William Flinn (1851—1924) was a powerful political boss and construction magnate in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Along with Christopher Magee (1848—1901), his political partner, the two ran the Republican Party machine that controlled the city for the final twenty years of the 19th century.
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He was born in Manchester, England on May 26, 1851 to John Flinn and Mary Hamilton Flinn, Irish immigrants there. The family next emigrated later that year to the United States and settled in Pittsburgh's Sixth Ward, famous for its hard-scrabble politics, where his father established a small contracting business.
Educated in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, William Flinn dropped out at age 9 to deliver newspapers, shine shoes, and later apprentice in the gas and steam fitting trades.
Flinn became politically active in the Republican Party as a ward boss collecting stray votes. He soon attained office in 1877 as a member of the Board of Fire Commissioners. Flinn quickly partnered with Christopher Magee (1848–1901), the city's Republican Party political boss. In 1881 Flinn was elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly at Harrisburg. In 1882 he was appointed chairman of the city's executive committee of the local Republican party, a position he held for the next 20 years. In 1890 he was elected to the Pennsylvania State Senate, where he sponsored the Good Roads Act, which became law in 1895. He remained incumbent there until his resignation in 1901. From 1884 until 1912 he served as a delegate to every Republican National Convention.
Flinn's chief business interest was large-scale contracting. His firm of Booth and Flinn was formed in 1876 in association with James J. Booth. As a result of politics and a "lowest responsible bidder" scheme, Booth & Flinn won most large construction and paving contracts in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, where they built streets, trolley lines, and bridges, usually amid charges by competitors of graft. The firm built the Liberty Tunnels, Wabash Tunnel, and Armstrong Tunnels in Pittsburgh, and in the later years of the company's continuation, the Holland Tunnel between New York City and New Jersey. (Booth retired from the firm in 1898; George H. Flinn, son of the founder, succeeded him, and in 1924 two other sons, William and A. Rex Flinn joined the company).
In The Shame of the Cities, the landmark 1903 book by Lincoln Steffens on political corruption in American cities, Steffens wrote about the alleged Flinn-Magee collusion: "Magee wanted power, Flinn wealth.... Magee spent his wealth for more power, and Flinn spent his power for more wealth.... Magee attracted followers, Flinn employed them. He was useful to Magee, Magee was indispensable to him. ... Molasses and vinegar, diplomacy and force, mind and will, they were well mated." Reformers eventually reined in Flinn by passing legislation to curb corruption and kickbacks.
William Flinn was also president of the Duquesne Lumber Company and the Pittsburgh Silver Peak Gold Mining Company. He sat on the board of directors of the Arkansas Fuel Oil Company, the Arkansas Natural Gas Company, the Gulf Oil Corporation, and the Pittsburgh Coal Company.
He married Nancy Galbraith in 1874 and the couple had six children: four boys, two girls. The sons—William, George, Ralph, and A. Rex—became prominent in business, three of them in their father's construction firm. The family home, called Braemar, was in the city Highland Park district. Though raised Roman Catholic, Flinn was a member of Pittsburgh's Sixth United Presbyterian Church.
Flinn's political and business organization began to crumble in the late 1890s when a flap over the rigged bidding system came to a head with Edward Manning Bigelow, director of public works. By the 1902 elections reformers held sway and citizens voted down the machine. Magee himself had died in 1901 after a short illness.
Flinn withdrew from local politics, as a result, and retired to a country estate north of the city called Beechwood Farm. He became a gentleman farmer of Guernsey cattle, German police dogs, and Belgian hares.
He continued to manage his business interests and to dabble in Republican politics at the national life. In 1912, however, he abandoned the GOP in the support of Theodore Roosevelt's nomination, and followed him into the Bull Moose Party.
During the winter months Flinn resided in Florida, where at St. Petersburg he died on February 19, 1924 at the age of 72. He is interred at Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh. According the Register of Wills of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, J.N. Mackrell, Flinn's personal property and real estate at his death exceeded $11 million.
Flinn is honored with several monuments throughout the city of Pittsburgh and the Allegheny County segment of Pennsylvania State Route 8 is named the William Flinn Highway. His country estate is now a nature reserve, Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve, operated by the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania. Flinn's daughter Mary used some of her inheritance to build a country estate nearby Beechwood called Hartwood; today it is open to the public as a part of Hartwood Acres Park.