Bird Sim Coler (October 9, 1867 Urbana, Illinois – June 12, 1941 Brooklyn, New York) was an American stockbroker and politician from Brooklyn, New York. He served as the first New York City Comptroller after the city's 1898 consolidation and was the Democratic nominee for Governor of New York in 1902. He narrowly lost the election to Governor Benjamin Odell Jr.
Coler was born on October 9, 1868, in Urbana, Illinois, the son of William N. Coler and Cordelia Sim.[1] The elder Coler established a banking house after the Civil War and brought his family to Brooklyn.[2]
The younger Coler was educated at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.[2]
Coler and Emily Moore, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Moore, were married on October 1, 1888. He died on June 12, 1941, in Brooklyn, and she died on August 23, 1941, in the same hospital. They had a son, Eugene Bird Coler.[3][4]
He established himself as a stockbroker in New York City, became prominent in municipal and State politics, and was first Comptroller of Greater New York, from 1897 to 1901. In 1902, he was the Democratic nominee for Governor of New York, but lost to Benjamin B. Odell Jr., by a small plurality in spite of his enormous lead in New York City.
In 1905 he was elected president of the Borough of Brooklyn, on the Municipal Ownership ticket. For his four-year term, Coler appointed Charles Frederic Adams, a Single-Tax advocate who had endorsed Coler's earlier run for governor[5], to be the Borough Secretary.[6] In 1918, Coler ran unsuccessfully on the Democratic ticket for New York State Comptroller.
He was the author of Commercialism in Politics, Two and Two Make Four, He Made Them Twain, and other sociological works.[2]
In 1927, Coler, then the commissioner for public welfare in New York City, investigated "The Santa Claus Association" of John Duval Gluck. The association became embroiled in controversy as a result of dubious fundraising and accounting practices.[7]
Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital on Roosevelt Island bears his name.
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