A year after Michael Shore came into office as a new state prosecutor, a bomb exploded next to the garage of his home. No one was hurt and no one held responsible for the bombing, but it was one of several such incidents in the the late 1940s and early 1950s in which reform-oriented public officials were threatened by violence to their homes. (See for example the bombing of the Mayor’s house four years later.)

Shore’s large home and new car in the posh neighborhood along Crestwood Drive give some sense of how much the reform movement was led by the city’s elite.