It’s been more than 70 years since Paul A. Fino began serving as a U.S. Congressional rep for the Bronx, where he was born and raised.
Fino, a leader in the Bronx’s Republican party, won a seat in the 83rd Congress in 1952, then was reelected for seven more terms—resigning in 1968 to become a judge on the New York State Supreme Court.
He sounds like the kind of colorful, promotional politician who understood his constituents in the borough’s 25th District. In postwar New York City, that district—from Riverdale to Woodlawn to Parkchester to Throgs Neck—was primarily Italian, Irish, German, and Jewish, per a New York Times article on Fino’s battle to keep his Congressional seat in 1956.
It’s hard to know where he would land in today’s political climate. Fino, who earned a law degree in 1937, was described in one article as a “pragmatic moderate.” He was opposed to busing and abortion rights, but he voted for the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s. He supported Medicare, as well as “bigger and earlier” Social Security benefits.
His battles with liberal Mayor John Lindsay were legendary. “Mr. Fino had a hard time swallowing what he considered the Manhattan-style elitism of Mr. Lindsay, who was mayor from 1966 through 1973,” the New York Times stated in Fino’s obituary.
Fino retreated from political life after the 1970s; he died in 2009 at age 95. I wonder what this long-serving politician would think if he knew that a re-election ad painted on the side of a tenement in the 1950s or 1960s would still be legible in 2024?
The faded sign, at Crotona Avenue and 183rd Street, preserves him as “your fighting congressman” on a tenement located roughly between two Bronx landmarks: Arthur Avenue and the Bronx Zoo.
[Shoutout to Justine V. for spotting this ad and taking the photo. Second photo: New York Times]
Tags: 1950s 1960s Faded Ads in New York City, Bronx Faded Ads, Faded Ad Paul Fino Bronx, Faded Ads on Tenements NYC, Paul Fino Bronx Congressional Representative, Paul Fino Bronx Republican Party, Paul Fino Re-Election Faded Ad Bronx
Ephemeral New York 
March 18, 2024 at 9:44 am |
In an attempt to cover the ethnic bases, he teamed up with two other politicians and ran under the slogan Lefkowitz Gilhooly and Fino, hoping to catch the Jewish, Irish, and Italian votes.
March 18, 2024 at 12:02 pm |
Very savvy…unless it backfired!
March 18, 2024 at 8:50 pm |
I had a similar experience with oudated political signs nearly 30 years ago in Brownsville, Brooklyn. I had to check on some central air conditioning equipment at the Chase Bank branch at 1697 Pitkin Avenue, on the corner of Pitkin Avenue and Rockaway Avenue. The air conditioning equipment was on the top floor, which was the 2nd floor, and used as an employee break room. At that time (and probably still to this day) there were two huge “Elect So and So” signs that you could still see from the inside of the building, but not from the outside of the building, as an outside brick facade had been placed over the original full building-width glass window expanse. When they put up that brick facade, they never even bothered removing the political signs, which I guessed had been there since the late 1950’s/early 1960’s, as both names were ethnically very Jewish, and the demographics of Brownsville in 2005 were vastly different than the constituency of the early period. I was sort of thrilled by seeing this historical throwback from an earlier era. Glenn in Brooklyn, NY.