This article will be permanently flagged as inappropriate and made unaccessible to everyone. Are you certain this article is inappropriate? Excessive Violence Sexual Content Political / Social
Email Address:
Article Id: WHEBN0000755645 Reproduction Date:
Seth Low (January 18, 1850 – September 17, 1916), born in Brooklyn, New York, was an American educator and political figure who served as mayor of Brooklyn, as President of Columbia University, as diplomatic representative of the United States, and as 92nd Mayor of New York City. He was a leading municipal reformer fighting for efficiency during the Progressive Era.
Seth Low was the son of Abiel Abbot Low and Ellen Almira Dow.[2][3] Low's father was a leading China trader, and his father's sister, Harriet Low, was one of the first young American women to live in China.[4] The Low family was old Puritan New England stock, descended from Thomas Low of Essex County, Massachusetts.[2] Low was named after his grandfather Seth Low (1782–1853) who moved with his son Abiel to Brooklyn to start a prosperous importing company.[2] When Brooklyn was incorporated as a city in 1834, Seth the elder was one of the incorporators; he also served on the Board of Aldermen and was first President of the Board of Education.[2] Seth the elder was also involved with charity and support work for the poor; on his deathbed, he admonished his three-year-old grandson and namesake: "Be kind to the poor."[2]
Seth's father was a Unitarian, and his mother was an Episcopalian.[2] For years, Seth wavered between the two faiths. Finally, at age 22, Seth decided he would henceforth be an Episcopalian.[2]
Low attended Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn and Columbia College. After graduating from Columbia in 1870, Low made a short trip abroad, and then entered the tea and silk house of A. A. Low & Brothers, which had been founded by his father in New York. In 1875, he was admitted a member of the firm, from which, upon its liquidation in 1888, he withdrew with a large fortune.[5] On December 9, 1880 he married Anne Wroe Scollay Curtis of Boston, daughter of Justice Benjamin R. Curtis of the United States Supreme Court. They had no biological children, but adopted two nieces and a nephew.[3]
By 1881 Brooklyn had been governed for years by a corrupt Democratic political machine under Hugh McLaughlin.[2] By this time, a wave of goo-goo (or "good government") sentiment had begun to gain favor, and public sentiment was starting to turn against the incumbent Democratic regime.[2]
Brooklyn Republicans sensed an opportunity, but they were split between the "stalwart" candidate Benjamin F. Tracy and reform candidate Ripley Ropes.[2] Seth Low had no particular ambition to become Mayor,[2] but his name was brought forth as a compromise, because his wealth and old family name appealed to the "stalwarts" and his reformist views appealed to the reformers.[2] Low accepted the nomination at the Republican city convention, making it clear that he would not be a partisan mayor.[2] Low defeated the incumbent Democrat James Howell after a two-week campaign, 45,434 votes to 40,937.[2]
Low's time in office was marked by a number of reforms:
Low's tax increases and non-partisan governing policy lost him a measure of public support. By 1883, fellow Republicans were criticizing Low openly, and the press was critical of his tax policy.[2] Although the Democrats ran the weak, nearly unknown candidate Joseph C. Hendrix in 1883, Low beat him by a slimmer margin than his first election. Where Low won his first term by 5,000 votes, he squeaked by re-election with only a 1,548-vote margin.[2]
In 1884, Low's mugwump support of Democrat Grover Cleveland in 1884 furthered the rift with his fellow Republicans. He declined to run for a third term in 1885, and refused to support Republican nominee General Isaac S. Catlin.[2] Instead, he supported a reform candidate, General John R. Woodward.[2] By this time, the public was losing their attraction to reform, and Democrat Daniel D. Whitney won election. With Whitney came the return of Democratic machine politics for another seven years.[2] By 1892, some writers were looking back on Seth Low's tenure as a "Golden Age" of clean government.[2]
Following his tenure as mayor of Brooklyn, Low assumed the presidency of Columbia College, serving between 1890 and 1901. Not an educator in the specific meaning of the word, he succeeded by his administrative skill in transforming the institution.[5] He led the move of the institution from Midtown Manhattan to Morningside Heights, and secured trustee approval to change its name to "Columbia University". The new campus matched Low's vision of a civic university fully integrated into the city; the original design, subsequently reconceived, left it open to the street and surrounding neighborhoods.
To forge a university, Low vitally united the various schools into one organization whose direction was moved from the separate faculties to a university council. Further reforms effected by him include the reorganization of the Law School, the addition of a faculty of pure science, the association with the university of the Teachers College, and the extension of the department of political and social study.[5] In 1895, he gave one million dollars of his inheritance from his father for Low Memorial Library to be built at the new Columbia University campus. It was dedicated to his father, and opened in 1897.
On July 4, 1899 he was one of the American delegates to attend the International Peace Conference at The Hague. Others in the delegation were Andrew D. White, then the United States Ambassador to the German Empire; Stanford Newel of Minnesota, then the United States Minister to the Netherlands; Captain Alfred Mahan, of the United States Navy; Captain William Crozier, of the United States Army; and Frederick Holls of New York.
At the conference, Low made the concluding speech, printed two months later in The New York Times, saying:
Low's first campaign for mayor of consolidated New York in 1897 was unsuccessful, partially because of a division among anti-Tammany Hall candidates and parties. However, four years later, he managed to attain office.[7]
During his 1901 campaign, he had the support of humorist Mark Twain. He and Twain made a joint appearance that drew a crowd of more than 2,000.
In 1902, Low resigned as president of the university to become the second mayor of the newly consolidated George B. McClellan, Jr..
He was chairman of the Tuskegee Institute, the black school headed by Booker T. Washington, from 1907 until 1916. From 1907, he was also president of the business-labor alliance the National Civic Federation. Even though he believed in collective bargaining rights, which had customarily been denied to labor unions by those in authority, he did not favor strikes, but rather embraced arbitration as a suitable labor-management negotiation tactic. He was a founder and the first president of the Bureau of Charities of Brooklyn, and was elected vice-president of the New York Academy of Sciences and president of the Archaeological Institute of America.[5]
Low became interested in the food supply problem, that is its contribution to the constantly increasing consumers' cooperative store societies in the eastern United States, but not being in sympathy with the radical tendency of this phase of the cooperative movement, he finally resigned and devoted himself entirely to the agricultural phase of cooperation. Low was also a trustee of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, D.C.[3]
In the Spring of 1916, Low became ill with cancer.[2] He died in his home in AFL founder Samuel Gompers. [8] He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY.
The Brooklyn Fire Department operated a fireboat named Seth Low from 1885 to 1917.[9]
New York City, Long Island, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island
New York City, Long Island, Albany, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Richard Nixon, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan
Barack Obama, The New York Times, Michael Bloomberg, Republican Party (United States), United States presidential election, 2012
Anglicanism, Book of Common Prayer, Taiwan, Church of England, British Isles
The Bronx, Staten Island, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Socialist Party of America
New York City, Democratic Party (United States), American Civil War, Seth Low, Paris
New York City, Liberal Party of New York, Socialist Party of America, New York City mayoral elections, Conservative Party of New York
Theodore Roosevelt, Republican Party (United States), Nobel Peace Prize, William Howard Taft, Richard Nixon
West Virginia, Guangzhou, American Civil War, Authority control, National Register of Historic Places