Angelo Joseph Rossi
| Angelo Joseph Rossi | |
|---|---|
 |
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| 31st Mayor of San Francisco | |
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In office January 7, 1931 – January 8, 1944 |
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| Preceded by | James Rolph |
| Succeeded by | Roger Lapham |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
January 22, 1878 Volcano, Amador County, California |
| Died | April 5, 1948 (aged 70) San Francisco, California |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Grace Mabel Allen; children: Eleanor Rossi Crabtree, Clarence Rossi, Rosamond Rossi Cleese |
| Profession | Florist |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
Angelo Joseph Rossi (January 22, 1878 – April 5, 1948) was a U.S. political figure who served as the 31st mayor of San Francisco. He was the first mayor of 100% Italian descent of a major U.S. city (top 10 most populous U.S. cities between 1776 and 1931).
Rossi was born in Volcano, Amador County, California, and came to San Francisco in 1890 with his widowed mother and six siblings after the family home and general store burned to the ground in minutes. (His father, also named Angelo, left Italy in 1849 at the age of 16 aboard a ship loaded with marble that departed from Genoa. When he arrived in Amador County, he mined for gold and opened his general store.) When Angelo arrived in San Francisco with his family in 1890, he attended school but left after 6th grade to work in jobs that ranged from cash boy to a clerk in a couple of different florist shops, including Carbone and Sons and Pelicano and Sons, which became Pelicano and Rossi when he became a partner in the early 1900s. Eventually he opened his own company, Angelo J. Rossi, Inc., and during his tenure in office the florist company continued to operate in a sparkling Art Deco-motif building Angelo owned at 45 Grant Avenue.
He was first appointed mayor when mayor James Rolph resigned to become Governor of California in January, 1931. After completing the remaining year of Rolph's term, Rossi was elected in his own right as mayor in November 1931. He was reelected mayor for second and third full terms in 1935 and 1939 respectively. Running for a fourth term as mayor in 1943, he was defeated when a protégé of his, George Reilly, ran against him, splitting the Catholic vote, and when Roger Lapham was tapped by business interests to run, in part to advance their cause regarding the City's purchase of the Market Street Railway.
A Republican, he served as San Francisco's mayor from 1931 to 1944. Rossi was mayor when the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge were built, and he presided over the building of Treasure Island and the Golden Gate International Exposition (World's Fair) of 1939. Under his administration, the city resisted compliance with the Raker Act which required San Francisco to sell power from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite to municipalities or municipal water districts, and not to any corporations, a condition of use of the Hetch Hetchy Valley. He dedicated the Mount Davidson Cross in March, 1934. He was a strong proponent of the New Deal alphabet-soup roster of work programs and worked vigorously and constantly with Washington to bring as many dollars to the City as possible in order to create jobs and improve the City's infrastructure.
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