 |
Mayors Gone Wild
By Nancy J. Parisi
American politics at the local level has always been a rough-and-ready, wild-and-wooly affair. From Tammany in the boroughs of Manhattan to the shoot-first-ask-questions-later governance of the Wild West, if you were looking for gentility and restraint, you didn’t expect to find it in public office. Though the boozing and fist fights have calmed down a bit, things haven’t changed all that much over the years. Here we survey highlights of just four of the more colorful mayoral reigns in Buffalo’s history.
|
|
|
Mayor Francis X. Schwab (center) loved his beer, and saw inequities in the enforcement of Prohibition, declaring, “The plain people have as much right to a glass of beer as the wealthy have to their cocktails.” Image courtesy of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society archives.
|
Schwab: near beer and curtains for the KKK
Buffalo’s Prohibition mayor, Francis X. Schwab, who served 1922–25, and then 1926–29, made national headlines for manufacturing and selling beer–in his own brewery, Broadway Brewing Company. From across the state, the New York Times admiringly reported his audaciousness, but “dry” fanatics in Buffalo were not pleased that the mayor championed “the benefits of moderate drinking.” Schwab’s high-profile “near-beer” case was tried by U.S. Attorney General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the man who helped found the organization that would become the C.I.A. Schwab paid a $500 fine and the case was closed. The Prohibition-mad Donovan forged on to have a few men’s clubs in Buffalo and outlying areas busted for serving alcohol–even one at which he was reportedly a member.
Hooded Knights on the Niagara: The Ku Klux Klan in Buffalo, New York by Shawn Lay, one of his series about the KKK, includes several references to Schwab, who battled their energetic recruitment of area men. Schwab reportedly had spies in the midst of “Buffalo Klan No. 5” and sped their demise, especially after their lists of membership became known.
“We all know that the Klan is unconscionable, un-American, and against the better interests of all good citizens,” Schwab stated. “We don’t want the Klan in Buffalo … I will discharge any city employee or official who becomes a member.” Schwab was victorious in 1925 for his second term and the KKK Buffalo chapter faded out.
Schwab also battled “police reserves,” civilians who acted as a militia to aid the police–as the police or the zealous citizens saw fit. Schwab disbanded the reserves that, he charged, were “misusing authority and flashing their badges and revolvers at every opportunity,” according to an essay about William Donovan by Stephen Powell, Buffalo brewery historian. Buffalo, the state’s second-largest city, also had a little dope problem as the restraints of Prohibition continued onward.
The Courier-Express ran a story in 1940 about how a sculpted bust of former mayor Schwab came to lose his right eyebrow: “The colorful Schwab had the policeman up before him in his old County Hall offices on a charge of being drunk. The cop was still drunk. During the hearing, the wobbly policeman reached out to steady himself and grabbed Schwab’s bust. The bust went to the floor. So did the cop.”
Schwab was honored with a Common Council resolution following his death: “He was a man of sterling integrity, character, and soul; he gave of his mind and heart to his fellow man; he rose above the limitations of creed; he reached beyond the confines of race; he extended the hand of fellowship to all.”
|
|
|
Mayor Steven Pankow, at right, with his wife standing in front of a portrait of Pankow; image courtesy of the Courier-Express archives.
|
Now pave this:
“Diamond Jim” Pankow
“Diamond Jim” is how Buffalo Mayor Steven Pankow was branded by his fans and foes. Pankow’s entrepreneurial acumen and free-wheeling life mirrored the portrayal of early twentieth-century American businessman/bon vivant James Brady in the 1935 biopic of same name starring Edward Arnold. Pankow relished the moniker.
Pankow lived life large, playing out his time in City Hall as if reading from a Rat Pack script. He politicked all day, and reveled all night.
Pankow worked menial jobs until he discovered his talents in sales, working as a used car salesman before opening his own dealership on Bailey Avenue. His first political job was county clerk, and he used his charms, connections, and savings to go further. In his words, quoted from a Courier-Express article in 1953: “‘You don’t get anything by sitting and waiting … If you want something badly enough, you have to go after it. I want to be mayor of Buffalo and I’m not bashful about saying so.’”
Undaunted after his defeat in 1949, Pankow forged ahead, switching party affiliations and endorsements (Republican to Democrat to Independent) before finally prevailing in ’53. Long after his term (1954–57) Pankow marveled at the powers he wielded. As he said during a Buffalo News interview: “It’s a good job, the best job in the city. … Back then the mayor could do just about anything he wanted. … I loved the job. I’d get in a limousine each morning and travel around the city, checking all the departments. I wanted to know what was going on and if everything was working the way it should. I treated people right.”
It was also Pankow’s custom to go for lunch every business day in his limo with a motorcade of three motorcyle cops. Sometimes he’d have the police blare their sirens for a little extra adrenalizing kick.
