mayorgaynor

LOC -- date is wrong -- should read "1913"

Wystan, Thanks for the heads up on the date. We will correct it when we update the record.

William Jay Gaynor had served a term as reform mayor of New York. Because the incorruptible Gaynor would not cooperate with the Tammany machine, Tammany refused to nominate him for a second term. So Gaynor was renominated by an independent group, and accepted their nomination. In this photo, the independents are on their way to notify Gaynor of the nomination, just before he sailed to Europe on a vacation voyage. On September 10, exactly a week after this photo was taken, Gaynor died of a heart attack, in his deck chair aboard the steamship Baltic, 400 miles off the coast of Ireland.

William Jay Gaynor died on September 10th, 1913, so this photo of his funeral was likely taken with a few weeks of then.

the wooden structure at the bottom of the picture may be public toilets? the sign says public works commission

I don't know which Taft that is, but he doesn't look like President Taft.

Photo is from September 1913 based on information about Gaynor's death.

The funeral took place on September 22, 1913, and Ex-president Taft was among the pallbearers, see photo in the New-York tribune., September 23, 1913, Page 2. See also


But this photo doesn't show Ex-pres. W. H. Taft (nor his brother Charles Phelps Taft, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Phelps_Taft).

And the man with mustache and glasses isn't Robert Adamson, another pallbearer. A photo of R. Adamson is here:


Rhinelander Waldo:
Could be the man tagged "Taft"

Thanks for your research B-59. We'll see what we can find about the identity of the pallbearers in this photo, and add them to the record the next time we update.