His inauguration took place on January 1, 1910. He walked to work—his very first visit to City Hall. From then on, he regularly walked across the Brooklyn Bridge between his office and his home in Park Slope, Brooklyn. That year, a Brooklyn resident officially became the mayor of Greater New York. It is said he often blended common sense with Greek philosophy, a trait that seemed to impress the entire New York press corps. Just months after his inauguration, an assassination attempt was made on William J. Gaynor. Read more about it at brooklyn-yes.com.
The Assassination Attempt
Most New York mayors get booed while doing their job; there has always been and always will be no shortage of disgruntled citizens. But with William J. Gaynor, things took a different turn: he was wounded during an attempted assassination. The mayor was lucky.
Following the attempt, a bullet fired by a disgruntled former municipal employee remained lodged in Gaynor’s neck. Three years later, suffering from the lingering effects of that wound, he died of a heart attack. Gaynor was the only New York City mayor to die in office.
William J. Gaynor was nominated in 1909. As mayor, he became an independent reformer. He fought against police brutality and corruption. For example, Police Lieutenant Charles Becker was convicted of ordering the murder of gambler Herman Rosenthal during Gaynor’s term. He advocated for public transit and abolished tolls on the East River bridges.
Seven months later, on Tuesday, August 9, 1910, he boarded the ocean liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse for a month-long vacation in Europe. He was posing for photographers and speaking on deck with well-wishers and a fellow passenger—the President of Chile—when John J. Gallagher approached him. Gallagher was a man who had been fired several times from the city’s Department of Docks.
Gallagher, a 58-year-old Irish immigrant who lived alone in a Third Avenue boarding house, had been accused of neglect of duty. Claiming he was the victim of a conspiracy, he had written to the mayor demanding compensation. He had also tried to meet with him a few days earlier at City Hall but was rebuffed with a note stating the mayor could do nothing about the matter he was writing about.
Gallagher fired several shots from a .38 caliber revolver, hitting the mayor and his Sanitation Commissioner, William H. Edwards, a former Princeton football player who weighed over 300 pounds. Believing he was fatally wounded, the mayor managed to ask for his farewells to be sent to the people.
Public Sympathy
He was taken to St. Mary’s, where he recovered quite quickly. Gaynor returned to City Hall in early October. The shooting and assassination attempt sparked such an outpouring of sympathy across the U.S. that he was immediately projected for Governor and even President. However, William J. Gaynor declined the higher office.
Interestingly, shortly before the attack, one of his constituents had warned him against walking around the city without a guard. Immediately after the shooting, Gaynor blamed “journalistic scoundrels” for inflaming public sentiment against him and creating a climate for violence. Evidently because Gaynor survived, Mr. Gallagher was never tried for shooting the mayor. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison for shooting Mr. Edwards and died in 1913 in a state hospital for the criminally insane.
A former layman and member of the Christian Order’s lay brotherhood, Gaynor could be both sharp-tongued and opinionated. He did not suffer fools gladly. When introduced to a fanatical proponent of Sunday blue laws, a man who influenced the canon title, Gaynor refused to shake his hand.
Shortly before sailing again for Europe on September 4, 1913, he planned an independent campaign for re-election, saying he was going to spend two weeks on the ocean where no one could get to him. He died aboard the steamship Baltic on September 10. Gaynor’s body was returned to New York on the liner Lusitania. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery.
The Death of William Gaynor
After his death, Astoria Park was immediately named in his honor, although that name was later revoked. A Brooklyn high school was named after him but was subsequently closed. Due to renovations at City Hall, his official portrait, which usually hung on the third floor, was kept in storage for a long time.
Mayor Gaynor’s funeral took place in 1913. Born upstate in 1851, Gaynor had worked as a reporter for The Brooklyn Argus. As a lawyer living in Park Slope and a candidate for State Supreme Court, he challenged John MacCain, the powerful Coney Island party boss who was later convicted of criminal offenses and obstructing democracy. Gaynor was considered incorruptible. He literally threw politicians out of his office who tried to pay for his endorsement.
The following April, a 71-year-old unemployed blacksmith shot at Gaynor’s successor, John Purroy Mitchel, but missed, instead hitting a Corporation Counsel in the cheek. In defense, Mr. Mitchel drew his own revolver—one with which he had once accidentally shot his friend in the leg.