Dont Call Me Boss: David L. Lawrence, Pittsburgh's Renaissance Mayor

Lawrence may not have liked the word, but he was the boss of Pittsburgh from 1933 to 1966. At the start, he was a boss in the old-fashioned sense: he was in on the ground floor of Franklin Roosevelt's victory in 1932 and parlayed that position, along with the patronage that accompanied it, into an impregnable machine, replacing an entrenched Republican organization with which he had worked closely. In 1945 he became the mayor of the dying city when no one else wanted the job and, with help from business and industrial leaders, revitalized the Steel City both physically and psychically. Weber, dean of Duquesne University's Graduate School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, tells Lawrence's story effectively, but interest in the man will likely be confined to Western Pennsylvania. Photos. (February 29)