1882–1947

Mayor of New York from 1933–1945, La Guardia combined in himself two of the city’s greatest cultures: he was the son of a Jewish mother and an Italian–American father. He was a vigorous, impassioned, reform–minded, and popular leader who was not above reading comic strips over the radio during a newspaper strike in 1942. His bluntness and loud speeches were legendary; one newspaper said that he had become popular only through “lusty mudding and robust histrionics.”