A lawyer and public official, Robert F. Wagner (1910-1991) was one of New York City's last Tammany Hall mayors, 1954-1965.

A New York City mayor for 12 years, Robert F. Wagner was intimately involved in politics from childhood. His mother died when Robert was nine. His father, a senator, was a powerful figure in the New Deal wing of the Democratic Party and a sponsor of several significant reform acts, including the Wagner Act, which created the National Labor Relations Board. Wagner reaped the benefit of his father's famous name as well as his enormous popularity when he ran for public office.

Early Start in Politics

Young Robert attended a public school in New York and the Taft School in Watertown, CT, and received his law degree from Yale Law School in 1937. In that same year he was elected to the New York State Assembly and remained there until...