New York Almanack

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Frances Perkins

NYC Street Co-Named For First Woman Cabinet Member Frances Perkins

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Frances Perkins street co-naming ceremonyOn March 26, 2022,the city of New York officially co-named West 46th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, Frances Perkins Place. Perkins was U.S. Secretary of Labor under Franklin Delano Roosevelt from 1933 to 1945, the first woman to serve as a cabinet secretary.

The Frances Perkins Place block includes Hartley House, a nonprofit organization where France Perkins was a social worker. You can read more about Frances Perkins here. [Read more…] about NYC Street Co-Named For First Woman Cabinet Member Frances Perkins

Tammany’s Last Stand: The McManus Club & The McGovern Campaign

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Jimmy McManus in 1972James R. McManus was born in Hell’s Kitchen in 1936 and recently died in 2019. For 54 years (from 1962 to 2016) he was the Democratic Party District Leader from the Hell’s Kitchen area. This was a position that his father Eugene E. McManus had held for 20 years before him.

Previously Eugene McManus’s great grand uncle, Thomas J. McManus, had held the position, since the formation of the McManus Democratic Club in 1892, when he defeated the prior District Leader George Washington Plunkitt, author of Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics (1905). [Read more…] about Tammany’s Last Stand: The McManus Club & The McGovern Campaign

Frances Perkins: The First Woman Named To A Presidential Cabinet

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The Historians LogoThis week on The Historians Podcast Jim Kaplan chronicles the achievements of the first woman member of a Presidential cabinet. Frances Perkins was FDR’s Secretary of Labor who helped design Social Security.  [Read more…] about Frances Perkins: The First Woman Named To A Presidential Cabinet

Frances Perkins, One of America’s Most Influential Women, Remains Unrecognized

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Frances Perkins meets with American workersFrances Perkins, who served as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor in all four terms of his administration, is often credited with designing many of the New Deal’s social welfare programs, including Social Security.  As such, she ranks among the most influential women of the 20th Century.

Few however, know that Perkins began her career in the Hell’s Kitchen area of the city of New York, work that as inspired inn part by a chance meeting an Irish Tammany Hall District Leader Tom McManus. [Read more…] about Frances Perkins, One of America’s Most Influential Women, Remains Unrecognized

Remembering The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

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The figure of death on the Asch BuildingIn his short novel, Washington Square, Henry James wrote about New York women of the Gilded Age; elegant ladies who strolled the sidewalks of the city’s shopping district, Ladies’ Mile.

These New York women admired window displays of shirtwaists, an elegant button-down blouse with rows of tiny and elaborate tucks. The shirtwaist was favored by New York women as a symbol of chic modernity. But the silhouette of fashionable ladies came at a price paid by their downtrodden sisters, immigrant women living in the city’s tenements. These newest New York women worked long hours for low wages in the city’s notorious sweatshops. [Read more…] about Remembering The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

A NY Woman Who Belongs On The $20 Bill

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800px-Frances_Perkins_cph.3a04983Recently the Treasury Department has announced its intent to place a prominent woman of historical importance on the U.S. currency. There is no one who is more deserving of this honor than Frances Perkins, a New York woman, who was probably the most significant and important female government official of the 20th century.

As Secretary of Labor throughout President Franklin Roosevelt’s four terms and the first woman ever to hold a cabinet position, Frances Perkins designed most of the New Deal Social Welfare and Labor Policies, such as social security, the minimum wage, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and protections for unions, and reshaped America. [Read more…] about A NY Woman Who Belongs On The $20 Bill

FDR: The Original Game Changer

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Roosevelts Second Act by Richard Moe.jpgThe famous Riddle of the Sphinx asks, “Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and then two-footed, and finally three-footed?” To which Oedipus answered: “Man, who crawls on all fours as a child, then walks on two feet as an adult, and then as an elder uses a walking stick.”

This is what crossed my mind as I came across a small sculpture of Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Sphinx, with cigarette holder and all, at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum gift shop. I’d often find myself browsing the store during breaks from my research there, but the oddity of the sculpture stuck with me as I was unable to answer the riddle of FDR as Sphinx until reading Roosevelt’s Second Act: The Election of 1940 and the Politics of War (Oxford Univ. Press, 2013) by Richard Moe. [Read more…] about FDR: The Original Game Changer

Frances Perkins: Secretary of Labor Under FDR

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Frances Perkins meets with Carnegie Steel Workers in 1933Any recognition of influential and famous American women should include Frances Perkins and rank her close to the top of such a list. Perkins was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s secretary of labor during his entire time in office, from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman cabinet member in our history.

Although she is largely unknown to most Americans, many historians credit Perkins as being the architect and driving force responsible for the key achievements of FDR’s New Deal program during the Great Depression of the 1930s. [Read more…] about Frances Perkins: Secretary of Labor Under FDR