardia 392 pp. popular biography online edition; also excerpt and text search
• Kaufman, Herbert. "Fiorello H. La Guardia, Political Maverick" Political Science Quarterly 1990 105(1): 113-122. Issn: 0032-3195 in Jstor
• Kessner, Thomas. "Fiorello H. LaGuardia." History Teacher 1993 26(2): 151-159. Issn: 0018-2745 in Jstor
• Kessner, Thomas. Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York (1989) the most detailed standard scholarly biography
• La Guardia, Fiorello H. The Making of an Insurgent: An Autobiography. (1948)
• Mann, Arthur H. La Guardia: A Fighter Against His Times 1882-1933 (1959)
• Mann, Arthur H. La Guardia Comes to Power 1933 (1969)
• Zinn, Howard. LaGuardia in Congress (1959) online edition

References

External links

• Obituary, New York Times, September 21, 1947 La Guardia Is Dead; City Pays Homage To 3-Time Mayor
• LA GUARDIA, Fiorello Henry at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• La Guardia and Wagner Archives/Fiorello H. La Guardia Collection
  • oral interviews from the Fiorello La Guardia Oral History database
• Tiziano Thomas Dossena, "Fiorello La Guardia" in Bridge Apulia USA, No.3 (Italy, 1998)

Mayors of the City of New York since the 1898 Consolidation Van Wyck · Low · McClellan · Gaynor · Kline · Mitchel · Hylan · Walker · McKee · O'Brien · La Guardia · O'Dwyer · Impellitteri · Wagner · Lindsay · Beame · Koch · Dinkins · Giuliani · Bloomberg