Bloom, Sol, 1870-1949

<p>Sol Bloom (March 9, 1870 – March 7, 1949) was a song-writer and American politician from New York who began his career as an entertainment impresario and sheet music publisher in Chicago. He served fourteen terms in the United States House of Representatives from the West Side of Manhattan, from 1923 until his death in 1949.</p>

<p>Bloom was the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee from 1939 to 1947 and again in 1949, during a critical period of American foreign policy. In the run-up to World War II, he took charge of high-priority foreign-policy legislation for the Roosevelt Administration, including authorization for Lend Lease in 1940. He oversaw Congressional approval of the United Nations and of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) which worked to assist millions of displaced people in Europe. He was a member of the American delegation at the creation of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945 and at the Rio Conference of 1947.</p>

<p>Bloom was especially concerned with the fate of European Jews but was unable to overcome very strong resistance to admitting Jews or any refugees before the war. He argued vigorously after the war that the United States needed to take in larger numbers of refugees. He adopted the Zionist position that mandated Palestine should become the refuge for Jewish victims of the Holocaust. He urgently lobbied President Harry Truman in 1948 to immediately recognize the Jewish state of Israel, which Truman did. When the Republicans took control of the Foreign Affairs Committee after the 1946 election, Bloom worked closely with the new chairman, Charles Eaton. They secured approval for the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.</p>

BLOOM, Sol, a Representative from New York; born in Pekin, Tazewell County, Ill., March 9, 1870; moved with his parents to San Francisco, Calif., in 1873; attended the public schools; engaged in the newspaper, theatrical, and music-publishing businesses; superintendent of construction of the Midway Plaisance at the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893; moved to New York City in 1903 and engaged in the real estate and construction business; captain in the New York Naval Reserve in 1917; elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-eighth Congress by special election, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of United States Representative-elect Samuel Marx, and reelected to the thirteen succeeding Congresses (January 30, 1923-March 7, 1949); chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs (Seventy-sixth through Seventy-ninth Congresses and Eighty-first Congress), Special Committee on Chamber Improvements (Eighty-first Congress); director of the United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission; director general of the United States Constitution Sesquicentennial Commission; chairman of the Committee on Celebration of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the United States Supreme Court; director and United States Commissioner, New York World's Fair, in 1939; died on March 7, 1949, in Washington, D.C.; interment in Mount Eden Cemetery, Westchester Hills, N.Y.

<p>Sol Bloom (1870-1949) was a self-made man who rose from poverty to success in business and a distinguished career in public service. The son of Polish-Jewish immigrants had no formal schooling but learned Hebrew from his mother and educated himself. Bloom first went to work in San Francisco at the age of seven and made his way up from the factory to the theater to the import business. As a young man, he moved to Chicago to manage the Midway amusements at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. His lucrative music publishing company (which issued songs that he wrote) led him to settle in New York in 1903. Seven years later, Bloom devoted himself to the real estate business, and made another fortune by building substantial apartment houses and some of Manhattan’s best known theaters (including the Apollo, Harris, and Music Box).</p>

<p>At the age of fifty, Bloom retired from business and entered politics. In 1923 he was elected as a Democrat to the House of Representatives from Manhattan; Congressman Bloom began the first of his fourteen consecutive terms. As a veteran of the entertainment industry, he was involved with issues of copyright law and radio broadcasting, and he organized the national George Washington Bicentennial celebration of 1932. He worked on behalf of social causes such as the relaxation of immigration laws, intervention in the anthracite strike of 1926, modification of the Volstead Act, and he supported most New Deal legislation. Appointed chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 1940, Bloom developed critical legislation during and after World War II, including measures involving armament, universal service, lend-lease, and relief to foreign countries. He helped write the United Nations charter in 1945, and he ardently supported the creation of a Jewish state. Sol Bloom died in 1949. He was succeeded in Congress by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., who won a special election on the Liberal Party line.</p>

<p>Bloom lived in and represented New York’s 19th (later 20th) Congressional District, which included much of the Upper West Side. Flemish and Dutch settlers of the late 17th century called this region Bloemendaal, meaning "flowering valley." During the early 19th century, small villages developed among the country estates of the rich. The area changed dramatically as New York expanded north, Central and Riverside Parks opened, and Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway) was rebuilt as a grand boulevard. From the 1870s to the 1920s, cultural institutions, residential hotels, apartment buildings, mansions, rowhouses, and tenements rose on the Upper West Side. Urban renewal projects of the 1950s-1980s replaced old buildings with new construction such as large housing complexes and cultural institutions, as well as schools and playgrounds.</p>