Robert Wagner, Ex-N.Y. Mayor, Dies at Age 80

Robert F. Wagner, a U.S. senator’s son who was mayor of New York from 1954 to 1965 and later U.S. ambassador to Spain, died today, apparently of natural causes. He was 80.

Police and an ambulance crew were called to Wagner’s Manhattan home early today, where he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Wagner, a lifelong Democrat like his father, had a long political career that included tenure as a state assemblyman, Manhattan borough president and U.S. envoy to the Vatican.

Wagner never realized his greatest political ambition, to serve in the U.S. Senate as his father, Robert F. Wagner Sr., had done for 23 years.

Wagner ran for the Senate once, in 1956, losing to Republican Jacob K. Javits in the second Dwight D. Eisenhower landslide.

Wagner’s three terms as mayor was a longevity record matched only by Fiorello H. LaGuardia and Edward I. Koch.

Wagner said repeatedly that he liked being mayor, despite the headaches that went with it, including race riots, waterfront and newspaper strikes, police scandals, school boycotts by blacks and a water shortage.

He was criticized frequently for procrastinating, often forming study committees so that a problem might have time to fade away, rather than taking action.

Wagner was mayor when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the Giants baseball team moved to San Francisco. But he had Shea Stadium built and was on hand when the New York Mets first played baseball in 1962.

He also helped save Carnegie Hall and kept the subway fare at 15 cents during his 12 years in City Hall. A subway ride is now $1.15.