James McManus, the last of the city’s Tammany Hall Democratic party bosses, died at home Monday at the age of 84.
McManus, the Democratic Party district leader in Hell’s Kitchen for more than 50 years, headed up the McManus Midtown District Club, which began in the Tammany Hall era.
His great-grand-uncle, Thomas McManus, who was elected to the state assembly in 1892, founded the McManus Club, which ran politics in Hell’s Kitchen for decades. James McManus took over the club in 1963.
For generations, its St. Patrick's Day breakfast was a must-stop for city politicians — until it was canceled in 2015 for lack of an appropriate venue.
McManus stepped down as district leader in 2017, so his nephew, Mickey Spillane Jr. — the son of the legendary Hell’s Kitchen mobster Mickey Spillane, remembered as the “last of the gentlemen gangsters,” could win the position, according to the New York Times .