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.
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.