[johnofphilly]

Mr. Moses was born in 1888, so I'm sure he's long moved on.

He was responsible for the building of big highways around New York City, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge (bigger single span than the Golden Gate), the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, and much more.

Edie from the Bronx may remember in 1962 when he bore a highway across the Bronx destroying a proud neighborhood called East Tremont. This among other neighborhoods.

I believe he was responsible for the demolition of Penn Station, one of the city's great masterpieces whose columns and statues ended up being landfill.

Eventually he wanted, in the early sixties, to obliterate the cast iron buildings of Soho and the West Village in order to put a highway through from Battery Park to the West Side Highway. A protest led by Writer/Activist Jane Jacobs saved the neighborhood, and hence Moses was for once defeated in his quest to discard another treasure.

He did many good things, but certainly at a price. Back in the twenties when Al Smith was Governor, Moses was head of the Parks Commission. When eventually building roads in the boroughs, he was head of numerous departments, salaried only on one or two of them.

I'm curious as to what Bobbysoxer, Carl, Edie, Euge, the two Freddies, Gonzo, June, or any of our numerous New Yorkers may feel about this man's impact on the city, or his checked/balanced defeat in the Village.

[BobbySoxer]

First of all, you'll never get two new Yorkers to agree on anything and Carl is from Arkansas so let's go with the rest of us.

We're all too young to remember Robert Moses and whatever controversy surrounded him, but my understanding is that most of his recent press has been negative. This is probably because of the monumental book, THE POWER BROKER, by
Robert Caro which told us all we ever needed to know about Mr. Moses: his arrogance, his bigotry, his manipulative
powers, and his brilliance. We'll never know what New york would have been without him; and i'm not sure whether he was stopped by Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, or just old age. I read the book some years ago and impressed as I was,
I don't remember the details. Bronxites despise him, but the Jones Beach crowd probably adores him.

Certainly an interesting subject - my gut feeling - it takes more than one old man to do in my city.

Funny you should mention Bob Moses -- I just got Caro's book about him a few months ago and read it voraciously. What a fascinating subject! Moses is truly one of the people who permanently changed the city, for better or for worse.

Moses seems to be a perfect case of "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." He brought New York City and its surrounding environs into the automobile age in the first part of the 20th century, for which he should be remembered gratefully. But once the public thought he could do no wrong, and politicians were too scared of him to challenge any of his more harebrained ideas, he was allowed to run amuck. His wanton destruction both of lower middle class neighborhoods throughout the city and his replacing them with those horrible, oppressive housing projects, as well as his deliberate neglect of the entire public transportation system of New York City and State, probably contributed in a big way to the fiscal and social decay of the '60s and '70s.

I think he's a great man in many ways who, if he'd been kept in check, would be much better remembered today.

Just my loudmouthed New York opinion!

Pal Joey

[Jim L]

When the Northern and Southern State parkways were built on Long Island he had the bridges going over them built low to the ground so that trucks had no clearance thereby effectively prohibiting trucks and all commercials vehicles and that still remains in effect to this day.

Anyone travelling the Long Island Expressway or the New Jersey Turnpike or any other major highway can appreciate this.

[johnofphilly]

I picked this up from LIHistory.com (Long Island).

I had to restructure it a bit to fit uploadable parameters.

Thanks for that info, John!

It's hard to imagine what New York and its surroundings would be like today without Robert Moses. I just wish he'd decided to retire around 1945 or so, before he made some of his most destructive ideas a reality. Perhaps NYC would have avoided some of the structural and financial disasters it faced in the '70s. Hindsight is 20/20, of course -- an awful lot of people thought he was God's gift to New York at one time.

PJ

[Gonzalo Duque]

All I ever knew about Robert Moses was from a recent PBS special! I understand he did quite a few great things, upsetting a lot of people along the way. But I gathered that he wanted to build LOTS of freeways in, around and along the borough of Manhattan. That would have meant disrupting some neighborhoods and uprooting a lot of people with virtually nowhere to go. His huge freeway project through the center of the island didn't get built! I guess some people felt he had to be stopped, had to have a limit.

I was born in Jersey City, NJ and grew up in central NJ. I've been to Manhattan (NYC) many, many times at all stages of my youth, indeed, to all 5 boroughs. My last few trips (in the 80s) were to buy Sinatra vinyl recordings; the British Capitol imports!

Thanks for thinking of me though! NJ is close enough to be considered!

