New York Today: The ‘Boy Mayor’ of New York

Exciting to learn history, there is so much we don't know about the people who cared about this city. Some of us live in the moment and let the current politicians suck all of the air out of the room. We should know the names of people who directly affected the life style and the tremendous impact they had on our lives in the past and current New Yorkers. Thank you for the story and please do more. There is an audience who wants to learn and not let our politicians continue to make mistakes by forgetting the past.

And another thing: "But some Democrats in New York, especially his primary rival, Cynthia Nixon, have suggested that the governor’s long tolerance of anti-abortion Senate Republicans in Albany, and a renegade group of Democrats they collaborated with, has badly undercut his feminist bona fides." Andrew and his late father Mario Cuomo have been excoriated by their their Catholic churches for supporting birth control and abortion. Democrats have short memories, and Cynthia Nixon is just taking a break from her support for marijuana. (The legalization of which, by the way, would make unmotivated youth even more unmotivated, less able to put in the hard work necessary for, say, getting into schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, or completing work on their BAs, if they've gotten that far, or arriving to work on time.) Andrew Cuomo is a pragmatist and knows that he needs to work with all kinds of people from all over this very large, diverse state of ours in order to get things done. You know, like our marriage equality bill, especially because the federal right for gay people to marry will now be in serious jeopardy.

La Guardia was also a WW I aviator having left Congress to serve as head of the U.S. air forces in Italy. Obviously he was smart enough to wear his seat belt.

Love reading about New York it brings me back to stories my grandmother told me about living in NYC.

Such an excellent (and to me, moving) story of a flawed figure I never knew about, and almost feels cautionary about what happens when principles take precedence over public relations. But before I went there and got on that soapbox, luckily I saw this, and started humming instead. :) “Our weather headline today is sure to surprise no one: It’s sticky." Tune of “I Feel Pretty” (West Side Story classic tune) It feels sticky, pretty sticky It feels sticky and icky, they say I’m not picky, but I’d rather stay inside today. It feels humid, much too humid They say through mid-day we will perspire It’s so humid that the evening rush may still be dire. See the plan we have for our dinner, dear It’s with friends who have no A-C Such a sticky day, such a sticky spot, such a sticky mess, sticky as can be Since it’s yucky, not surprising, That for lunch, I’m advising: take care Don’t get stuck in that sticky horrible air.

Also commemorated at 5th Avenue and 90th Street “Engineers Gate” to Central Park. https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/central-park/monuments/1045

Jonathan Wolfe- Thank you for this historical profile and all your work. Hopefully the New York Times will assign you to cover more current NYC news such as land use, local communities etc.

For years I look at another memorial to Mayor Mitchel, at the Central Park Reservoir. Despite many progressive efforts, like Teddy Roosevelt, he had some serious conservative traits that echo our current President. He was a war hawk, that pushed for universal military preparedness. He also campaigned under a narrative that Germans, Jews, and Irish ethnic groups were unpatriotic Americans. It should also be noted that his failed reelection bid was a 3 way split between him, Tammany winner John Hylan, and a popular Jewish-Socialist-Pacifist Morris Hillquit - an election with many modern day parallels.

I'm surprised they called him the boy mayor. I read someplace that in this time era, the average man lived to be about age 34 when this guy died. They should have called him the "not so young but no so old" mayor.

Mitchel is also remembered at Mitchel Field on Long Island-- the old Army Air Base turned Nassau Community College. Most think it was named for General Billy Mitchell of the Air Corps, but no.

"[Mayor Mitchell's] snazzy suits and hobnobbing with the wealthy didn’t win him fans among poor New Yorkers." Go figure. With that logic, today's poor people wouldn't have voted for Theodore Roosevelt or Franklin Roosevelt either; and yet both men, one a Republican and the other a Democrat, did more to advance the plight of the poor than any other politician except Lyndon Johnson. No, today people prefer politicians like Jumaane Williams, who's very good at getting himself arrested (i.e., getting publicity) but is opposed both to a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy and to marriage equality. (Birth control in any form is a very good way to eliminate income inequality in that it allows women, and couples, to get an education and a job and only then begin to think about having babies. And the promised fulfillment of marriage is good for gay people, whose self-esteem, too often, is corroded by public condemnation.) I was going to observe that perhaps yesterday's poor people were smarter. They needed to be. But in 2016, poor white America voted for Donald Trump. Now, there's a wealthy guy who knows how to manipulate non-thinkers.