John Purroy Mitchel

New York - MCMXXX

Addressed As

Deceased or Former Mayor

Background

John Purroy Mitchel (July 19, 1879 – July 6, 1918) was the 95th mayor of New York from 1914 to 1917. At 34, he was the second-youngest mayor and he is sometimes referred to as "The Boy Mayor of New York." Mayor Mitchel is remembered for his short career as leader of reform politics in New York as well as for his early death as a US Army Air Service officer in the last months of World War I. Mitchel's staunchly-Catholic New York family had been founded by his paternal grandfather and namesake, John Mitchel, an Ulster Presbyterian Young Irelander who became a renowned writer and leader in the Irish independence movement and as a staunch supporter of the Confederate States.

Reformers praised him. Oswald Garrison Villard, the editor of The Nation, said he was "the ablest and best Mayor New York ever had." Former President Theodore Roosevelt, endorsing Mitchel's re-election bid in 1917, stated that he had "given us as nearly an ideal administration of the New York City government as I have seen in my lifetime." However, even his staunchest supporters admitted he was a poor politician who was too aloof from the ordinary voters and too concerned with "scientific" urban management. He still won in a landslide in 1913 but lost the Republican primary in 1917.

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