VIDEO: 1938 World Series NY Yankees vs. Chicago Cubs

Seventy-five years ago, the Chicago Cubs and the New York Yankees faced off in a lopsided World Series contest.  The powerhouse Yankees swept the Cubs in four straight games.  Watch the highlights of Game Four, narrated by Archives baseball maven Stephen Weinstein, and see Mayor La Guardia give a Bronx Cheer.  Sadly, in 2013 New York fans will have to remember the old Brooklyn Dodger refrain, "Wait 'til next year!"

VIDEOS: Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Casey Stengel, Fiorello La Guardia, Brooklyn Dodgers, and NY Yankees and Giants

Bedlam at Shea Stadium when the Mets win the 1969 World Series

Baseball is in the air at Citifield, Yankee Stadium, and the La Guardia and Wagner Archives.  Check out our new videos narrated by Stephen Weinstein, the Archives' baseball expert extraordinaire : 

"Opening Day 1936: New York Giants vs. Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds" where Mayor La Guardia throws out the first pitch, the Giants trounce the Dodgers, and Babe Ruth watches the action.

"Joe DiMaggio's Wild Dash Home Clinches Yankees 1939 World Series Victory Over the Cincinnati Reds"  The Yankees swept the Cincinnati Reds that year and this baseball newsreel would have been seen in movie theaters alongside the news of the Soviet Union's and Nazi  Germany's conquest of Poland.

You can also view the Archives' slide show,  Baseball in New York, on the La Guardia and Wagner Archives computer screens located on the 1^st floor of the walkway between the M and E buildings by the La Guardia Welcome Center, and the 2nd and 4th floors of the lounge areas of the C-building.  You can also view them online at : http://tinyurl.com/dxalkg7

Mayor La Guardia's Cousin Knocks on the Archives' Door

Patrizia Luzzatto with her cousin Fiorello La Guardia

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs

You never know who will walk in your door on any particular morning. Yesterday, it was Patrizia Luzzatto, the cousin of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. She arrived unannounced to the Archives researching the Luzzatto family tree. Fiorello’s mother was Irene Luzzatto-Coen of Trieste. Born in the Austro-Hungarian port city of Trieste, Irene was of Italian-Jewish heritage. Patizia and Fiorello share a common great-grandfather, who I learned from Patrizia was a rabbi and a teacher in a yeshiva. The Luzzatto family had deep roots in Trieste dating back to the 18^th century, but they were most likely Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in the fifteenth century, although medieval Roman and Florentine records also mention Luzzattos.

I had the privilege of sharing notes with Patrizia, who has spent the last two years researching the Luzzattos, about Fiorello La Guardia and his family. (She will be sending her research to the Archives.) We had both read the autobiography of Fiorello's sister, Gemma La Guardia Gluck, and discussed her harrowing experiences during World War II. Gemma had married a Hungarian Jewish man and settled in Budapest before World War I. She lost both her husband and her son-in-law to Nazi genocide. The Nazis initially sent Gemma, her daughter and grandson to the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Knowing Gemma was Mayor La Guardia’s sister, the Nazis then sent them to Berlin as potential ransom. When the war ended, Gemma and Fiorello regained contact and he helped her to settle in New York City in the Queensbridge Houses his administration had built. (To learn more about Gemma’s story and read the correspondence between her and Fiorello go to: http://tinyurl.com/bctcrb5 )

In our conversation, I learned that Patrizia’s family, like Gemma’s, were also survivors who went first to Argentina and later settled permanently in Caracas, Venezuela. Both are stories to think deeply about, especially as we approach Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) on April 8^th, which will be the 70^th anniversary of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Gemma La Guardia Gluck: Sister of Fiorello and Holocaust Survivor

Gemma La Guardia Gluck

In commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Archives is featuring the story of Gemma La Guardia Gluck, sister of Fiorello and Holocaust survivor, on our website.  Fiorello's and Gemma's mother was Jewish and Gemma had married a Hungarian Jewish man and settled in Budapest before World War II.  To read more about Gemma's harrowing story and her correspondence with Fiorello when he helped her and her family emigrate to the U.S., click here.  

Professor Emerita Janet Lieberman Remembers the 1939 New York World's Fair

Professor Emerita Janet Lieberman 

Remembers the 1939 New York World's Fair

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs 

On Sunday April 30, 1939, the New York World’s Fair officially opened with a formal ceremony that included a speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Fair’s opening was selected to coincide with the 150th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration as the first president of the United States in New York City.

In commemoration of the Fair’s opening, the La Guardia and Wagner Archives has posted on its YouTube channel a video containing footage of the Fair and the memories of La Guardia Community College Professor Emerita Janet Lieberman visiting the Fair. The video was compiled and edited by Sandy Chase.

The 1939 New York World’s Fair offered a vision of a utopian city of tomorrow—one in which life was going to be easy thanks to new technology that would revolutionize transportation, home economics and daily life. Yet, the Fair made no mention of war, no sense of a troubled present, in spite of the looming world nightmare.

Marijuana Legalization Arguments Similar to La Guardia's Arguments Against Prohibition

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs

Ninety three years ago this month the 18^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, banning the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors."  Congressman Fiorello H. La Guardia was a major opponent of prohibition. In the 1926 photo below you can see him mixing "near beer" with malt tonic to create 2% beer to demonstrate how easily Prohibition could be flouted.    In his article "Prohibition: A National Farce" (March 1927 "A Smokers Companion"), La Guardia argued that Prohibition was impossible to enforce, led to criminality, and cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue.  In  "Marijuana Push in Colorado Likens It to Alcohol," The New York Times reports similar arguments being made by proponents of marijuana legalization, "Banning or improperly regulating a substance that large numbers of people will use anyway failed in the 1920s with alcohol - with the spread of speakeasies and corruption during Prohibition - and is failing now with marijuana, they say."

Fiorello La Guardia pouring beer at his congressional office, June 1926.  

The La Guardia and Wagner Archives explores these issues in our "Unforgiving Economy" calendar/website  in a month called "The Underground Economy," and developed a lesson in our Women's Leadership Curriculum on temperance and prohibition, called 19th Century Reformers Ida Wells-Barnett and Frances E. Willard.

Below are some other interesting links related to that theme:

An Identity Thief at Age 18:  

America Goes Dry With Prohibition:  

Gangster Al Capone Exploits Prohibition:   

Assignment Discovery Shorts: Prohibition Makes Chicago Corrupt: