Hugh J. Grant

Hugh John Grant (September 10, 1858 – November 3, 1910) served as the 88th mayor of New York City for two terms from 1889 to 1892. He remains the youngest mayor in the city's history, was one of the youngest mayors of a major American city, and was the second Roman Catholic mayor of New York City. Biography Hugh Grant, whose father John Grant had grown rich in politics and real estate, was born on West 27th Street in New York City, on September 10, 1858. He was orphaned young and raised by his guardian, a man named McAleenan. He attended both public and private schools, spent two years at Manhattan College, another year studying in Germany, and two more at Columbia Law School. Though the earliest data, including the United States census of 1860 and 1870 and Grant's 1878 passport application, establish his birth year as 1858, early in his political career he began to present himself as born several years earlier in 1852 or 1853, perhaps to avoid calling attention to his youth. A Tammany Hall Democrat, he began his political career as a city alderman from 1883–1884, where he was one of only two aldermen not caught up in a financial scandal related to the Broadway Surface Railroad. For the remainder of his public career, however, he was a compliant member of Tammany under the patronage and control of its leader Richard Croker. Grant lost the race for mayor as Tammany's candidate in 1885, but won the office of sheriff in 1886. He was Sheriff of New York County from 1887 to 1888. He was Mayor of New York City from 1889 to 1892, appointing Croker as New York City Chamberlain in 1889. His administrative accomplishments included the reorganization of city administration and the initial stages of placing the city's electrical system underground. In response to foot-dragging by the hesitant electric companies, Grant took a heavy-handed approach to placing the lines underground. Between 1889 and 1891, he ordered the chopping down of electric light poles before the underground system was prepared, leaving some public areas in darkness, and lambasted the electric companies for delaying the process and then asking to dig up newly repaved roads. His feuds with the electric companies occurred in the context of the Blizzard of 1888 and a severe wind storm in January 1891 – both of which badly damaged the city's growing net of above-ground wiring – and a spate of accidental electrocutions by low-hanging wires in Manhattan in late 1889.