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George Lunn -- Schenectady's Socialist mayor
On a Monday night exactly 100 years ago this week, two men knocked on the front door of 17 Jay St. in Schenectady. They wanted to see George Lunn.
A former minister at the First Reformed Church, Lunn was running for political office, and the next day he would be elected the city’s first and only Socialist mayor. First, however, he had to play ball with the bosses of his newly adopted political party, and that meant signing an agreement the night before the election assuring Socialists everywhere, but particularly those in New York state, that he would follow the dictates of the party leaders or give up the mayor’s office. Posted on November 7, 2011.
This photograph of Lunn shows him busy at work in the mayor's office at the City Hall Annex in 1912.
George Lunn posed for this photograph sometime around 1910, after he left as pastor of the First Reformed Church and before he was elected mayor of Schenectady.
George Lunn was around 30 years old when this photo was taken, probably just before he came to Schenectady in 1904 to become pastor of the First Reformed Church.
George Lunn, standing farthest to the right on the platform, posed for this picture while serving as editor of The Citizen during the summer of 1911, before announcing he would run for mayor as a Socialist.
George Lunn, left, was lieutenant governor under New York Gov. Al Smith, right, when the pair met with two other powerful Democrats, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, second from left, and West Virginia’s John W. Davis, in August of 1924 at FDR’s home in Hyde Park. Davis was the Democratic candidate for president that November, losing to incumbent Calvin Coolidge.
