“Justice on the Broadest Scale”

The La Guardia program in some ways resembled that of the “sewer socialists” of the early twentieth century. The moderate wing of the Socialist Party, sometimes derided by those to its left for its lack of engagement with questions of national or international revolution, pursued incremental improvements in public services for urban immigrant workers and their families. The changes brought about in cities like Milwaukee where the socialists achieved power cumulatively proved transformational in working-class lives, as did the La Guardia reforms.

For a child, what a difference it was between having to play in a dirty lot or dodge cars in the streets and having a playground and swimming pool nearby. For families, leaving a slum tenement for a new public housing apartment, with modern appliances and sanitary conditions, made everyday life utterly different. So, too, did the ability to go just about anywhere in the city for only a nickel on the expanded transit system. And for many families, a local health center meant access, for the first time, to modern medicine. This was not a revolution, but it was in its own way revolutionary.

The La Guardia public works not only brought new comforts and services to working people — they also were a massive employment program during the depths of the worst depression the country had faced. La Guardia saw no contradiction between the need to create jobs quickly and elevating civic standards, offering working people not minimal amenities and services but the best possible. The social critic Lewis Mumford wrote that the Harlem River Houses exemplified “what New York might be if we wanted to make it rival the richer suburbs as a place to live and bring up children.” (Because of changed federal funding rules, later public housing projects did not match its quality.) The high schools built in the La Guardia era were grand edifices with indoor swimming pools, including Bayside (where, bizarrely, at least in my day, the boys took swimming classes in the nude). The campus built for Brooklyn College had the air of a traditional, upscale private college, with a Georgian-style quad.

Buildings, infrastructure, and social services were important, but La Guardia believed ordinary people deserved more. Running for mayor, he declared, “I want justice on the broadest scale. . . . justice that gives to everyone some chance for the beauty and the better things of life.” That meant, among other things, culture and the arts. When during World War II, the city took over the massive Shriners Temple on 55th Street for failure to pay taxes, La Guardia, working closely with several labor unions, established the nonprofit City Center for Music and Drama, which presented low-cost theater, symphonic, ballet, and opera performances. The New York City Opera Company not only offered tickets at a third the price of the Metropolitan Opera; it also, unlike its establishment rival, refused to practice racial discrimination in the singers it presented.