Claire Shulman RIP

Claire Shulman served as Queens Borough President from 1986 to 2002, the first woman to hold the job and, for a long time, one of the only women to serve in high office in NYC. She has died at age 94.

Shulman was instrumental in the development of previously depressed parts of the borough like Jamaica, Flushing, and Long Island City. Most notably she speardheaded the transformation of Queens into a cultural hotspot, working to improve the Queens County Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image, and the New York Hall of Science.

Shulman also had an impressive personal legacy -- her daughter is an astronaut named Ellen Baker and her son is a prominent oncologist. She had another son who died in 2001 and was a budding director.

Her rise to the BP job was dramatic -- her predecessor, Donald Manes, a flamboyant old-school machine pol had dramatically committed suicide in 1986 after being caught up in a wild mess of corruption, mob ties, and nastiness. In many ways, her time in office was transitional, as the last remaining ties to Tammany Hall and machine/mob-domination gave way to reform, good government, and a new city. 

RIP.