Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Tammany Hall
Caught between his campaign for president and his duties as governor, FDR navigated political pressures to force the resignation of New York City’s corrupt mayor, Jimmy Walker.
A bold dream to connect the Hudson to the Great Lakes by canal created a transportation revolution.
Why do they usually avoid holding conventions in New York?
This summer marks a sea change in the traditions of American party politics.
Some 20 years ago, a friend let me leaf through several photograph albums compiled by his grandfather, an Army surgeon who had spent the 1880s and 1890s stationed at dusty Western outposts, helping to keep a wary eye on the Indians, only recently subdued.
AMERICAN CHARACTERS
Lincoln Steffens was a young reporter for the Commercial Advertiser during the late 1890’s, and he always remembered it as a grand time for a New York City newspaperman: “There was the Cuban war, the Boer war, and best of all—T
In the dead center of the long, rectangular island of Manhattan—New York to most people—sits a long rectangle of parkland known appropriately enough as Central Park.
Thus Boss Richard Croker breezily dismissed charges of corruption. But the fortune he made from “honest graft” was not enough to buy him what he most wanted
The most glamorous and the most powerful of the Tammany bosses who ran New York City for much of the century between Boss Tweed and Carmine DeSapio was Richard Croker.
The 1910 race for the mayoralty of New York looked like a tough one.
Once upon a time an honest man ran for mayor of New York City — and, naturally, lost
Part hero, part rogue, Boston’s Jim Curley triumphed over the Brahmins in his heyday, but became in the end a figure of pity.
In a day of rampant money-making, gentle Peter Cooper was not only a reformer but successful, widely loved, and rich.
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