HIST 3480: The History of NYC
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
The Father of Consolidation
Andrew Haswell Green (1820-1903)
 Green was a lawyer, reform Democrat,
and close friend of future N.Y. governor
and 1876 presidential candidate, Samuel
Tilden.
 Green first got involved with politics by
being elected to the School Board in
1854.
 His reputation for honesty and strong
administrative capabilities led to his
appointment as a Central Park
Commissioner. He served and also led
this commission between 1857 and 1870.
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Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Timeline of Consolidation
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The Dongan Charter (1686) and the Montgomerie Charter (1730)
gave the City of New York domain over the East River and its
ferries, depriving Brooklyn of rights to its own waterfront.
New Yorkers strongly opposed Brooklyn’s chartering as a city in
the 1830s as they saw it as potentially creating destructive
commercial competition.
In 1857, the two cities had at least some functions merged by the
state legislature with the creation of metropolitan police, fire, and
health districts.
The Central Park Commission was a state-sponsored agency
created in 1857 that was given power to develop bridges, roads,
and sewers on both sides of the river, and it was while serving on
this commission that Andrew Haswell Green began to develop a
plan for consolidation.
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Timeline of Consolidation
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Green proposed a non-binding plebiscite that goes forward in
1894 in which the New York and the surrounding counties vote in
favor of consolidation; the measure passes by a mere 500 odd
votes in Brooklyn.
Brooklynites rally against the measure and delay it for several
years.
Ultimately, upstate Republican boss Thomas Collier Platt (18331910) succeeds in getting the consolidation charter passed in
1897 through tremendous political arm-twisting and deal-making.
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Thomas Collier Platt
THOMAS COLLIER PLATT
(1820-1903)
 “Easy Boss” of upstate Republicans
 Supported Green’s plan for consolidation
since he saw it as an opportunity for
Republicans to take away more control of
the city from Tammany.
 He shepherded the Consolidation Act to
passage in 1896.
 Pushed through a new city charter through
the state legislature in 1897, focused
around a strong and centralized authority of
the mayor.
 Ultimately, Platt’s plan did not come to fruition, and he is discredited.
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Consolidation & The Progressive Era
New York City and Progressivism: The
Career of Theodore Roosevelt
(1858-1919)
• Born a sickly child into a very wealthy old-money New
York family.
• Graduates from Harvard (1880)
• State Assemblyman (1882-1884)
• Mother and young wife dies on the same day (February
14, 1884)
• Becomes a cowboy/rancher in the Badlands of the Dakota
Territory, but loses his $80,000 investment when a bad
winter kills off his cattle.
• Runs for mayor in 1886, but loses a three-way race to
Democrat Abram S. Hewitt (the other candidate was the
reformer Henry George).
• Serves on the U.S. Civil Service Commission, a three-man
commission to reform corruption and patronage in the
federal government (1889-1895).
Presidential portrait by
John Singer Sargent
(1903)
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Career of Theodore Roosevelt
(1858-1919)
•Appointed superintendent of the NYPD (1895-1896).
Befriends reformer Jacob Riis at this time.
• Serves as Assistant Secretary of the Navy
(1897-1898)
• Becomes a colonel of the “Rough Riders,” a volunteer
regiment that fought in Cuba during the SpanishAmerican War (1898)
• Elected Governor of New York (1899-1900).
• Selected and is elected as Vice President of the United
States (takes office March 4, 1901)
• McKinley dies on September 14th of gangrene
poisoning inflicted by two bullets from an assassin’s
gun on Sept. 5th and Roosevelt is sworn in as president.
• President (1901-1909)
Presidential portrait by
John Singer Sargent
(1903)
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
TEDDY ROOSEVELT AS STRONG’S SUPERINTENDENT OF THE BOARD
OF POLICE COMMISSIONERS (1895-1896)
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
NYC POLITICS FROM THE 1890s THROUGH THE DEPRESSION
Reform Cycle Begins: Corruption of Investigations of the 1890s
• 1894-1895: Lexow Committee – State legislature investigation largely
driven by concerns over police corruption in the Tenderloin, with pressure
from the Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst. Theordore Roosevelt becomes
Superintendant of Police during this time.
