Remembering Former Mayor, and Former Neighbor, Ed Koch

Former Mayor Ed Koch passed away this morning at the age of 88. Born in the Bronx, with his early childhood was spent in Newark, after high school his family moved to our area, living in an apartment at 320 Ocean Parkway and reportedly attending the Flatbush Jewish Center on East 5th St. He went back and forth to City College, but apparently didn’t have much time for fun in the neighborhood:

Between the hour-and-a-half subway ride every day up to the 135th Street campus and preparing for a heavy course load, Ed stuck close to home and did not become friendly with the neighbors like his mother and sister did.

Mayor from 1978 to 1989, there are of course different opinions on his performance, and Ben Smith’s obituary in BuzzFeed sums up some of that feeling:

“Koch had a very good first term and helped pull the city out of its doldrums, and he had a certain sense of the excesses of liberalism,” Cooper Union history professor Fred Siegel said. As time wore on, however, “he had no vision of how to run the city,” Mr. Siegel said.

Koch himself put it differently. “I consider myself to be a liberal with sanity,” he told the New York Sun…

So far, some neighbors and area politicians have had some things to say, and memories to share, about Koch on Twitter:

An outsize character, there are obituaries with great anecdotes in plenty of places, so click around to read more.

How will you remember Ed Koch?

Photo of Koch and his boxer named Boxer on Ocean Pkwy via La Guardia and Wagner