DURING last summer’s contentious primary campaign, Bill de Blasio managed to get himself selected as his party’s candidate for mayor of New York without the support of the Democratic Party’s once-powerful county organizations. Historically, that’s quite an achievement. Even Ed Koch, the man who helped put a stake in the heart of Tammany Hall in the early 1960s, had the tacit backing of machines in Brooklyn and the Bronx when he captured the mayoralty in 1977.

Political machines clearly aren’t what they used to be. But last fall’s designation of the old Tammany Hall headquarters on Union Square as a city landmark is a reminder of just how powerful the nation’s most famous machine was, and why it remains a presence in political conversations.

Tammany Hall — shorthand for the faction that controlled Manhattan’s Democratic Party for most of a 150-year period — has a well-deserved place in the annals of urban misgovernment in the United States. It stole elections, it intimidated political antagonists, and it shook down contractors and vendors. It produced the very face of political corruption, William M. Tweed, known to friend and foe as “Boss.” And it was at best indifferent to the grievances of African-Americans and, later, Hispanics in New York.

But there’s more to the story. Tammany Hall’s leaders delivered social services at a time when City Hall and Albany did not. They massaged justice at a time when the poor did not have access to public defenders. And they found jobs for the unemployed when the alternative was hunger and illness.