[johnofphilly]

a few quotes from old man Moses:

This was taken from a collection of interviews compiled by Earl Blackwell in 1973, quoting Moses in two parts from a 1970 interview:

The first:

• "Engineering is perhaps the second oldest profession. I am proud to have been associated in a small way with the successors to the artificers who, equipped only with such primitive instruments as the wheel, lever, and slaves, were able to dig, fashion, move, lift, and create civilizations which we are only now beginning to appreciate."
  

then, after laying this ear-lubricating foundation, he sticks everyone with this:

• "It is too bad that so much early engineering genius was wasted in placating vengeful gods and deifying phony pharaohs, but we have compounded worse felonies in modern times."

Another quotation from a different speech:

• "I'm not an administrative stooge who has to curry favor with the chief and sing for his supper. If you think you're right, why, stand up and say so!"

I find it interesting that Mr. Moses originally wanted to put a bridge where the Battery-Brooklyn Tunnel is. A second bridge linking Brooklyn to Manhattan would have been such a demeaning discredit to the time-immemorially monumental Brooklyn Bridge, a masterpiece that reached its completion just a few years before his birth. You'd think he'd have some sacred childhood sentiment.

Another interesting fact about the Battery-Brooklyn Tunnel is that the tubes reportedly were in place in 1939, but due to World War II, the tunnel remained unfinished until afterwards.

I remember watching a PBS special on Robert Moses, and someone he worked with said that he cared about projects, not people. In the long run, so far, it seems his works have not had much of a delitrious effect on us Tri-Staters. But I thing we need more time to truly assess his legacy.

[BobbySoxer]

In today's (March 16th) Sunday Times City Section 14 page 3 there is an article written by Mark Shapiro whose forthcoming book,"The Last Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers and their final pennant Race Together" will be published this week.

The article is too long to print here, but please peruse it if you can. It appears that there is indisputable proof that
the real villlan in the Dodger Demise was not the despised Walter O'Malley, but rather the merely disliked Robert Moses.
The author offers written evidence that O'Malley really gave it his best shot, but was unable to overcome the
determination, bigotry, and arrogance of the powerbroker. My world may be shattered, but I'm off to Amazon to
place another order.

John, whatever made you start this thread, and how did I know where to find it. Perhaps there really is a Baseball God
or Godess.

[Jake]

I'm reading Caro's book on Bob Moses now, and have for awhile now. It is really long, almost as long as Churchill's "The Second World War".

I was able to read Churchill's work on WWII alot quicker than Caro's book on Moses because Churchill's work is divided in five volumes, and the books are small enough to be able to carry them around without damaging the books. Caro's book is huge, weighs alot, two things that don't work well for a pilot who has to go through the same security checks at airports as normal passengers, and can't take heavy hand baggage . I don't want to ruin the book, and so as a result I read it at home only.

What a book it is. Such attention to detail, such research! I have the PBS "New York" series by Ric Burns in DVD and book form, and through that documentary I was introduced to Robert Caro. I liked the way he recounted stories in the series, I'm fascinated with New York, so to read on Robert Moses by Robert Caro was a given.

Excellent subject, although very awe-inspiring and awful at the same time. Caro told Charlie Rose that the more he writes on people amassing power, and Caro is working on an extensive biography on Lyndon Johnson at the moment, the more he -Caro- thinks the old addage "absolute power corrupts absolutely" is not quite as important as how power reveals the power grabber's inner self. Very true with regards to Robert Moses.

Robert Moses had a few downturns, like losing in grand fashion to Herbert Lehman in 1934. He had a major enemy in Franklyn Roosevelt. Fiorello La Guardia was mayor, but Moses was the most powerful man in New York at the time, and for many years after the "Little Flower's" death. He had no regard for individual people, looked only at the masses, and figured he could do in New York City what he did on Long Island: create parks and parkways without regard for displacement of homes, communities, and such.

Yet Moses was capable of creating alot of good, alot of things that the modern day New Yorker takes for granted. The parks, parkways, bridges, United Nations headquarters, Lincoln Center, Jones Beach, Shea Stadium, to name very few, were things that came to be mainly because of Moses.

[lorenzotedesco]

Jake and I have exchanged thoughts on the Caro book. I just finished it in January. Just a monster of a book. One of the most complete, thought provoking books I've ever read. You will walk away from Caro's work with changed views of Robert Moses whether you agree with the author or not. Admittedly I knew almost nothing about Moses when I began this project (reading this book is certainly a project in my mind). He was this bigger than life figure from another time....the master builder. His works, his legacy, are everywhere. I actually had found a very recent book on Moses that intrigued me but my research of the subject took me to the Caro volume instead. Am I glad I found the Caro book.

This book is almost a history of NYC, not only of Moses. Moses himself is this Dorian Gray character who played such a profound role in the story of NYC and the state of New York for so many decades. How one man could wield so much power for so long is an incredible tale. At one point in his storied career Mr. Moses held 12 positions in various state, city and quasi government agencies. 12, at the same time! And woe betide the mayor or governor who got in his way. Moses even defeated the president of the US, his long time political rival, Franklin D. Roosevelt who attempted to reign in the "terrible" Moses, maybe in retribution for earlier defeats FDR had suffered at Moses' hands on the state level in the 1930s.

