Fiorello La Guardia - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

LaGuardia was born in Greenwich Village in New York City to two Italian immigrant parents. His father, Achille La Guardia, was a lapsed-Catholic from Cerignola, and his mother, Irene Coen, was a Jew from Trieste, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; his maternal grandmother Fiorina Luzzatto Coen was a Luzzatto, a member of the prestigious Italian Jewish family of scholars, kabbalists and poets and had among her ancestors the famous rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto better known as Shadal. It was in Trieste that Achille La Guardia met and married Irene . Fiorello La Guardia was raised an Episcopalian and practised that religion all his life. His middle name “Enrico” was changed to “Henry” (the English form of Enrico) when he was a child.

He moved to Arizona with his family, where his father had a bandmaster position at Fort Whipple in the U.S. Army. LaGuardia attended public schools and high school in Prescott, Arizona. After his father was discharged from his bandmaster position in 1898, Fiorello lived in Trieste.

La Guardia joined the State Department and served in U.S. consulates in Budapest, Trieste (Italy), and Fiume (Austria-Hungary), now Rijeka (Croatia), (1901–1906). He returned to the U.S. to continue his education at New York University. In 1907–10, he worked for New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children as an interpreter for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration at the Ellis Island immigrant station.

He graduated from New York University School of Law in 1910, was admitted to the bar the same year, and began a law practice in New York City.