Fiorello LaGuardia

Fiorello H. LaGuardia

Fiorello Henry LaGuardia (born Fiorello Enrico LaGuardia, often spelled La Guardia, pronunciation [la 'gwardja], 1882-1947) was an American politician who served as Mayor of New York City for three terms from 1934 to 1945, and in the House of Representatives representing New York from 1917 to 1919, and from 1922 to 1933. He was popularly known as "the Little Flower," the translation of his Italian first name, Fiorello and a reference to his short stature.

LaGuardia, a nominal Republican who appealed across party lines, was very popular in New York during his mayoralty. During the Great Depression, he supported the New Deal and became a national figure for leading the recovery of the city. Shortly before the U.S. entered the World War II, he was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Director of Civilian Defense. After the war, in 1946 he served briefly as the director-general of United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

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. La Guardia represented a dangerous style of personal rule hitched to a transcendent purpose, according to Thomas Kessner, a City University professor and La Guardia 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 an Italian Catholic father, Achille La Guardia, from Cerignola, and an Italian mother of Jewish origin from Trieste (Irene Cohen Luzzato). He was raised an Episcopalian. He 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. LaGuardia served in U.S. consulates in Budapest, Trieste, and Fiume (1901–1906). Fiorello returned to the U.S. to continue his education at New York University, and during this time he worked for New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty for Children and as a translator for the U.S. Immigration Service at Ellis Island (1907–1910).

Political career

LaGuardia began serving as the Deputy Attorney General of New York in 1914. In 1916 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives where he developed a reputation as a fierce and devoted reformer. In Congress, LaGuardia represented then-Italian East Harlem.

Military service

LaGuardia briefly served in the armed forces from 1917 to 1919, commanding a unit of the United States Army Air Service on the Italian/Austrian front in World War I, rising to the rank of major.

In 1921 his wife died of tuberculosis. LaGuardia, having nursed her through the 17 month ordeal, grew depressed, and turned to alcohol, spending most of the year following her death on an alcoholic binge. He recovered and became a teetotaler.

Congressman again

LaGuardia ran for the House of Representative again in 1922. He won the election and served as a congressman until 1933. He continued to advocate for many reform measures, especially on the issue of labor disputes. 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. He was also noted for his opposition of immigration quotas.

In 1929, he launched a bid for New York's mayorship, but then-incumbent Jimmy Walker soundly defeated him. 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.

Being of Italian descent and growing up during the period when crime was rampant in the Bronx, LaGuardia had a loathing for the gangsters who gave the Italian community a negative reputation. He took a strong stance against organized crime. When he was first elected in 1933, he ordered the police chief to arrest Lucky Luciano, an infamous mobster, regardless of the charge he could be indicted. He addressed in the radio through his high-pitched, squeaky voice, "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 and future Republican candidate for president, to prosecute Luciano. Dewey investigated into Luciano's prostitution ring, and Luciano was sentenced to 30-50 years in prison.

LaGuardia often broke with orthodox 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.

LaGuardia is famous for, among other things, restoring the economic lifeblood of New York City during and after the Depression. His massive public works programs administered by his friend Parks Commissioner Robert Moses employed thousands of unemployed New Yorkers, and his constant lobbying for federal government funds allowed New York to establish the foundation for its economic infrastructure. He was also well known for reading the newspaper comics on the radio during a newspaper strike, and pushing to have a commercial airport (Floyd Bennett Field, and later LaGuardia Airport) within city limits. 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 was also a very outspoken and early critic of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. In a public address as early as 1934, LaGuardia 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, LaGuardia 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."

In 1940, included among the many interns to serve in the city government was David Rockefeller, who became his secretary for eighteen months in what is known as a "dollar a year" public service position. Although LaGuardia was at pains to point out to the press that he was only one of 60 interns, Rockefeller's working space turned out to be the vacant office of the deputy mayor.

In 1941, during the run-up to American involvement in the Second World War, President Roosevelt appointed LaGuardia as the first director of the new Office of Civilian Defense (OCD). The OCD was responsible for preparing for the protection of the civilian population in case America was attacked. It was also responsible for programs to maintain public morale, promote volunteer service, and co-ordinate other federal departments to ensure they were serving the needs of a country in war. LaGuardia had remained Mayor of New York during this appointment, but after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 he was succeeded at the OCD by a full-time director, James M. Landis.

During his tenure he ordered a commission (known as LaGuardia Commission) to study the effect of marijuana smoking on the society.

According to Try and Stop Me by Bennett Cerf, LaGuardia 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. LaGuardia still 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 his hat and gave the fines to the defendant, who left the court with $47.50.

Later life

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

LaGuardia loved music and conducting, and was famous for spontaneously conducting professional and student orchestras that he visited. He once said that the "most hopeful accomplishment" of his long 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. He died at his 5020 Goodridge Avenue home, in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, of pancreatic cancer at the age of 64 and is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

A man of very short stature, LaGuardia's height is sometimes given as five feet. According to an article in the official weblog of New York Times, however, his actual height was five feet, two inches.

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 High School, a number of other institutions are also named for him, including LaGuardia Community College. Many roads and other geographical locations are named after LaGuardia. LaGuardia Place, a street in Greenwich Village which runs from Houston Street to Washington Square, is named for LaGuardia; there is also a statue of the mayor on that street. Rehov LaGuardia (LaGuardia Street) is a major road and the name of a highway junction in southern Tel-Aviv, Israel. Ulica Fiorella LaGuardie is the name of a street in Rijeka.

LaGuardia Airport, the smaller and older of New York's two currently operating international airports, bears his name; the airport was voted the "greatest airport in the world" by the worldwide aviation community in 1960.

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

Further reading

• Brodsky, Alyn. The Great Mayor: Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of the City of New York. (2003). 530 pp.