Jacob Aaron Westervelt

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Westervelt was politically an ardent but not very active Democrat. In 1840 he was elected to the Common Council, in which he served for two years as an Alderman from the thirteenth ward. Westervelt stepped back from active political involvement for a couple of years, but remained a shrewd observer of current affairs and recognized nuisances and the needs of the people of "his" town. He witnessed sharply increasing taxes between 1850 and 1852 and the establishment of a reform movement that began to decry excessive government spending. Grand jury revelations of widespread corruption on the common council heightened such concerns. Reformers mobilized and ran the Democratic incumbents out of office, electing in their place a combination of Whigs and reform Democrats committed to "economy" in government. In November 1852 Westervelt was nominated for Mayor of the city by reformist representatives of the Democratic party. The mayoralty election was held at the same time as the presidential election, and the Democrats were successful in both.

Westervelt was elected by a majority of 10,000, the largest ever received by a candidate up to that time (being nearly as much indebted to Whigs as to Democrats for his seat), against the most popular member of the Whig party, Alderman Morgan Morgans, carrying his own ward by a majority of nearly 1,000, and only a few votes behind the electoral ticket for President Franklin Pierce. The new mayor inherited the bad financial situation of the city, corrupt politicians, and an ailing police system. In his first message to the Community Council he declared the subjects he planned to deal with first, and that according to him, needed the attention of the council:

Westervelt's term was marked by many reforms of the city's police. One of the most controversial was his attempt to enforce a police uniform.

In 1844, New York City's population of 320,000 was served by an archaic police force, consisting of one night watch, one hundred city marshals, thirty-one constables, and fifty-one municipal police officers. On 7 May 1844, the state legislature approved a proposal that authorized creation of a city police force, along with abolition of the nightwatch system. Under Mayor William Havemeyer, the NYPD was reorganized on May 13, 1845, with the city divided into three districts, with courts, magistrates, and clerks, and station houses. Within eight years this system showed weaknesses. The New York Times wrote in 1853, "Our police are inefficient. Worse has been said of them." Another publication delineated the situation much more precisely:

It was Mayor Westervelt's stated aim to sort out the bad seed. In 1853 an administrative body was created, called the Board of Police Commissioners, consisting of Mayor Westervelt, the recorder and the city judge. Apart from the fact that the chief of police was selected by the Mayor with the Board's approval, the Board had full powers of appointment and dismissal of all members of the force and was charged with general administrative duties.

In nothing was the undisciplined attitude of the police more clearly shown than in their refusal to wear uniforms. "Un-American", "undemocratic", "militarism", "King's livery", "a badge of degradation and servitude"—ideas of this kind formed the basis of opposition against Westervelt's wish to put policemen in uniform, mainly from the force itself and an influential number of citizens who deemed it "unrepublican" to put the servants of the city in livery. On June 24, 1854 there was a large, angry meeting of 1,000–1,500 policemen. The objects of the meeting were stated in a notice posted prominently in the streets and published in the morning papers:

Westervelt's position was clear: that a uniform incites a high degree of chivalrous sentiment, that it involves a "pride of cloth", and that the wearer knows that if he disgraces it he disgraces himself and the profession in which he serves. Westervelt earned many party enemies by his determined policy to keep appointments to the police force, which were then a large part of the patronage appertaining to the mayoralty, free from political influence.

By the early 1850s New York had grown to sufficient size and prominence that the city decided to host a major exhibition of the type that London had pioneered in 1851. Such early exhibitions were forerunners of the later world's fairs. The Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations opened during the term of Mayor Westervelt on July 14, 1853, in a sparsely developed part of the city. Fortieth and Forty-second streets bounded the fair's four-acre site to the immediate west of the Croton Distributing Reservoir—today's Bryant Park. Within New York's Crystal Palace, designed by Karl Gildemeister, four thousand exhibitors displayed the industrial wares, consumer goods, and artworks of the nation. Westervelt was President of the Exhibition, which set off one of the first major tourism booms in New York; many hotels were built to handle the influx of visitors. Over one million people visited the Crystal Palace Exhibition, which closed on November 1, 1854 (in spite of its popularity, the exhibition's sponsors lost $300,000 on the venture). The structure remained standing after the fair, and was leased for a variety of purposes before being destroyed by fire on October 5, 1858.

Mayor Westervelt did not shy away from unpopular decisions if he considered them to serve the general good. In 1853 the New York legislature designated a 750-acre (300 ha) area from 59th to 106th Streets for the creation of the planned Central Park, though the land alone cost over $5 million. At the time, the city's finances were declining, and Westervelt was concerned about overspending and the state's regulatory overreach in its decision to designate such a large area. There were several competing proposals to curtail the park, but no decision was made until March 1855, when the city's board of councilmen voted 14-to-3 to trim both the lower thirteen blocks (from 59th to 72nd Streets) and four hundred feet from each side of Central Park. However, on March 23, 1855, the new Democratic Mayor, Fernando Wood, vetoed the measure.

The New York Draft Riots, the worst riots in United States history with respect to lives lost, took place during the Civil War in 1863, when immigrant factory workers forcibly resisted the federal government's military draft. In the United States, the period from 1820 to 1870 was generally characterized by conflicts on the domestic front, such as the police riots and the riots of the Know-Nothing movement. It was during Westervelt's term as mayor that some of the first Know-Nothing riots occurred. This nativist American political movement was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to American values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. This body of thought was often propagated by street preachers. One of the most ambivalent characters was Reverend Mr. Parsons, who had been in the habit of regularly preaching on the wharves, in shipyards and other "obscure" places along the East and North Rivers. On December 11, 1853 he planted himself upon a pile of timber in the Westervelt & MacKay shipyard. His voice traveled far, and in the course of half an hour there was an assemblage of some ten thousand people. As a result of his speech a serious riot occurred and on the orders of Mayor Westervelt the preacher was taken into custody. Some Know-Nothinger hastened to the station house with the intention of liberating him. Finding no redress there, five thousand excited men marched to 308 East Broadway and surrounded the residence of Mayor Westervelt. Finding that he was absent from home, they contented themselves with daubing a large cross on the door.

The feelings of the members of this movement against the participation of foreign-born citizens in municipal affairs had grown very bitter, and Westervelt set himself so sternly against them that his house was mobbed again. Probably due to the paucity of support for his reformist efforts during his term, but also because he applied himself more and more to the business of shipbuilding again, Westervelt declined a renomination, which for him was equivalent to an election, and was succeeded as Mayor by Fernando Wood. In 1857 Westervelt became a member of the New York State Assembly for Rockland County.

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