BOSS TWEED: The Corrupt Pol who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York by Kenneth D. Ackerman Page A
Authors: Kenneth D. Ackerman
Tags: History
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banquet under what reporters called a “spacious circular pavilion” erected on the wide green lawns, though the charity boys had to fight for food with the swarm of news reporters Tweed had invited to witness his good deed. “I never saw so many persons claiming to represent the newspaper profession,” one of them wrote. 17
These were gravy days. Tweed had grown rich, and bolder in showing it. He held court each morning at his Duane Street office, dispensing liquor, cigars, and favors amid the elegant finery of mahogany furniture, cut flowers, and glass dividers. Passersby described his new home on Fifth Avenue at 43rd Street as “a palatial mansion, with a brownstone front, an aristocratic flight of stone steps, and a front door buried in gorgeous moldings and carvings of mahogany and rosewood.” Inside, Tweed served champagne and dollar cigars in “rich parlors [kept] warm with luxurious gaslights, which danced within their figured shades.” 18 He rode about town in a barouche carriage with a four-horse team and traveled the state’s rail lines in a private Wagner parlor car, playing fifty-cent-ante draw poker with political friends along the way. At the train stations, he avoided pesky job seekers and favor-askers by using his own private entrance.
His wife Mary Jane and their eight children seemed mostly to disappear from his public life these days, except his two oldest sons, 24 year-old William Jr. whom he’d now made an assistant city district attorney, and 22-year-old Richard whom he’d installed as manager of the Metropolitan Hotel. Tweed planned soon to renovate the hotel into a showplace. He still ate well, but his extravagance raised eyebrows: “That’s Tweed. Drinks wine at 1 o’clock in the afternoon,” one neighborhood steakhouse owner grumbled. “He’ll come to
a bad end. Never knew a man who drank champagne in the daytime who didn’t.” 19
In Albany at the state legislature, Senator Tweed began using his parliamentary muscle to build a unique record as city champion: He sponsored bills to charter the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Stock Exchange, to support Presbyterian and Mount Sinai Hospitals and the Shepard’s Fold orphanage, and to open new streets in crowded Manhattan—extending Lexington Avenue 20 and widening Broadway from 34th to 49th Street. Critics charged graft, but Tweed as usual shrugged off the complaints for lack of proof. 21 He made his suite at Albany’s Delavan House one of the capitol’s finest private apartments; he fitted its seven spacious rooms with cut-glass decanters, steel-engraved wall hangings, rose-decorated porcelain cuspidors, and lushly carpeted floors.Tweed had a penchant for flowers and canaries; they decorated all his rooms. 22 He kept a walnut sideboard cabinet always stocked with whiskey, champagne, and cigars to woo the constant stream of visiting politicos, newsmen, and lobbyists.
For his Irish and German immigrant backers, Tweed used his chairmanship of the legislature’s Charitable and Religious Societies Committee to win direct public subsidies for Catholic parochial schools—violating the traditional rule against public funding of religious institutions. 23 He hid the provision in the back pages of the annual Tax Levy, a long, complex bill that contained the city’s overall budget and tax base and was loaded with pork for districts throughout the state; for upstate Protestants to get their own special favors, they’d have to give Tweed his. Tweed’s victory won him cheers from immigrant wards where it greatly expanded classrooms at a time when public schools barely met the need, but drew protest from Protestants and opponents of church-state meddling. “Papal conspiracy,” some Republicans cried. “Another raid on public schools,” echoed the New-York Times , arguing that “no Catholic parent will be permitted to send his child to public schools of the State on pain of excommunication.” 24 Tweed stuck to his guns,
These were gravy days. Tweed had grown rich, and bolder in showing it. He held court each morning at his Duane Street office, dispensing liquor, cigars, and favors amid the elegant finery of mahogany furniture, cut flowers, and glass dividers. Passersby described his new home on Fifth Avenue at 43rd Street as “a palatial mansion, with a brownstone front, an aristocratic flight of stone steps, and a front door buried in gorgeous moldings and carvings of mahogany and rosewood.” Inside, Tweed served champagne and dollar cigars in “rich parlors [kept] warm with luxurious gaslights, which danced within their figured shades.” 18 He rode about town in a barouche carriage with a four-horse team and traveled the state’s rail lines in a private Wagner parlor car, playing fifty-cent-ante draw poker with political friends along the way. At the train stations, he avoided pesky job seekers and favor-askers by using his own private entrance.
His wife Mary Jane and their eight children seemed mostly to disappear from his public life these days, except his two oldest sons, 24 year-old William Jr. whom he’d now made an assistant city district attorney, and 22-year-old Richard whom he’d installed as manager of the Metropolitan Hotel. Tweed planned soon to renovate the hotel into a showplace. He still ate well, but his extravagance raised eyebrows: “That’s Tweed. Drinks wine at 1 o’clock in the afternoon,” one neighborhood steakhouse owner grumbled. “He’ll come to
a bad end. Never knew a man who drank champagne in the daytime who didn’t.” 19
In Albany at the state legislature, Senator Tweed began using his parliamentary muscle to build a unique record as city champion: He sponsored bills to charter the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Stock Exchange, to support Presbyterian and Mount Sinai Hospitals and the Shepard’s Fold orphanage, and to open new streets in crowded Manhattan—extending Lexington Avenue 20 and widening Broadway from 34th to 49th Street. Critics charged graft, but Tweed as usual shrugged off the complaints for lack of proof. 21 He made his suite at Albany’s Delavan House one of the capitol’s finest private apartments; he fitted its seven spacious rooms with cut-glass decanters, steel-engraved wall hangings, rose-decorated porcelain cuspidors, and lushly carpeted floors.Tweed had a penchant for flowers and canaries; they decorated all his rooms. 22 He kept a walnut sideboard cabinet always stocked with whiskey, champagne, and cigars to woo the constant stream of visiting politicos, newsmen, and lobbyists.
For his Irish and German immigrant backers, Tweed used his chairmanship of the legislature’s Charitable and Religious Societies Committee to win direct public subsidies for Catholic parochial schools—violating the traditional rule against public funding of religious institutions. 23 He hid the provision in the back pages of the annual Tax Levy, a long, complex bill that contained the city’s overall budget and tax base and was loaded with pork for districts throughout the state; for upstate Protestants to get their own special favors, they’d have to give Tweed his. Tweed’s victory won him cheers from immigrant wards where it greatly expanded classrooms at a time when public schools barely met the need, but drew protest from Protestants and opponents of church-state meddling. “Papal conspiracy,” some Republicans cried. “Another raid on public schools,” echoed the New-York Times , arguing that “no Catholic parent will be permitted to send his child to public schools of the State on pain of excommunication.” 24 Tweed stuck to his guns,
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