• 1899-1900: Mazet Committee (1899-1900) – Another state legislature
investigation driven by upstate Republicans that examined into organized
vice and graft in city government. Leads to Croker’s permanent retirement to
his estate in Ireland, Wantage, where he bred race horses.
• Birth of the Fusion Movement: Over the next three decades, elections were
a back and forth between Fusion Reformers taking power followed by
Tammany reasserting itself. Several mayors also used Tammany to get
elected, but then would strike out on an independent path (McClellan and
Gaynor are good examples).
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
POLITICS OF THE 1890s
AND EARLY 1900s
Mayors
1893-1894: Thomas F. Gilroy – Tammany
Democrat
1895-1897: William L. Strong – Fusion (he
himself was a Republican)
1898 - Consolidation
1898-1901: Robert A. Van Wyck – Tammany
Democrat
1902-1903: Seth L. Low – Citizen’s
Union/Republican/Anti-Tammany Democrats
1904-1909: George B. McClellan, Jr. –
Democrat (elected with Tammany help, but
proved independent)
1909-1913: William J. Gaynor – Tammany
Democrat (although a reformer)
1914-1917: John Purroy Mitchel – Fusion
1918-1925: John Francis Hylan – Tammany
Democrat
1926 – 1932: James “Jimmy” J. Walker –
Tammany Democrat, also known as “Beau
James” or the “night mayor”
Tammany Bosses
1886-1893: Richard Croker
1893-1897: John C. Sheehan
1897-1901: Richard Croker
1901-1902: Louis Nixon
1902-1924 : Charles Francis Murphy
1924-1929: George W. Olvany
1929-1934: John F. Curry
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Mayor Robert Van Wyck (1898-1901)
• First mayor of Consolidated Greater New York
• Hand-picked by Richard Croker of Tammany
since it was believed Van Wyck would not
interfere; had been a City Court judge.
• Tammany also ran his brother, Augustus, for
governor against Roosevelt in 1898.
• Oversaw the construction of the first subway line,
the IRT, which would open in 1904.
• Political career was ruined by the revelations of
the Mazet Committee, which showed that Van
Wyck, Croker, and other Tammany officials were
getting payoffs from the American Ice Company
to preserve its monopoly on ice in Manhattan
(it only would sell large $0.60 blocks, hurting
Tammany’s poor constituents).
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Mayor Seth Low (1902-1903)
• Born into a wealthy Brooklyn merchant family.
• Served as Mayor of Brooklyn from 1881 to 1885.
• Served as president of Columbia University from 1890 to
1901. Oversaw the move of the campus from midtown to
Morningside Heights in 1897.
• Ran for mayor of NYC in 1897 but loses to Van Wyck
because of divisions within anti-Tammany forces.
• After the revelations of the Mazet Committee
investigations, Tammany is temporarily discredited.
• Low becomes the first “fusion” candidate elected as mayor
• of NYC, taking office in 1902.
• Institutes civil service reform, where jobs are assigned by
merit rather than by political connections.
• He reduced police graft and improved the education
system.
• Cold and intellectual, he was not a good campaigner. He
also chose to enforce a ban on Sunday liquor sales, which
proved an important issue in his defeat by Democrat
George B. McClellan, Jr. in the 1903 campaign.
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. (1904-1909)
• Son of famed Civil War general, George B. McClellan,
who had run against Lincoln for president in 1864.
• Had become a Tammany president of the Board of
Aldermen in 1892 at age 27.
• Elected to the U.S. House in 1895.
• Defeats Mayor Low in the 1903 election with over
60,000 votes.
• Serves two terms (four-year terms were restored for
his second term) and grows increasingly independent
from Tammany.
• Oversees the opening of the IRT subway on Oct. 27,
1904 (he insisted on driving the ceremonial first train himself).
• Re-elected with Tammany’s help in 1904 in a bitter fight against independent
William Randolph Hearst, running on the “Municipal Ownership League” ticket.