After his term was over, however, life began to go sour. In 1959 Pankow was arraigned on charges of income tax fraud, not correctly claiming all his mayoral earnings. Pankow’s legal troubles began when feds investigated mutterings about bribes regarding several multimillion-dollar paving contracts between the city and three companies. Rock Asphalt Inc. seems to have been the largest contributor, with $49,500 in “promotion expenses” falling directly into city officials’ hands.
Raymond Brayer, head of Rock Asphalt, Inc., according to a Buffalo Evening News trial report on December 3, 1959, had gone to his office at 223 Erie Street to retrieve more money for a payment to the mayor. “Upon returning to Pankow’s office on the second floor … he went into the inner room, the place where the coffee is made, and handed the money in an envelope to the mayor.”
Faced with the charges, Pankow would claim innocence in the age-old politico manner: though a businessman and former county clerk, he was weak on accounting skills. It was at about this time there was a fire at Pankow Motors where his tax and accounting records were stored.
The trial against the former mayor and five former and then-present city officials lasted seven and a half weeks. The jury deliberated for thirty-four hours (in lock-down in the Statler Hilton Hotel) and was ultimately discharged, as nobody could corroborate the testimony of Brayer. The former mayor walked, completely evading jail time.
Pankow went on to run again for office–unsuccessfully. He also opened a liquor store and bought McVan’s Nite Club in 1963 from one of the original owners, Mrs. Lillian McVan, who had started the club during Prohibition, “when the principal traffic on the Niagara River was rum-running,” as she told the Courier-Express.
About two decades later, Mayor Stanley Makowski would appoint Pankow to the Board of Assessors, a patronage job.
|
|
|
Mayor Chester Kowal mixed his medications once too often. Image courtesy of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society archives.
|
Kowal the rockstar: pills, booze, cars, and a pesky indictment.
Sixties-era Mayor Chester Kowal (1962–65) manned the mayoral office in between two of Frank Sedita’s terms. Research reveals that Kowal crashed cars, popped pills, enjoyed his booze, and got injured—a lot. Kowal racked up nine major injuries in about that many years, the Courier-Express reported.
A winner of an amateur boxing championship in 1924 and a WWII Air Force pilot in his working-class youth, Kowal was city comptroller when the party decided to nominate him to run in 1957 against Sedita, who defeated him. Following a rally during that campaign, he was in a car driven by his brother/wing-man Peter, and suffered “injuries to neck muscles and spinal-column ligaments.” The Courier Express provides dialogue: “ ‘Chet, are you hurt?’ his brother asked. ‘What do you think?’ Chet replied.” He continued on as comptroller and gave the mayoral office another stab, defeating the incumbent and taking office in 1961. More car crashes followed.
Masten District councilman Delmar Mitchell accused the mayor and his staff of fostering a “do-nothing regime insofar as Buffalo’s Negro population is concerned,” and caring little for East Side development. Mitchell pointed out that Kowal didn’t rehire African-American city employees who had worked for Sedita. Trying to make amends, Kowal held a p.r.-friendly meeting at P.S. 44 on Broadway. The Buffalo Evening News reported that the two-hour meeting featured the mayor and all his department heads, answering questions and providing information for forty citizens. On the docket was the state of Broadway Market, in the red forty years ago.
In April of 1963 the Common Council objected to a proposed budget that would have cut, among other things, “garbage roll-out service.” In an op-ed piece, the Courier-Express calls this proposal “too horrible to contemplate.” The council restored skating rinks and hoped that Kowal and administration would “live within their curtailed limits.”
In the last year of Kowal’s term, the Courier-Express summed up all of his injuries. “Mayor Chester Kowal has suffered an extraordinary series of illnesses and accidents,” the piece begins. “Kowal’s desk at City Hall in recent months has resembled a miniature pharmacy, with an array of pill bottles and other medicines within easy reach.”
Then a Buffalo Evening News headline pronounced that Kowal, after an eight-month investigation, was charged, along with his former corporation counsel Ralph Saft, with taking “unlawful fees” for dumping city refuse at a private Tonawanda dumpsite, co-owned by Saft’s son-in-law. Kowal was also charged with perjury, for having lied to the grand jury.
On June 16, 1963, Kowal was released without bail, and posed for photos in his office after claiming innocence. A celebration followed with his brother Peter and six cronies, and hours later, at 3 a.m., Kowal was found unconscious with pills strewn alongside his body.
Both dailies provided timelines. Kowal, “a former choirmaster, picked up a baton and led the group” in song during festivities from 6–8:30 p.m. The party continued on, sans mayor, to late-night supper in Kenmore. Kowal had told his pals, “Don’t order for me; I’ll join you there.” He had his brother drive him home and then back to City Hall at about 10 p.m. He’d told his wife he’d be out with the boys. He told his brother he needed to get work done.
