Fiorello LaGuardia was born in Greenwich Village and died in the Bronx.\u00a0 He was truly a native son of New York.\u00a0 His father was Italian Catholic, his mother Italian Jewish and he was raised Episcopalian. \u00a0He grew up in Prescott, Arizona.\u00a0 At age 16, his family moved to his mother\u2019s hometown of Trieste in what is now Italy.\u00a0 With his linguistic skills, he worked at the US Consulates in Hungary and Croatia.\u00a0 When he was passed over for a promotion, he quit the State Department, moved back to New York City to attend New York University law school.\u00a0 In 1910, he graduated, was admitted to the bar the same year, and started his law practice.<\/p>\n
His law practice was centered on representing immigrant workers in the garment industry.\u00a0 Although he never made much money, he made friends and gained a reputation on the Lower East Side.<\/p>\n
La Guardia turned his attention to politics and he joined the Republican Party.\u00a0 His first run for the US Congress in 1914 was unsuccessful, but his effort was sufficiently impressive that he was named Deputy Attorney General for the State of New York the following year.\u00a0 In 1916, he ran again against a Tammany-backed incumbent.\u00a0 He campaigned speaking to crowds in Yiddish, Italian, and Serbo-Croatian.\u00a0 He was narrowly elected to the US Congress and initiated his political career.\u00a0 His congressional career was paused briefly with the start of WWI when he joined the war effort as a pilot. In 1919, he was elected to the New York City Board of Alderman.\u00a0 He ran for Mayor in 1921, but was defeated in the primary.<\/p>\n
In 1922, his bid to return to Congress was challenged by a Tammany-backed Jewish candidate.\u00a0 He was billed as an anti-Semite and \u201cJew-hater\u201d.\u00a0 He was urged by his campaign to announce publicly that his mother was Jewish.\u00a0 He declined but challenged his opponent to a debate in Yiddish.\u00a0 His opponent declined and LaGuardia won his race.<\/p>\n
His second bid for Mayor of New York City in 1929 resulted in defeat. Fiorella LaGuardia lost his Congressional seat in the 1932 FDR landslide.\u00a0 In 1933, with his third attempt, La Guardia won the race for Mayor of New York.\u00a0 LaGuardia served three consecutive terms as the Mayor of New York.<\/p>\n
It was as Mayor of New York that LaGuardia gained fame as a feisty and authoritarian leader.\u00a0 He was bent on ridding the city of corruption and the Democrat-led Tammany machine.\u00a0 He proposed the clearance of slums, supported the improvement of city services, and the rewrite of the city charter.\u00a0 He read comic strips on the radio and frequently showed up at fire houses to help fight fires.\u00a0 He initiated big infrastructure projects such as LaGuardia airport and built bridges and roads.\u00a0 He exploited his good relationship with FDR to bring New York New Deal funds along with the WPA work projects. He was one of New York\u2019s most popular mayors.<\/p>\n
LaGuardia refused to run for a fourth term as Mayor and retired in 1945.\u00a0 Small in stature at 5\u20192\u201d, he was commonly referred to as the \u201cLittle Flower\u201d yet he left his indelible mark on the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fiorello LaGuardia was born in Greenwich Village and died in the Bronx.\u00a0 He was truly a native son of New York.\u00a0 His father was Italian Catholic, his mother Italian Jewish and he was raised Episcopalian. \u00a0He grew up in Prescott, Arizona.\u00a0 At age 16, his family moved to his mother\u2019s hometown of Trieste in what…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5590,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historical"],"yoast_head":"\n