Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia made great use of WNYC radio to educate and inform his constituents. He is probably best known for reading the comics on the radio during the newspaper deliverymen’s strike in July 1945. But later that year, in another WNYC radio broadcast, he addressed a common problem faced by New Yorkers: how to cook a large turkey in a small apartment oven. You are invited to enjoy the mayor’s unique solution in his October 28, 1945 broadcast:
Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace at the Food Stamp Plan Meeting at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, August 16, 1940. International News Photo. Mayor LaGuardia Photograph Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
The clip is selected from the Municipal Archives’ WNYC audio collection of more than 15,000 acetate or lacquer transcription discs and approximately 10,000 tapes. They date from 1936 through the 1970s. In the collection, we hear the voices of presidents, dignitaries, world leaders, artistic revolutionaries, musical geniuses, luminaries of the literati, and cultural icons. On December 7th, 1941, WNYC was the first U.S. radio station to announce the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. Whether the programs were quiz shows or roundtable discussions on current events, the focus was always on serving the public good.
We thank our colleagues at the New York Public Radio Archives for alerting us to this recording and for supplying the digital file. The NYPR Archives has been digitizing the WNYC lacquer phono discs and tapes from the Municipal Archives collection, and with a grant from the Leon Levy Foundation, they will continue this important work. Look for future blogs highlighting the progress of this project.