John F. Collins

John Frederick Collins (July 20, 1919 – November 23, 1995) was an American lawyer who served as the mayor of Boston from 1960 to 1968.

John Collins was born in Roxbury on July 20, 1919, to an Irish Catholic family.

His father, Frederick "Skeets" Collins, worked as a mechanic for the Boston Elevated Railway.

Collins graduated from Roxbury Memorial High School, and in 1941, from Suffolk University Law School.

He served a tour in the Army Counterintelligence Corps during World War II, rising in rank from private to captain.

He was a member of the Knights of Columbus.

In 1946, Collins married Mary Patricia Cunniff, a legal secretary, who Collins had met through his work as an attorney.

She would later campaign for Collins when he was incapacitated by polio.

The couple had four children.

Collins was a lawyer who served in the Massachusetts Legislature from 1947 to 1955.

In 1947, Collins was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, representing Jamaica Plain, and, in 1950, to the Massachusetts State Senate.

Collins spent two terms as senator and then ran unsuccessfully for state attorney general in 1954, losing to George Fingold.

When Collins lost his campaign for Massachusetts Attorney General in 1954, only one new private office building had appeared on the city skyline since 1929.

One in five of the city's housing units were classified as dilapidated or deteriorating and the city was ranked lowest among major cities in building starts, while the only growing industries in the city were government and universities (leading to a narrowing tax base) and the city already had a higher number of municipal employees per capita than any major city in the United States.

He and his children caught polio during a 1955 outbreak.

He was reliant on a wheelchair and crutches the rest of his life.

While campaigning for a seat on the City Council in 1955, Collins and his children contracted polio.

Collins' children recovered and he continued with his campaign despite warnings from his doctors.

As a result of the disease, Collins was reliant on a wheelchair or crutches for the rest of his life.

He was elected to the council and the following year was appointed Register of Probate for Suffolk County.

After partially recovering, he ran for mayor in 1959 as an underdog.

He successfully portrayed himself as outside corrupt "machine politics" and was elected.

As mayor, Collins is most remembered for a massive urban redevelopment program, which was spearheaded by Edward J. Logue and the Boston Redevelopment Authority and led to a rejuvenation of business in Boston.

The city's seafront began changing into the business and tourist-friendly district seen in later decades.

His actions were emulated by urban planners around the country, and the campaign was credited by later mayors as ensuring that Boston did not continue shrinking.

In 1959, Collins ran against Massachusetts Senate President John E. Powers for Mayor of Boston.

Collins was widely viewed as the underdog in the race.

Powers was supported by Massachusetts U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy.

Collins ran on the slogan "stop power politics", and was widely seen as independent of any political machine.

Collins' victory in the 1959 mayoral election was considered the biggest upset in city politics in decades.

Boston University political scientist Murray Levin wrote a book on the race, titled The Alienated Voter: Politics in Boston, which attributed Collins' victory to the voters' cynicism and resentment of the city's political elite.

Collins won re-election in 1963, easily defeating City Councilor Gabriel Piemonte.

Later in his second term, Collins made an unsuccessful run in the Democratic primary of the 1966 United States Senate election in Massachusetts.

After leaving politics, he worked as a visiting professor and lecturer.

In 1966, a Boston Globe poll showed deep dissatisfaction with the Collins administration's urban renewal policies.

Collins inherited a city in fiscal distress.

Property taxes in Boston were twice as high as in New York or Chicago, even as the city's tax base was declining.

Collins established a close relationship with a group of local business leaders known as the Vault, cut taxes in five of his eight years in office and imposed budget cuts on city government.

Collins' administration focused on downtown redevelopment: Collins brought the urban planner Edward J. Logue (who had been serving as the administrator of the New Haven Redevelopment Agency) to Boston to lead the Boston Redevelopment Authority and Collins' administration supervised the construction of the Prudential Center complex and of Government Center.

Urban renewal would affect 3,223 acres of the city, be highly profitable for the city's business community, and by the 1970s, led to Boston having the fourth-largest central-business-district office space in the United States as well as the highest construction rates.