Some political commentators find our current, self-made businessman mayor anomalous. Yet until the mid-19th century most mayors were businessmen, handling public affairs in their spare time. After New Yorkers began directly electing mayors in 1834, the elites found that democracy required time that could be more profitably invested in their businesses. They largely left politics to professionals, who happily shouldered the day-to-day work of winning elections as the price of access to the public trough. The occasional businessman mayor thereafter generally had inherited wealth. But one was a self-made man, whose name remains famous because the business he founded still bears it: W. R. Grace.

William Russell Grace, New York’s 54th and 56th mayor, was 14 when Ireland’s Great Famine drove him to America. He worked his passage to New York as a sailor and then worked as a cobbler’s helper, printer’s apprentice, and clerk. He liked business and became a broker at 16. Three years later, he sailed for Callao, Peru, to cash in on the boom in guano – dried bird dung. Millions of birds rest in their annual migrations on Peru’s Guano Islands, leaving mountains of excrement. In the 1840s, science rediscovered the wisdom of the Incas: Guano is amazingly rich fertilizer.

Peru became wealthy overnight, as worldwide guano demand exploded. Hundreds of sailing freighters moored off the islands to load the yellow dust. They needed naval stores: sails, rope, spars, masts, turpentine, tar, pitch, oakum, nails, kerosene, hard tack, salt pork. Grace sold these from his store ship – a floating warehouse – which sailed among the guano fleets as they waited for cargoes. By 1862, Grace was rich. He returned to New York, where he invested in real estate, dealt in sugar, and operated, chartered, and invested in ships for his cargoes and those of other merchants.

Grace had taken a layman’s interest in politics. In 1880, he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. He impressed several politicians, including Tammany boss John “Honest John” Kelly. Later that year, the Democratic Party’s Irving Hall and Tammany Hall factions negotiated a citywide ticket. Irving Hall suggested Grace for mayor; Kelly agreed. On October 22, 1880, two weeks before the election, Grace was nominated.

In an editorial blasting Grace, the New York Times wrote, “Though neither his birth nor his religion can be held to be of itself a disqualification for the office of Mayor…”Thus did the establishment signal its disfavor of an Irish-born Catholic mayor, even as nativist demagogues claimed Grace would “make this City subordinate to … the Holy Father in Rome.” Nonetheless, he squeaked in by 2,914 votes.

Grace’s alliance with Tammany did not survive his first month in office. The boss kept suggesting men for jobs whom Grace found unfit. Kelly called at City Hall. Voices were heard from the mayor’s office. Then Grace barked, “No one can dictate to me, Mr. Kelly.” Honest John stormed from the Hall. Thereafter, it was war.

Grace grappled with sanitation. Despite the street cleaning bureau’s soaring expenditures, streets were filthy, with up to a foot of horse manure in the roadbed. Street cleaners, by and large, spent their time politicking and showed up only on payday. In early 1881 Grace brought charges against the bureau’s commissioners – who were not mayoral appointees – which Republican Governor Alonzo Cornell, secretly allied with Tammany, dismissed after public hearings.

Nonetheless, the bureau was reorganized, new commissioners appointed, and the streets slowly became cleaner. To concentrate on governing the city, Grace did not seek re-election in 1882. He returned to private life praised by many who had criticized him during his first campaign. On October 20, 1884, independent reformers nominated Grace for mayor, creating a three-way race against a Tammanyite, future mayor Hugh J. Grant, and a Republican who had agreed to take a dive in Tammany’s favor. Assembly man Theodore Roosevelt, revolted by the Tammany-GOP deal, endorsed Grace. Many voters apparently felt Tammany’s attacks proved Grace’s integrity, and he won by 10,927 votes.

During Grace’s second term, he persuaded the Legislature to require all franchises – rights to use public property for profitable private purposes, such as telegraph, telephone, and electric cables – to be sold to the highest bidder. This ended, for a time, the corrupt practice of giving them to the politically connected. After his second term, he returned to private life for good.

Until the end, he was not a man to trifle with. He daily rode the Third Avenue Elevated to his Hanover Square offices. Marquis James wrote, “One day in his seventieth year, he arose to give his seat to a lady. A young man dropped into the seat. Mr. Grace took the young man by the collar and lifted him to his feet.” On March 20, 1904, Grace asked from his sickbed about one of his ships. Then he died.