Tammany Hall

Cartoon by Thomas Nast, of the Tammany rotten egg

Tammany Hall, (also called the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order), named for Tamanend (meaning "affable"), a Native American leader of the Lenni Lenape, was started in 1786 and was declared on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society. It was the Democratic political machine that played a major role in controlling New York City politics. It also helped many immigrants, especially the Irish, rise in American politics. In 1858 Boss Tweed became its leader. Although tainted by corruption, Tweed nevertheless presided over a number of positive social welfare developments.

In the middle 20th century it became less powerful and dissolved in the 1960s.

Tammany Hall Media

• 

  Vice president Aaron Burr was the first to employ the Tammany Society as a vehicle for political gain.

• 

  Fernando Wood, who served as mayor between 1855 and 1861, was the first to rise through the ranks of the political machine to that office.

• 

  During the reign of Boss Tweed, editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast denounced Tammany as a ferocious tiger mauling the country, personified as Columbia. The tiger became a lasting symbol of Tammany Hall.

• 

  During the 1880s and 1890s, Richard Croker reestablished Tammany as the indisputable political authority in the city and a source of immense political graft and patronage.

• 

  (KingNYC)pgTHESUN,NASSAUANDFRANKFORTSTREETS

• 

  Tammany Hall on East 14th Street between Third Avenue and Irving Place in Manhattan, New York City (1914). The building was demolished c. 1927.

• 

  44 Union Square, the former Tammany Hall building at 17th Street and Park Avenue South, across from Union Square, housed a theatre and a film school until renovations commenced in 2016.