Moses for better or worse was just an incredible personality. Just incredible.

There is a post script to this story too. I now live in the Boston area where the city, state and federal government combined to build the "Big Dig" which took an old overhead highway that dissected Boston and buried it beneath the city. The old highway was certainly on the order of the kind of work Robert Moses did. The affects of this mammoth project are being felt in other cities across America where planners and politicians are reconsidering the kind of sweeping, expensive projects that in the end may fail to live up to their press notices. I don't know if a Robert Moses could make it work in 2008. Or if he should for that matter.

Larry

[George M]

I must remember to look for this book on Robert Moses in the near future.

Of course, there are some in Brooklyn who hold against Robert Moses for his part in the great diaspora of the Dodgers moving. But I won't get into that subject here.

[S V PELUZIO JR]

It´s curious that he never learned to drive.

[lorenzotedesco]

Originally Posted by S V PELUZIO JR

It´s curious that he never learned to drive.

Yes, that is odd, isn't it. At one point early in his career Moses kept six drivers occupied around the clock to support him and his executive secretary. Moses and his secretary each had a limousine at their disposal with three drivers scheduled for eight hour shifts around the clock. When Moses wanted to work which was usually all the time he expected his secretary to be ready to work. They used the limos the way others would an office.

Larry

[Jake]

Yeah, so interesting! What a guy!

Of course, to tie this in to the Sinatra theme, did Sinatra know Robert Moses? I would think not, but you never know, considering the two were the most powerful people of their respective trades, and those two trades do have, at times, converging paths.

[Joe Szulczewski]

Robert Moses can be credited with numerous improvements in NYC, including Shea Stadium and the planning for the 1964 World's Fair. Depending on your personal leanings, he can be viewed as a savior during the Great Depression (and this time I do ot mean the last ambulance drivers' strike) with the public works projects that he helped initiate (If you ever want to see the New Deal in action, look to New York City in the 1930s). He can also be deemed a villan, as well, since he was not neighborhood-friendly. However, much of what we know today as New York City, its bridges, tunnels and highways can be traced in some form to Mr. Moses.

[Jake]

A particular poignant story about Moses and his drive for power was the way he detoured the Northern State Parkway about three miles to the south around Otto Kahn's golf course in Dix Hills. Meanwhile, farmer James Roth would learn that the revised parkway propagation would, as a result, cut his farming property in two, literally cutting off his field from his farmhouse. Roth requested to move the parkway about 1/10 of a mile further south in order to maintain a viable link between field and farm, however Moses refused and cut right through the property in the end.

Caro was quite explicit in saying that what is important in measuring the effects of power is how those with power treat those without it. "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" is not as important as "power reveals".

It is amazing that the "greats" like La Guardia and F. Roosevelt could hardly keep Moses under control, that it took WWII to prevent the building of the Brooklyn Battery Bridge, for example, which would probably have destroyed the magnificent view of the Downtown skyline from the Staten Island ferry, for example. Moses was the "Best Bill Drafter in Albany", capable of rewording contracts and laws and bills which kept him in power for 30+ years and non-accountable to the electorate, capable of remaining in power while the greats departed from the scene.

The story of Robert Moses is the story of 20th century New York, both its ups and downs. No one, I think, comes close to having or having had that kind of power in America. It's a fascinating story, horrific as it is awe-inspiring.

[George Lyons]

Love your posts, Jake, you're a great writer. So what did Farmer Roth do in the end?

[Jake]

Farmer Roth and his family, in the end, could only do what the residents of East Tremont did when the Cross Bronx Expressway cut through their neighbourhood: leave. At least I think Roth left, although he did work the farm for awhile after the parkway was in place. However, to get from his farmhouse to his field and back, via an Parkway underpass, took around fifty minutes, and Roth didn't have enough money to afford hired hands, so he and his son worked the field until it was no longer feasible.

Many farmers were in the same predicament, however they, along with many other New Yorkers, thought that the parkway had to go through their farms as a result of painstaking engineering research revealing the parkway couldn't be built otherwise. I can't imagine the look on their faces as people like Caro uncovered the hidden truths behind New York politics, that the parkways and expressways were built around the areas of those with power and through the areas of those without it.

Again, it's fascinating, horrific, really mind-boggling.

Not to say Moses didn't create masterpieces, like Jones Beach and even mighty Triborough, along with Riverside Park, amongst the many others.

Imagine: When you drive through New York's parkways, you are driving along roads Robert Moses built.