1. Seth Low was an American educator and political figure who served as the mayor of Brooklyn from 1881 to 1885, the president of Columbia University from 1890 to 1901, a diplomatic representative of the United States, and the mayor of New York City from 1902 to 1903.
Seth Low was a leading municipal reformer fighting for efficiency during the Progressive Era.
Seth Low's father was a leading trader in China, and his father's sister, Harriet Seth Low, was one of the first young American women to live in China.
The Seth Low family was old Puritan New England stock, descended from Thomas Seth Low of Essex County, Massachusetts.
Low was named after his grandfather Seth Low who moved with his son Abiel to Brooklyn to start a prosperous importing company.
Seth Low's father was a Unitarian, and his mother was an Episcopalian.
Finally, at age 22, Seth Low decided he would henceforth be an Episcopalian.
Seth Low attended Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn and Columbia College.
Seth Low defeated the incumbent Democrat James Howell after a two-week campaign, 45,434 votes to 40,937.
Where Seth Low won his first term by 5,000 votes, he squeaked by re-election with only a 1,548-vote margin.
Seth Low declined to run for a third term in 1885, and refused to support Republican nominee General Isaac S Catlin.
Seth Low led the move of the institution from Midtown Manhattan to Morningside Heights, and secured trustee approval to change its name to "Columbia University".
At the conference, Seth Low made the concluding speech, printed two months later in The New York Times, saying:.
In 1902, Seth Low resigned as president of the university to become the second mayor of the newly consolidated City of New York.
Seth Low was chairman of the Tuskegee University, a historically black college directed under Booker T Washington, from 1907 until 1916.
Seth Low was a founder and the first president of the Bureau of Charities of Brooklyn, and was elected vice-president of the New York Academy of Sciences and president of the Archaeological Institute of America.
Seth Low became interested in the food supply problem, that is its contribution to the constantly increasing cost of living.
Seth Low became convinced that this difficulty could best be solved by democratic cooperation among farmers and consumers.
Seth Low was president of the Bedford Farmers' Cooperative Association.
Seth Low was one of the founders of the Cooperative Wholesale Corporation of New York City, an organization which seeks to bring about a business federation of all the consumers' cooperative store societies in the eastern United States, but not being in sympathy with the radical tendency of this phase of the cooperative movement, he finally resigned and devoted himself entirely to the agricultural phase of cooperation.
Seth Low was a trustee of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, DC.
Seth Low died in his home in Bedford Hills, New York, on September 17,1916.
Seth Low is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
In Seth Low Pierrepont State Park Reserve, named after Low's nephew, there is a street named after Low called Seth Low Mountain Road.