Bayor, Ronald H. Fiorello La Guardia: Ethnicity and Reform. Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, Inc. 1993.
LA GUARDIA, Fiorello Henry
About this object
1882–1947
Biography
LA GUARDIA, Fiorello Henry, a Representative from New York; born in New York City December 11, 1882; moved to Arizona; attended the public schools and high school at Prescott, Ariz.; returned to New York; was graduated from the New York University Law School in 1910; was admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in New York City; served in the American Consular Service in Budapest, Hungary, and in Trieste, Austria, 1901-1904; American consular agent at Fiume, Hungary, 1904-1906; interpreter in the Immigration Service at Ellis Island 1907-1910; deputy attorney general of the State of New York 1915-1917; elected as a Republican to the Sixty-fifth and Sixty-sixth Congresses and served from March 4, 1917, until December 31, 1919, when he resigned; during the First World War absented himself from the House and on August 15, 1917, was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Army Air Service; promoted to the rank of captain and later to that of major; commanded the United States air forces on the Italian-Austrian front and was awarded the Italian War Cross; president of the board of aldermen of New York City in 1920 and 1921; elected as a Republican to the Sixty-eighth Congress, as an American Labor candidate to the Sixty-ninth Congress, and as a Republican to the Seventieth, Seventy-first, and Seventy-second Congresses (March 4, 1923-March 3, 1933); one of the managers appointed by the House of Representatives in 1932 to conduct the impeachment proceedings against Harold Louderback, judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, but left office before Senate trial; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1932 to the Seventy-third Congress; served as mayor of New York City 1934-1945; president of the United States Conference of Mayors 1936-1945; United States Director of Office of Civilian Defense from May 1941 to February 1942; chairman of the United States section of the Permanent Joint Board on Defense (United States and Canada) 1940-1946; special United States Ambassador to Brazil in 1946; director general of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in 1946; died in New York City September 20, 1947; interment in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
[ Top ]External Research Collections
New York Public Library
Manuscripts and Archives Division
New York, NY
Papers:
1918-1945, 62 linear feet (76 boxes and 2 scrapbooks) of originals and 54 microfilm reels of copies.
The collection documents La Guardia's careers as a congressman, president of the Board of Alderman, and a three-term mayor of New York City. The largest portions of the collection are congressional and mayoral correspondence files. A finding aid is available online.
Brooklyn Historical Society
Brooklyn, NY
Papers:
4 letters (August 30, 1938; January 18, 1943; May 6, 1947; and June 30, 1947) and 1 political appointment (September 15, 1942).
A finding aid is available in the repository.
City of New York Department of Records and Information
Services
Municipal Archives
New York, NY
Papers:
Collection is mayoral papers and correspondence, including photographs and sound recordings.
Columbia University
Oral History Project
New York, NY
Oral History:
Mrs. Fiorello La Guardia, 1950, 56 pages.
Fiorello H. La Guardia Community College
La Guardia & Wagner Archives
Long Island City, NY
Papers:
1882-1947, 35 feet.
Collection includes transcripts of speeches and radio broadcasts, files of his work as Director-General of UNNRA, over 4,000 photographs, personal papers, original sketches, artifacts, and scrapbooks. Unpublished finding aid in repository.
Oral History:
Collection includes more than 50 oral histories, some transcribed, from friends and associates.
Some restricted.
New-York Historical Society
New York, NY
Papers:
8 letters (1933-1943) and miscellaneous campaign notes (1933).
A finding aid is available in the repository.
Bibliography / Further Reading
Capeci, Dominic J. "Fiorello H. La Guardia and the American Dream: A Document." Italian Americana 4 (Fall/Winter 1978): 1-21.
------. "Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Harlem 'Crime Wave' of 1941." New York Historical Society Quarterly 64 (January 1980): 7-29.
------. "From Different Liberal Perspectives: Fiorello H. La Guardia, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and Civil Rights in New York City, 1941-1943." Journal of Negro History 62 (April 1977): 160-73.
Cuneo, Ernest. Life With Fiorello; A Memoir. New York: Macmillan, 1955.
Elliot, Lawrence. Little Flower: The Life and Times of Fiorello La Guardia. New York: Morrow, 1983.
Garrett, Charles. La Guardia Years; Machine and Reform Politics in New York City. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1961.
Hargrove, Edwin C., Jr. "The Tragic Hero in Politics: Theodore Roosevelt, David Lloyd, and Fiorello La Guardia." Parts I and II. Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1963.
Hazeltine, Alice Isabel, comp. We Grew Up in America, pp. 166-73. New York: Abingdon, 1954.
Heckscher, August, with Phyllis Robinson. When La Guardia Was Mayor: New York's Legendary Years. New York: Norton, 1978.
Kessner, Thomas. Fiorello La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989.
La Guardia, Fiorello H. The Making of an Insurgent. Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott, 1948.
------. New York City at War; Emergency Services. [New York: Casey Press Corporation, 1943].
Mann, Arthur. La Guardia. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959-1965.
------. "When La Guardia Took Over." New York Times Magazine (2 January 1966): 22-23+.
Manners, William. Patience and Fortitude: Fiorello La Guardia: A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.
Moses, Robert. La Guardia; A Salute and a Memoir. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957.
Rodman, Bella, and Philip Sterling. Fiorello La Guardia. New York: Hill and Wang, 1962.
Tugwell, Rexford Guy. Art of Politics as Practiced by Three Great Americans: Franklin Delano Rosevelt, Luis Munoz Marin, and Fiorello Guardia. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958.
Weston, Paul B. A Hammer in the City. Evanston, Ill.: Regency Books, 1962.
Zinn, Howard. La Guardia in Congress. 1959. Reprint, New York: Norton, 1969.