Fiorello LaGuardia

Fiorello H. LaGuardia

Fiorello LaGuardia (1882-1947) (also spelled as La Guardia, and pronunced la 'gwardja) was an American politician who served as Mayor of New York City for three terms from 1934 to 1945. Previously he represented New York in Congress from 1917 to 1919, and from 1922 to 1933. Irrascible and charismatic, he craved publicity and wanted people to call him "the Little Flower," from the translation of Fiorello as flower, along with a reference to his being five feet tall.

LaGuardia, 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. and in turn Roosevelt heavily funded the city and cut off patronage from LaGuardia'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.

LaGuardia 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 wardhealers with the honesty and efficiency of the good government reformers.

The intemperate mayor left no doubt who was in charge, but he lost his touch during the wars years 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.

Early life and career

LaGuardia was born in New York City to poor immigrants who came to America in 1880: Achille Luigi LaGuardia, an Italian father who no longer practiced Catholicism, and Irene Cohen Luzzato, an Italian mother of Jewish origin. He was raised an Episcopalian and spent most of his childhood in Prescott, Arizona. The family moved to his mother's hometown after his father was discharged from his bandmaster position in the U.S. Army in 1898. Joining the US Consular Service in 1901, the young man served in American consulates in Budapest, Trieste, and Fiume (1901–1906). He returned to the U.S. as a translator for the U.S. Immigration Service at Ellis Island (1907–1910), while taking a law degree in night school.

Political career

LaGuardia was appointed as the Deputy Attorney General of New York in 1914. He lost his first race for Congress in 1914, but was elected in 1916 from Greenwich Village. In the U.S. House of Representatives he developed a reputation as a fierce and devoted reformer. He did not seek reelection.

Military service

LaGuardia served in the armed forces from 1917 to 1919, commanding a unit of the Army Air Service on the Italian front in World War I, rising to the rank of major. He was deputy commander of American aviation training in Italy, represented the Aircraft Board, and commanded the American pilots who flew with the Italians. In November 1919 the war hero was elected President of the New York City Board of Aldermen

In 1921 his new baby and then his wife died of tuberculosis. LaGuardia, still in Congress, became depressed, and turned to a long alcoholic binge. He recovered and became a teetotaler. In 1929 he married Marie Fisher; they adopted two children, Jean Marie and Eric.

Congressman again

LaGuardia ran for the House of Representative again in 1922, from the Italian stronghold of East Harlem. He won the election and served as a congressman until 1933. He insisted that government must not lock out immigrants and that it must accord them equal opportunities to a decent life, and advocate for many reform measures, especially on behahlf of labor unions. One major legislation bearing his name was Norris-LaGuardia Act, which he sponsored with Nebraska senator George Norris in 1932. The Act banned yellow-dog contracts, which are labor contracts prohibiting a worker from joining a union.

In 1929, he launched a bid for New York's mayorship, but lost by a landslide to incumbent Democrat Jimmy Walker. In 1932, he lost his House seat to James J. Lanzetta, a Democrat.

Mayor of New York

Mayor LaGuardia (middle) shaking hands with New York City detective Mary A. Shanley

LaGuardia was elected mayor of New York City on an anti-corruption Fusion ticket, which united him in an uneasy alliance with New York's Jewish population and upper class liberals in opposition to the Irish Democrats based in Tammany Hall.

Agenda

LaGuardia came to office in January 1934 with five main goals:

• 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. Laguardia then collaborated closely with [{Robert Moses]], with support from the governor Democrat Herbert Lehman, to upgrade the decaying infrastructure.

To obtain the money he 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 an airport now bearing his name were all built during his mayoralty.

Fighting crime

The new mayor ran an honest administration and took a strong stance against organized crime, especially targeting gang leader Lucky Luciano, saying "Let's drive the bums out of town." In 1934, he conducted a search-and-destroy raid on slot machines operated by gangster Frank Costello, making thousands of arrests, swinging the sledgehammer and dumping the slot machines into water to show the media his toughness. In 1936, he instructed Thomas E. Dewey, a special prosecutor, to prosecute Luciano, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

LaGuardia rarely followed Republican party lines. In elections he also ran as the nominee of the American Labor Party, a union-dominated anti-Tammany grouping that also ran FDR for President from 1936 onward. LaGuardia supported Roosevelt, who was a Democrat, for president. He chaired the Independent Committee for Roosevelt and Wallace with Norris in the 1940 presidential election.

His massive public works programs administered by his friend and ally Parks Commissioner Robert Moses employed thousands of men and created ghighways, bridges, parks, swimming pools, and, indeed, much of the modern infrastructure of the city. When the newspapers went on strike he read the funny papers on the radio. He built a major airport in Queens, LaGuardia Airport. Responding to popular disdain for the sometimes corrupt City Council, LaGuardia successfully proposed a reformed 1938 City Charter which created a powerful new New York City Board of Estimate, similar to a corporate board of directors.

He fiercely denounced Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. As early as 1934, LaGuardia warned, "Part of Hitler’s program is the complete annihilation of the Jews in Germany."

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. LaGuardia Field), and had the city buy out the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, thus completing the public takeover of the subway system.

In 1941, during the run-up to American involvement in World War II, President Roosevelt appointed LaGuardia as the first director of the new Office of Civilian Defense (OCD). The OCD was 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. LaGuardia 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. FDR refused to make him a general and was unable to provide fresh money for the city. By 1944 LaGuardia 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.

Recognition and Legacy

Historians have recognized LaGuardia as the greatest mayor in American history, and perhaps the greatest in New York City, but some experts match him with Rudy Giuliani).

In addition to LaGuardia Community College and LaGuardia High School, a number of other institutions in New York and streets around the world are named for him, LaGuardia Airport, the smaller and older of New York's two currently operating international airports, honors his name.

He was the subject of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical Fiorello!.

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
• 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
• Mann, Arthur H. LaGuardia: A Fighter Against His Times 1882-1933 (1959)
• Mann, Arthur H. Laguardia Comes to Power 1933 (1969)
• Zinn, Howard. Laguardia in Congress (1959) [ online edition]

External links

• LaGuardia and Wagner archives
• oral interviews from the Fiorello LaGuardia Oral History database