Rhinelander Waldo (May 24, 1877 – August 13, 1927) was appointed the seventh New York City Fire Commissioner by Mayor William Jay Gaynor on January 13, 1910. He resigned on May 23, 1911, less than two months after the deadly Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire to accept an appointment as the eighth New York City Police Commissioner. On December 31, 1913, he was dismissed by the outgoing acting mayor, Ardolph Kline. Among other achievements in office, Waldo contributed to the motorization of both departments. Early life Rhinelander Waldo was born on May 24, 1877 in New York City to Francis William "Frank" Waldo, a stockbroker who died in 1878, and Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo, an American heiress known for commissioning the Rhinelander Mansion located in Manhattan at 867 Madison Avenue on the south-east corner of 72nd Street, designed in the 1890s by Kimball & Thompson and completed in 1898. Waldo was educated at the Berkeley School and the Columbia School of Mines before attending the United States Military Academy at West Point. Columbia University's alumni notes show that he was a member of the class of 1899, but it was unsure whether he graduated with the class or not. Career He joined the Seventeenth Infantry Regiment of the United States Army as a Second Lieutenant in 1899, after the United States had occupied the Philippine Islands in the Spanish–American War. In the course of nearly four years in the Philippines, he served under General Arthur MacArthur, Jr., was on the staff of General Leonard Wood during the Moro rebellion, and commanded a battalion of Philippine Scouts. He resigned from the Army in 1905 with the rank of captain and became New York's First Deputy Commissioner of Police in January 1906, at the age of 28. Waldo, who had served as New York City Fire Commissioner since the beginning of Mayor Gaynor's term in January 1910, was in office at the time of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire which occurred on March 25, 1911 and killed 146 people. On June 9, 1911, only 17 days after taking office as Police Commissioner, Waldo founded the motor-cycle squad, organized under the Office of Street Traffic Regulation Bureau. Another of his early acts as Police Commissioner was the appointment of three "Strong Arm" anti-vice squads and their commanders—one of whom, Charles Becker, was later executed for complicity in the July 1912 murder of the bookmaker Herman