• Becomes increasingly alienated from Tammany and Boss Murphy in second term.
• Immigration reaches it peak in 1907 with 1.1 million entering through Ellis Island.
• Tries to regulate the new “nickelodeon” industry, canceling their licenses in 1908.
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
1904 Plan and Profile of the IRT
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Mayor McClellan taking the controls
for the first subway run
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
1905 Herald Cartoon Critical of the IRT
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Charles Francis Murphy (1858-1924)
• Son of Irish immigrants, Murphy saved up
enough money to purchase his own saloon,
eventually acquiring several. He became the
Tammany political leader of the Gas House
District on the East Side (now Stuyvesant Town/
Peter Cooper Village).
• Becomes Tammany Grand Sachem in 1902 and
is key in getting McClellan elected. He remains as
sachem until 1924 and was perhaps the most
powerful Tammany leader ever.
• “Silent Murphy” reigned with restraint and
employed careful calculation.
• Dies on April 30, 1924, causing chaos for
Tammany. State Senator James Walker says,
“The brains of Tammany now lie in Calvary
Cemetery.”
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911)
• Born in the town of Makó in the Kingdom of Hungary
within the Hapsburg Empire in 1847 to a well-to-do
Jewish mercantile family.
• His family’s business went bankrupt in 1858, leading
young Pulitzer to attempt to enlist in several European
armies before emigrating to the U.S. in 1864 and enlisted
in the Union Army, fighting in the cavalry.
• After short stints in New York and New Bedford, Mass.,
he traveled to St. Louis by boxcar, where he found his first
reporter job at a German-language newspaper, the Westliche
Post. He soon became managing editor and was able to
purchase a proprietary share of the profitable paper.
• Pulitzer switched from the Republican Party to Democrats in 1880.
• He bought the St. Louis Dispatch and St. Louis Post in 1879 and
combined the two, creating a paper known for hard-hitting
investigative reporting and a populist orientation.
• In 1883, he bought the struggling New York World from financier
Jay Gould for $346,000, and turned it into a great success.
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951)
• Son of a wealthy California mining engineer. He enters
publishing by buying the San Francisco Examiner in
1887.
• Arrives on the New York scene by buying the failing
newspaper, the New York Journal in 1895 and
immediately begins a circulation war with Pulitzer's
New York World.
• Helps to engineer American entry into the SpanishAmerican War in 1898 by inflaming popular sentiments
against Spain. Viewed as one of the creators of “yellow
journalism.”
• Hearst served in the U.S. House from 1903 to 1907.
• Runs against McClellan in 1905 favoring the municipal
ownership of utilities and transit companies, which his
opponents deem socialism.
• Runs against Judge Gaynor in 1909 for mayor and is
once again defeated by Tammany.
• His life was the inspiration for Orson Welles’s brilliant
film, Citizen Kane (1941).
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
“The Yellow Kid”
• Popular feature of Pulitzer’s New
York World from 1895 to 1896.
• The Yellow Kid’s creator, Richard
F. Outcault, was hired away by
Hearst in 1897.
• The Yellow Kid had his head
shaved, which was a common
sight among New York City street
kids as a way to prevent lice; he
lived in “Hogan’s Alley” in a poor
Manhattan neighborhood.
• The Yellow Kid has been linked to
the term “yellow journalism.”
Consolidation
& The
Progressive
Era
“The Yellow
Kid”
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Mayor William J. Gaynor (1910-1913)
• Nearly became a Christian Brothers monk while still a
teenager, but drops out of the order while still a novice.
• Joined his father’s law firm instead.
• Served as a respected New York Supreme Court Justice
from 1895 to 1909.
• Picked by Tammany’s Charles Murphy to run in 1909 for
his reputation as incorruptibly honest reformer.
• Easily beats fusion candidate William Randolph Hearst
and Republican Otto Bannard.
• Walked to his inauguration from his home in Park Slope to
City Hall—would do this three-mile walk every day.
• Proved a real reformer, not a Tammany puppet, pruning
the city payroll of excess Tammany “no shows” and
initiated legislative efforts that became a new city charter
in 1911.
