Tammany Hall, Once a Temple of Political Corruption, Is Now a Landmark

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times The building at 100 East 17th Street in Union Square was once known as Tammany Hall, the headquarters of the corrupt Manhattan Democratic Party machine.

Tammany Hall is history. Shortly before a Democrat was elected mayor for the first time in 24 years, the former headquarters of the Manhattan Democratic Party organization was declared an official New York City landmark.

But the designation of the old “wigwam” on Union Square, which was dedicated on July 4, 1929, by Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt, was less a precursor to the latest Democratic resurgence than it was a memorial to Tammany’s sometimes-inglorious legacy. The building survives. The party organization itself, which once ruled imperiously, was buried by Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia and Democratic reformers decades ago.

So far has the organization slipped, in fact, that the latest Manhattan Democratic county chairman, Assemblyman Keith L.T. Wright, was caught unawares by the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s vote on Oct. 29 â€" an oversight that never would have occurred under his fabled predecessors such as Richard Croker, William M. Tweed or Charles F. Murphy, who would have not only personally handpicked the commissioners, but dictated the agenda.

“I needed to be there,” Mr. Wright declared in mock indignation after being informed of the vote by a reporter.

Francis S. Barry, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s director of public affairs, said that despite Tammany Hall’s checkered past, it remained a symbol of democracy.

“When the wigwam on 17th Street was built, the idea that a reform administration â€" like this one â€" would want to preserve anything that Tammany had done would have been laughable,” he said.

“The old goo-goos are spinning in their graves right now,” Mr. Barry continued, referring to a century-old term for good-government types. “But of course, Tammany Hall was much more than a temple of political corruption. From the 1860s onward, it was the strongest voice in defense of voting rights for all citizens, especially poor immigrants. The landmark designation was made for architectural and historical reasons, but the Tammany Hall building is first and foremost a monument to democracy and equal rights.”

Tammany’s credo was most memorably encapsulated by the party leader George Washington Plunkitt, who proclaimed, “I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em.” But “The Hall,” as it was widely known, was always about more than plunder and patronage.

Tammany, founded in the late 18th century and named for a Native American chief, shed its nativist beginnings and was instrumental in assimilating millions of immigrants who, in turn, loyally supported the machine with their votes. The Irish, in particular, as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it, embraced “the possibilities of politics.”

Those possibilities included public works like the Brooklyn Bridge, construction of schools and paved streets and, eventually, universal suffrage â€" each of which provided opportunities for graft or for self-perpetuation.

Perhaps the greatest physical monument to Tammany’s domination of Democratic politics and to opportunities taken is the old Tweed Courthouse, now the Department of Education’s headquarters, just behind City Hall. The New York Times reported in 1871 that the courthouse cost a small fortune in contracts steered to Tammany cronies and fees embezzled by corrupt officials.

When the building at the northeast corner of Union Square was dedicated, Senator Robert F. Wagner, joined on a podium by Governor Roosevelt and former Gov. Alfred E. Smith, proclaimed that, “Tammany Hall may justly claim the title of the cradle of modern liberalism in America.”

Terry Golway, director of the Center for History, Politics and Policy at Kean University in New Jersey and the author of a forthcoming book, “Machine Made,” about the Manhattan Democratic organization, said, “Tammany Hall is more than a building. It is an important symbol of modern urban politics â€" messy, flawed, chaotic and, yes, progressive. It’s wonderful that the city has officially recognized the importance of a place where newcomers were treated not as aliens but as fellow citizens. Would that we had such an efficient mechanism today.”

Seventeen speakers at the preservation commission’s public hearing in June favored the designation, which had been championed for years by Jack Taylor, an editor active in the Union Square Community Coalition. No one objected. Tammany would have appreciated the lopsided support.

The three-and-a-half-story, neo-Georgian building at 100 East 17th Street was inspired by Federal Hall on Wall Street (where George Washington was inaugurated) and was built using oversized red bricks modeled after those used by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello in Virginia.

It was commissioned in 1927 at a zenith of the organization’s dominance. But when the hall was completed two years later, the party’s power had already begun to wane. The 17th Street facade features the seal of the Tammany Society and sculptural reliefs of Chief Tammany and Christopher Columbus, as well as a Revolutionary War-era liberty cap. The architects, Thompson, Holes & Converse and Charles B. Meyers, also designed the psychiatric wing of Bellevue Hospital.

The building was sold in 1943 to Local 91 of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and was later occupied by the Roundabout Theater and the New York Film Academy, which is still there.

Today, Mr. Wright presides over the borough’s Democratic Party from a modest office on West 39th Street without any vestiges or trappings of the grand sachems who once ruled Tammany. The building houses a Chinese restaurant and a number of garment center companies, and the party office is not listed on the lobby directory.

“There’s most definitely still an organization,” Mr. Wright said. “But it’s not dictatorial, it’s not tyrannical, and certainly I’m not a despot. We’re the epicenter of reform politics.”