CITIES: The Reformer

At 57, New York's Judge Samuel Seabury seemed almost an anachronism in the gay, irreverent 1920s. The son, grandson and great-grandson of clergymen, he saw part of life through the stained-glass windows of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He saw another part with the solemn, pince-nezed gaze of a reform-minded lawyer and jurist. The worst of what he saw was symbolized by James John Walker, New York City's twice-elected (1925, 1929) mayor. Jimmy Walker, top hat perched jauntily askew, wisecracked his way through the '20s like a handsome Bacchus, and it was perhaps...

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