After neither the mayor or his brother could be found at 2:30 a.m., Kowal’s worried wife reached one of the celebrating party, who rushed back to City Hall, where they found Chet at 3 a.m. Brother Peter had continued carousing elsewhere in the city.
Three months later, Kowal died. The following day his case was dismissed from County Court.
|
|
|
Fort Makowski lives in infamy, but thankfully not in reality. Image courtesy of the Courier-Express archives.
|
Halt the walls:
the rise and demise
of Fort Makowski
Stanley Makowski, Buffalo’s fifty-seventh mayor (1974–77), moved up to the city’s top executive post when Frank Sedita resigned in the last year of his third term. Makowski, always noted as a mild-mannered politician, had been serving as the mayoral assistant. He completed the remainder of Sedita’s term before winning the next mayoral election.
His inauguration was unusual, not only for the brevity of the term he inherited (meaning he had to hit the ground campaigning), but for the lack of pomp, snacks, and booze. (Tippling on the second floor of City Hall–a satellite men’s club at times—was common.) The Courier-Express reported there “were no bishops, no judges, few widely known individuals in the inaugural ceremony itself. There was just Makowski, his family, some friends and a four-piece band.”
Makowski’s inaugural address shared above-fold real estate in January 1974 with the story that now-beyond-fallen O. J. Simpson had been selected as Buffalo’s Good Fellow of the Year by Mr. William J. Conners III, president and publisher of the Courier-Express. In true ’70s parlance, Makowski vowed “to establish a governing agency and staff to coordinate a diversity of municipal ‘people programs.’” The mayor-elect created an open-door policy with constituents, and hoped for self-reliant city government. The following will sound all too familiar to followers of upstate-downstate political struggles: Makowski charged “Albany and Washington with shortchanging the city by not returning to Buffalo a fair share of the taxes collected here … of all the taxes collected in Buffalo, ninety percent go to Albany and Washington.”
Makowski hoped to create an agency overseeing widespread City Hall slackerism. “I intend to take steps necessary to insure that this city is never again afflicted with ‘no-shows’ and ‘goldbrickers.’” And that brings us to the impetus, the literal building blocks, for the Makowski’s most notorious mayoral act.
Dark bricks–tons and tons–are what Makowski’s time in City Hall is ultimately best known for in local lore. In the early summer of 1976, federally-funded “work-intensive” renovations (via the Economic Development Administration within the Department of Commerce) began on McKinley Monument’s oblelisk, slumbering lions, and fountain. Somehow along the way this project expanded to incorporate dark brick walls designed by city architect Robert O’Hara (who went on to work for a private firm). The brick wall rose five and six feet around the circumference of the bustling rotary. His strategy: create warm and encompassing spaces for those who wished to lunch and gather at the square. Many critics felt that muggers would also appreciate the design.
“The new design is really very exciting, and I think it will stand the test of time. Wait until it’s finished, I think people will be pleased,” O’Hara urged. The public overwhelmingly disagreed, rallying against what became to be known as Fort Makowski.
Led by late artist Virginia Tillou, artists joined businesspeople and politicians protesting the besmirching of the monument. Tillou spoke out against what she found so disappointing about the mayor’s judgment, stating that landscaping would have been better, showing “taste and restraint,” instead of obscuring views of the monument. At an Anti-Fort Makowski demonstration Robert Kaiser and his son arrived in tanks (cardboard-covered cars) with “Attack the fort, save the monument” placards attached. Tillou, it should be added, also fought against the tri-coloring of McKinley Monument in 1976, when the entire country went mad painting everything that would stand still red, white, and blue.
Headlines blared on September 21 when the bricklaying was put on hold. Both dailies featured screamers about the work stoppage: “Halts Walls!” greeted morning C-E readers. In the end, Erie Excavating Corporation delivered the city from Fort Makowski.
Nancy J. Parisi has been a journalist and photojournalist in Buffalo for two decades and in 2005 completed an MFA at Parsons School of Design. She is a proud urban pioneer and has lived in the city’s Old First Ward for fifteen years.
The following sources were used to retell the stories of these four Buffalo Mayors Gone Wild: Buffalo Evening News, Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, Grosvenor Room microfiche collection; Courier-Express, Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, Grosvenor Room microfiche collection; Shawn Lay, Hooded Knights on the Niagara: The Ku Klux Klan in Buffalo, New York (1995); Stephen Powell, William J. Donovan (a.k.a. “Wild Bill”) Takes on Buffalo, www.buffalonian.com/history; Michael F. Rizzo, Through The Mayors’ Eyes: Buffalo, New York 1832–2005, (2005).
SUBSCRIBE NOW
Back to the Table of Contents
Back to Top
|
|
|
