Fort Lee Mayors, Movers and Shakers

Next Tuesday is election day, and as the late great Speaker of the House of Representatives, Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, once said, “All politics is local.” 

Looking through that prism, we can search the history of our own borough of Fort Lee to reflect on the mayors who have led us from our inception as a borough in 1904 through the better part of the 20th century.

This seems the right season to undertake this endeavor, for as the leaves fall from the trees, or as the snow knocks both the leaves and the trees down, I begin to think of the greatest book on American politics ever written in my mind, Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah. This 1956 novel centers on the fictional Mayor of Boston, Frank Skeffington. Now it should be told, the book is based on the real-life, legendary Mayor of Boston, James Michael Curley. 

The book, and the great 1958 John Ford film starring Spencer Tracy, details the last of the old-time elections, with the candidate, a great Irish-American mayor, running his last campaign, his “last hurrah,” as he visits the political wards, the boxing arenas, the church halls and even a wake or two along the way, pounding the pavements and glad-handing for votes.  

If you haven’t seen the movie, I urge you to go the and take out the DVD, if only for the scene of the mayor going to poor old Knocko Minihan’s wake. His meeting of old friend and professional mourner Delia Boylan is classic – one of the great scenes in American cinema history, with two old pros, Spencer Tracy and Jane Darwell, having the time of their lives, under the direction of John Ford.

I have added some photos of past mayors of Fort Lee. These tintypes and portraits line the Fort Lee Municipal Building's Council Chambers at 309 Main Street. Many of the portraits were painted by the legendary Fort Lee artists Willard Ortlip and his son, Paul Ortlip. 

We start with the first Mayor of Fort Lee, John Abbott. And lets end the confusion once and for all: Abbott Boulevard was not named after New Jersey native and one part of the great comedy team of Abbott  & Costello, Bud Abbott. The boulevard was named after Mayor Abbott, who was elected Fort Lee’s first mayor on May 17, 1904. 

Though General George Washington named Fort Lee in 1776, it was part of Ridgefield Township until it was incorporated as a borough in 1904. Mayor Abbott and the first elected Borough Council met in Schlosser’s Hotel, the current site of the Border’s Book Store building on Schlosser Street. One of Mayor Abbott’s early actions was to write to the gas company regarding a rock that obstructing Lemoine Avenue.  On July 12, the Mayor and Council issued a resolution on the creation of re acquiring the title of Pond Park. Mayor Abbott served from 1904-1906, and again from 1908-1912, and to my knowledge is still the only mayor in Fort Lee history to sport a nifty beard.

The Mayoralty of Daniel W. McAvoy ran from 1906-1908, and if he is remembered at all today, it is for the fact that his son, Henry A. McAvoy, a special effects and locations manager for Fox Film Studio in Fort Lee, blew himself up in his Whiteman Street garage on November 4, 1920 while working on special effects for the studio. According to newspaper accounts, several students at Public School No. 1 were knocked out of their classroom desks from the force of the explosion.

We now skip to Mayor Charles Heft, one of the real movers of Fort Lee. No, I mean he actually ran a moving company. My Uncle, the late Charlie Viola, worked for Mayor Heft when he was a kid in Fort Lee. Mayor Heft’s term ran from 1940-1951.

Any discussions of Fort Lee mayors must touch on the father and son team of Mayors Louis Hoebel, who served from 1930-1934), and his son, Henry Hoebel, Mayor of Fort Lee for most of the 1960s. Henry was a great historian of Fort Lee, and we were lucky enough to do several interviews with him at the weeks before his death in the early part of the 21st century. Part of his legacy is on view at our museum for Henry donated one of the key items of our Revolutionary War collection, an officer’s sword dating back to 1776. He found it as a boy buried in the ground somewhere in the borough.

We mentioned the “moving” Mayor of Fort Lee, now onto the “shaker” Mayor, or more appropriately, the bandleader or musician Mayor of Fort Lee of the late 1960s-1971, Mayor Joseph Licata. Mayor Licata’s time in office was one during which Fort Lee changed rapidly. In September 1971 Palisades Amusement Park closed for good. Many historic landmarks were lost to the wrecker’s ball, and high-rise development began to boom.

The youngest Mayor in Fort Lee history, Mayor Burt Ross, followed Mayor Licata into office. Ross was energetic and marched to the beat of his own drummer, a man of his times to be sure. Many accomplishments came under his mayoralty, but he will be forever remembered in Fort Lee as the man who refused "the bribe."

Mayor Ross wore a wire for the FBI during his term in office and uncovered corruption on the property then known as the Sutton Property and what we know today as the Redevelopment Area 5 site. Ross was offered a bribe to use his influence for the zoning of the property, and he risked his life to do the right thing.

In September of 1975 Mayor Ross was appointed by the Governor of New Jersey as head of the State Energy Office, and he was replaced by then Councilman Richard Nest who would go onto win his own term in office as mayor from 1976-1980. Mayor Nest was an old-school personality, not unlike the fictional Mayor Skeffington, and though not Irish by birth, he certainly was an Irish politician in his actions, words and deeds, and that is a high compliment.

Mayor Nicholas Corbiscello, known by most Fort Lee residents as Nick, was mayor for three consecutive terms. His administration continued the development of Fort Lee. He remains with us today and is as dapper as ever.

Corbiscello was followed into office by a man who himself would serve three consecutive terms, Mayor Jack Alter. Mayor Alter died in office in the midst of his own last hurrah, his last campaign for mayor some four years ago, and he holds the distinction of being the last 20th century Mayor of Fort Lee.

That pretty much covers the last 100 years of mayors in Fort Lee, Republican and Democrat, movers and shakers and all those in between. As Tip O’Neill would say, all politics is indeed local.