Defying archival practices, at some point the Department of Records and Information Services created a “Special Collection” which consists of historical City government records separated from a variety of other collections. Organized alphabetically, the trove is a hodge-podge of important documents including a 1728 petition to establish a Jewish burial ground, and a 1765 letter to restore peace from British General Thomas Gage.

This arrangement highlights the shortcomings of the Special Collection. Nothing is where it belongs! If processed and filed following normal archival practices, the letters would be in folders of correspondence related to the subjects, organized by year. This would make it possible for a researcher to trace the back and forth between letters received and responses sent.   

Within the Special Collection is a folder labeled Roosevelt, Eleanor. It contains correspondence written to and from Eleanor Roosevelt dating from 1924 to 1945. The 1924 letter is on stationery from the Women’s Division of the Democratic State Committee. The stationery lists a who’s who of prominent Democratic women including Miss Frances Perkins and Miss Lillian Wald. The letter is written by Eleanor Roosevelt to Mrs John F. Hylan, resident of St. Marks Avenue in Brooklyn, who was married to Mayor John Hylan. The letter introduced Mrs. Pounds who was setting up the Democratic Women’s Booth at an upcoming event. DORIS currently has an initiative to provide the actual names of women, not simply their married names. Today the metadata for the letter would include a reference to Marian O’Hara Hylan.   

An odd item in the folder is not correspondence—it’s a first day of issue envelope dated April 24 1972, honoring Fiorello LaGuardia. 

All together, there are 44 pieces of correspondence; 39 are from Eleanor Roosevelt to Fiorello LaGuardia; three are from LaGuardia to Roosevelt, one is from Roosevelt’s secretary and one letter to Mrs. Hylan. Written on heavy 6” x 9” paper, the Roosevelt-LaGuardia notes date from April 9, 1935 to October 7, 1945. Most are typed on White House notepaper with a hand-written signature at the bottom. Some contain penciled notations with instructions from the Mayor. For example, the first note informs the Mayor that Eric Gugler, an architect who remodeled the West Wing of the White House also has a plan for a war memorial for Battery Park. Eleanor Roosevelt suggested that “it might interest you because of what could be done to improve that part of the city at a very small cost.” Scrawled at the top are the instructions from Mayor LaGuardia to staff: “ask Jonas Lie to look at this.”   

Who, you might ask, is Jonas Lie? Born in Norway, he moved to the United States in 1893 and trained at the Art Student League. An Impressionist landscape painter, he specialized in coastal scenes, New York City scenes and, famously at the time, a series of paintings depicting the construction of the Panama Canal. He was also a member of the Art Commission. Did Lie check out the exhibit and vet the architect?  We don’t know but we do know that the memorial to World War 1 soldiers was not built.

Many of Eleanor’s notes are banal, part of the give and take of government. They convey information about people looking for work, express gratitude for Birthday wishes, invite attendance at events. Most begin with the salutation, “My Dear Mr. Mayor:” One interesting missive was not written to the Mayor but to Mrs. LaGuardia (aka Marie Fisher LaGuardia) and signed not by Eleanor but by her secretary, Edith Helm, aka Mrs. James M. Helm. The letter expressed concern that an earlier note inviting the couple to stay overnight at the White House went astray and reiterated the offer of a sleepover.  Did that actually occur?  

A duo of notes inviting the LaGuardia family for lunch and a little party and then responding back to the Mayor, expressing understanding that the children’s bed time schedule would dictate how late they could stay at Hyde Park.

Some are oblique: “I am enclosing a letter which has come to me and would appreciate it if you could look into the matter.”  We likely will never know the matter that aroused Eleanor Roosevelt’s interest on July 16, 1940. 

One note from August, 1940 generates curiosity.  “I am very anxious to have a talk with you and Mr. Flynn tells me that we had better talk in some quiet place,” it begins.  One presumes the reference is to Boss of the Bronx Edward Flynn, a strong supporter of President Roosevelt and, in 1940, the national chair of the Democratic Party.  The note continues, suggesting a visit that would require the Mayor to “climb three flights of stairs to have tea with me at my apartment, 20 East 11th Street (Miss Thompson’s name is on the bell…”  It was clearly urgent because Eleanor Roosevelt offered an alternative date when she would be back in town.  A handwritten date at the bottom, written by someone at City Hall, states “Sept 4 –“  So, presumably, the conversation happened.  

In August, 1941, Eleanor Roosevelt became an Assistant Director in the Office of Civil Defense, based in Washington. A September 1941 note to LaGuardia explained her approach to familiarizing herself with the organization and stated her intention, with LaGuardia’s permission, to visit the offices on Monday.

Her tenure at Civil Defense was short. Due to criticism of the President’s wife holding a position in government, she resigned in February, 1942.

One exchange of correspondence in August 1943 clearly concerns racial unrest in the City. Early that month, a white police officer shot a black soldier in Harlem.  Rumors that the soldier had been killed lit the fuse on simmering tensions over price gouging, lack of economic opportunity, discrimination and police brutality. Over two days, six black people were killed, more than 500 injured, thousands arrested and millions in property damage. Eleanor Roosevelt weighed in with a much longer note than any of the others.  Referencing her conversations with black residents of the City, she suggested hiring more black police officers, finding more summer employment for young people and expanding supervised play for the youngest residents. Further, she reported there was “a feeling that white policemen are unnecessarily harsh to young colored people.” 

This letter struck a chord. Famously pugnacious, Mayor LaGuardia responded with two single-spaced, double-sided missives in defense of the City’s efforts, dated only a day apart. Citing “lies, lies, lies and more lies concerning the situation” LaGuardia wrote that despite recruitment efforts the number of black police officers on the force had only increased by twenty since 1933 only twenty new  black police officers joined the force between 1933 and 1943. 

The final note in the folder dated October 7, 1945 does not use White House note paper but instead is from a New York City address on Washington Square. Written in response to LaGuardia’s request, it enclosed a pass for a Senator Farley to visit the Hyde Park grave of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt who had died on April 12, 1945 and instructed that further requests be sent to the Department of the Interior.