Fiorello LaGuardia: Five Foot Two and Larger Than Life

On my late-morning walk through Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York, I paid a visit to the grave of New York City’s 99th mayor, known to most today by the airport named in his honour: Fiorello La Guardia, “the Little Flower”.

The diminutive mayor was born in Greenwich Village in 1882. His father, Achille La Guardia, was Italian-born, Catholic, and an army bandmaster. His mother, Irene Coen, was Jewish, from a distinguished Italian-Jewish family of scholars in Trieste,

Fiorello’s mother was Italian-Jewish from Trieste. 

then under Austrian rule. Young Fiorello was named after his maternal grandmother, Fiorina; both names mean “little flower”. As you can see in the photo, a flower is inscribed on his tombstone, a quiet nod to his first name.

The La Guardia family left New York when Fiorello was about three, following his father’s military postings across the United States before settling in 1898 in Trieste, a port city at the top of the Adriatic. At 18, Fiorello became a clerk at the US consulate in Budapest, and while still in his early twenties he was given charge of the small consular office at Fiume, now Rijeka, Croatia. Along the way, the gifted linguist picked up five languages, including Yiddish. All of this would serve him well years later, when he sought the votes of immigrant New York.

One of his Harvard-educated superiors in the consular service reportedly told him he would never rise without a university degree and the right background. So Fiorello came home and, in 1907, enrolled at New York University Law School, studying at night for three years while working days as an interpreter at Ellis Island. He had no college degree and had not finished high school, so he first had to pass state equivalency exams. He graduated in 1910 and was admitted to the bar that same year, at 27.

La Guardia, who had been raised an Episcopalian (Anglican), opened a small practice in Lower Manhattan serving immigrants, often for little or no fee. He handled deportation cases and represented striking garment workers for free. Disillusioned by the corruption in his city and determined to change it, he was elected mayor of New York City in 1933, after two failed attempts, becoming the city’s first Italian-American mayor. He would serve three consecutive terms and became enormously popular, especially with Italian, Jewish and working-class voters.

The airport grew out of a famous stunt. In 1934, La Guardia flew home on a ticket marked “New York”, but the plane landed in Newark, New Jersey. He refused to get off, insisting his ticket said New York, and had the plane fly him on to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn,

giving reporters an earful along the way. Fiorello wanted an airport for his city, and he got one: construction began in 1937, even as critics mocked it as far too big and expensive. Two years later, New York Municipal Airport opened to airline traffic, and within a year it was among the busiest airports in the world. The city added “LaGuardia Field” to the name within weeks of the dedication. Today it is simply LaGuardia.

Fiorello Henry La Guardia died at his home in the Bronx on September 20, 1947, at the age of 64. His funeral was held two days later at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Episcopal cathedral in Manhattan. In keeping with his dislike of pomp, the service was simple and brief, with no eulogies.

1882-1947