New Deal, Child Labor Law Defeated In March 1937

Photos public domain. At left, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Get into a conversation with a long-time Queens resident and you're likely to discover a subscriber of the Long Island Star- Journal, a daily paper that informed the community about local and world news until it folded in 1968. A banner across the Star-Journal masthead reminded readers that the newspaper's name came from the merger of the Long Island Daily Star (1876) and the North Shore Daily Journal- -The Flushing Journal (1841).

Welcome to March 1937!

In 1937 the nation was still in the grip of the Great Depression, a period in our history when the economy all but collapsed and one of every four workers was unemployed. President Franklin Roosevelt, who the public elected to turn things around, spent four years trying to get Congress and the Supreme Court to support his efforts to revive the economy. His program, called the "New Deal", ran into severe opposition.

The president tried a controversial maneuver by "packing" the Supreme Court with six hand-picked judges. In Queens, he had the backing of John Clancy, president of the powerful Vincent Quinn Association of Whitestone who stated, "It is desirable that this court be responsive to some degree to the more progressive and enlightened thought in this country in its attempts to remedy existing social and economic ills." FDR's controversial plan was soundly defeated. Clancy later was borough president of Queens from 1959 to 1962.

Below, the Trylon and Perisphere of the 1939 World's Fair.

Domestic Relations Justice Herbert O'Brien slammed a proposal by Roosevelt to strengthen the child labor law when he called it "communist in origin". Justice O'Brien further warned that the new law gave the government the power "to limit, regulate and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen". The proposed legislation would tell "every child where he was to go to school, what profession he should adopt and to what church he should go".

The Queensboro Federation of Mothers' Clubs added their voice to his, claiming the new law "would be detrimental to the character and home life of American children".

Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia chose Gracie Mansion as the mayor's official residence in 1942. Before that time, he spent summers in different parts of the city. In March of 1937 the mayor's office announced that the summer City Hall was to be in Queens, fulfilling a promise LaGuardia has made the previous July when the summer City Hall was in Pelham Bay Park in The Bronx.

LaGuardia would be staying at the old Chisholm Mansion in College Point. Built just before the Civil War, its 20 rooms could easily accommodate the mayor and his staff. The stone for the mansion, originally intended for a college building Dr. William Muhlenberg planned to erect in College Point, remained unused when the school failed and was transferred to Pennsylvania. A niece of Muhlenberg married William Chisholm, who purchased both the stone and the former site of the college. The Chisholms, who were part of high society 100 years ago, abandoned College Point when they moved to New Jersey after World War I. The empty building was used briefly as a community center and torn down in 1941, but the property remains today as Mac Neil Park.

On March 11, 1937, the Board of Education approved plans for Astoria's new William Cullen Bryant High School. It would cost $2,325,000 and be built for 4,120 students. Credit for the new school went to Queens Board Member and Rego Park resident Mrs. Johanna Lindlof, who earnestly argued for more than three hours at a city hearing that Astoria's growing population warranted a new school.

On March 3, under a headline touting the latest building boom in Queens, City Council President William Brunner asked for immediate action to increase mass transit in the borough. He announced a program to extend the Queens Boulevard subway from Jamaica to Bellerose with a spur down Van Wyck Boulevard to South Ozone Park, and another extension to Far Rockaway. He discussed expanding the Flushing subway to Bayside with a branch north to Whitestone and College Point. And finally, the construction of a South Queens line linking the borough with the Fulton Street system in Brooklyn was also suggested. Brunner added that only 25 square miles, or less than a quarter of Queens' 115 square miles, had adequate mass transit. By way of comparison, more than 50 percent of The Bronx and Brooklyn had elevated or subway service.

Perhaps the most significant piece of news that month was a press release on March 16 by World's Fair President Grover Whalen with plans for the Trylon and Perisphere, the centerpiece of the new theme center at the Fair.

The Trylon was to be a 700-foot triangular obelisk as tall as the Metropolitan Life Insurance building on Madison Square in Manhattan. The name Trylon was coined to indicate that it was built from three (or tri) pylons. It would be the sixth highest structure in the city (and seventh in the nation.) No lights would shine upon it. At night it would seem to soar and vanish into the night sky.

The Perisphere, a term also coined for the Fair, would be a white sphere centered in a cluster of fountains. Somewhat confusingly, the root word "peri" in Perisphere meant "beyond, all around, about". It was gigantic, a hollow 200-foot sphere that was to dominate the skyline of the World's Fair. The interior was more than twice the size of Radio City Music Hall. An escalator went up to the entrance some 50 feet above the ground.

The sphere was to contain a dramatized panorama of the "World of Tomorrow". The exterior of the globe was to have colorful moving patterns of lights and geometric patterns giving the optical illusion that the sphere was slowly rotating.

A bridge linked the sphere and obelisk and a curving ramp led from the top of the obelisk 900 feet to the ground.

In announcing the plans of the theme center, Whalen said, "We promised the world something new in fair architecture, and here it is, something radically different and yet fundamentally as old as man's experience.

"We believe that in these plans the architect has presented the spirit of the fair. These buildings are a glimpse in the future, a foretaste of what we hope in some part to be the harbinger.

"We don't mean that the buildings of tomorrow will be a sphere and triangle, but we do believe that they will shed extraneous elements and will revert to fundamental lines and forms. We feel that simplicity must be the keys of a perfectly ordered mechanical civilization."

Finally, on March 31 a Gridiron Club Smoker at the Flushing Armory featured dozens of celebrities, including newspaperman Walter Winchell, fighters Jack Dempsey, Jack Johnson and James Braddock and entertainers Ed Sullivan and Duke Ellington, among others. Tickets were $1.

That's the way it was in March 1937!

At 7 p.m. on Monday, April 7, join the Greater Astoria Historical Society and the Roosevelt Island Historical Society for a book signing and slide lecture on The Queensboro Bridge, among the latest offerings in Arcadia Publishing's "Images of America" series. The slide lecture will highlight the bridge's construction and commemorate its opening in 1909.

The lecture will be held at the Society Gallery, on the fourth floor of the Quinn Building, 35-20 Broadway, Long Island City. For more information, call 718-278- 0700 or visit www.astorialic.org. The Society Gallery is open to the public on Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. For more information, contact the Greater Astoria Historical Society at 718-728-0700 or visit www.astorialic.org.