Politics
Rudolph G. Tenerowicz
1890–1963 · physician, politician
Budapest-born Polish-American physician who served as mayor of Hamtramck and as a US congressman from Detroit, a career marked by a bribery conviction and his role in the 1942 Sojourner Truth Homes conflict.
- Born
Budapest, Hungary- Died
Hamtramck, Michigan
aged 73- Birth name
- Rudolph Gabriel Tenerowicz
- Detroit years
- 1923–1963
- Field
- Politics
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Tenerowicz was born in Budapest to a Polish family that emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1892. He studied at the Polish seminary of SS. Cyril and Methodius, then trained in medicine in Chicago and served as an Army doctor in World War I. In 1923 he opened a medical practice in Hamtramck, the Polish enclave surrounded by Detroit. He was elected mayor in 1928; in 1931 he was convicted in a vice conspiracy case, but a pardon from Governor William Comstock allowed him to return and serve again from 1936 to 1938. As mayor he backed Jean Hoxie's youth tennis program, which produced state and national champions. Elected to Congress in 1938, he pressed federal agencies in 1942 to assign the new Sojourner Truth Homes to white tenants only. He later returned to medicine in Hamtramck and died there in 1963.
Highlights
- Mayor of Hamtramck, 1928–1932 and 1936–1938
- US Representative for Michigan's 1st district, 1939–1943
- Supported Jean Hoxie's celebrated Hamtramck youth tennis program
- Convicted in 1931, later pardoned by Governor Comstock
- Buried at Arlington National Cemetery
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Related place · 1942
Sojourner Truth Homes
Status being checked
Federal public housing project in northeast Detroit whose opening to Black tenants in 1942 sparked a violent confrontation; Tenerowicz lobbied to reserve it for whites.