• Survives an attempted assassination on August 9, 1910,
just as he was boarding a ship for Europe; but with the
bullet lodged in his pharynx, he becomes depressed and
irascible, losing his effectiveness.
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Gaynor after being shot, August 9, 1910, by a
disgruntled dockworker, James Gallagher.
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire – March 25, 1911– 4:40 pm
• Fire breaks out at the ten-story Asch Building at 23-29
Washington Place right before quitting time in the top
three floors, which housed a women’s garment “sweatshop.”
• Fire spreads quickly; the passenger elevator operator is
incapacitated and dies.
• One staircase was blocked by fire, one was locked to prevent
theft (the foreman with the key escaped at the first sign of fire).
• The flimsy fire escape collapsed with the heat, and 20
people who were on it fell to their deaths.
• The two freight elevators became inoperable after three trips
since the heat warped their rails and people fell on to the top of
the cars with great force.
• The fire department responded quickly, but its ladders only
reached the sixth floor.
• People either are burned to death or choose to jump.
• Overall, 146 workers are killed, including 125 young female
workers, mostly Jewish and Italian immigrants, all within a span
of about 18 minutes.
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire – March 25, 1911– 4:40 pm
• Owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were acquitted of
criminal charges, but in a civil lawsuit had to pay $75
for each victim killed.
• The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
(ILGWU)—the union representing many Triangle
workers—organizes a relief fund for victims’ families
and protests about the conditions that led to the disaster.
• The New York State Legislature created the Factory
Investigating Commission (FIC), which led to better
regulation; young Lower East Side assemblyman Al
Smith was vice chairman and distinguishes himself.
• Tammany boss Charles Murphy gets behind reform.
• Noted social worker, Francis Perkins, leads the NYC’s
new Committee on Public Safety, formed after the fire.
Perkins later would become FDR’s secretary of labor,
the first female cabinet member.
Shirtwaist style
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Officials look on near bodies of those who jumped
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
Editorial cartoon in Hearst’s New York Journal by Tad Dorgan
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
John Purroy Mitchel (1914-1917) “The Boy Mayor”
• Young lawyer comes to prominence as anti-Tammany
Democratic aldermen in the early 1900s.
• Becomes President of the Board of Aldermen in 1909.
• Leads a corruption investigation of the corrupt borough
presidents of the Bronx and Manhattan and gets them
dismissed, which leads to his city-wide prominence.
• Enters the 1913 race as a “Fusion” candidate, backed by
Republicans, Jewish and Protestant reformers, and antiTammany Democrats. He wins at 34 years of age.
• Reformed police department considerably, but ran into
political trouble when he vetoed new school construction and
threatened to take funding away from Catholic schools (even
though he himself was a devout Catholic).
• Lost his 1917 reelection bid to Tammany “dark horse” John
Francis Hylan in an election that featured a non-Fusion
Republican and Socialist candidate, Morris Hilquit, who
Mitchel barely beat for second place.
• Mitchel joined the army air corps to become a pilot and died in
a training accident in 1918.
Consolidation & The Progressive Era
John Francis Hylan (1918-1925)
• “Red Mike” served as a locomotive engineer for the Brooklyn
Union Elevated Railway and was a longtime resident of
Bushwick.
• Studied law at night, became an established attorney and then a
Kings County judge.
• Chosen by Tammany as a “dark horse” candidate in the 1917
mayoral election but defeats fusion incumbent John Purroy
Mitchel with the backing of Tammany and the Hearst papers;
the latter shared his desire for municipal ownership of utilities.
• Progressive reformers aghast at his election; the New York
Times calls him a “man of marvelous mental density.”
• Proved to be a relatively capable mayor who was honest and
institute many reforms that made the city better run: helps
create the Port Authority of New York and begins initiates the
move toward the creation of the city-owned subway line, the
IND, and creates a city-owned radio station, WNYC.
• Easily wins reelection, but the Tammany power vacuum after
the death of Murphy in 1924 left it in a state of confusion and
opened the door for the charismatic Walker.