The Power Broker
introduction — wait until the evening
In terms of personal conception and completion, no other public official in the history of the United States built public works costing an amount even close to that figure. In those terms, Robert Moses was unquestionably America’s most prolific physical creator.
When Robert Moses began building state parks and parkways during the 1920’s, twenty-nine states didn’t have a single state park; six had only one each. Roads uninterrupted by crossings at grade and set off by landscaping were almost nonexistent. Most proposals for parks outside cities were so limited in scope that, even if they had been adopted, they would have been inadequate. The handful of visionaries who dreamed of large parks were utterly unable to translate their dreams into reality. No one in the nation seemed able to conceive of proposals—and methods of implementing them—equal to the scope and complexity of the problem posed by the need of urban masses for countryside parks and a convenient means of getting to them. New York City residents heading for Long Island’s green hills and ocean beaches, for example, had to make their way, bumper to bumper, along dusty rutted roads the most modern of which were exactly eighteen feet wide. Those who made it to the Island found that the hills and beaches had been monopolized by the robber barons of America, who had bought up its choicest areas with such thoroughness that there was hardly a meadow or strip of beach within driving distance of New York still open to the public. So fierce was their opposition—and so immense their political power—that New York park enthusiasts had stopped thinking of putting parks on Long Island.
When Robert Moses began building state parks and parkways during the 1920’s, twenty-nine states didn’t have a single state park; six had only one each. Roads uninterrupted by crossings at grade and set off by landscaping were almost nonexistent. Most proposals for parks outside cities were so limited in scope that, even if they had been adopted, they would have been inadequate. The handful of visionaries who dreamed of large parks were utterly unable to translate their dreams into reality. No one in the nation seemed able to conceive of proposals—and methods of implementing them—equal to the scope and complexity of the problem posed by the need of urban masses for countryside parks and a convenient means of getting to them. New York City residents heading for Long Island’s green hills and ocean beaches, for example, had to make their way, bumper to bumper, along dusty rutted roads the most modern of which were exactly eighteen feet wide. Those who made it to the Island found that the hills and beaches had been monopolized by the robber barons of America, who had bought up its choicest areas with such thoroughness that there was hardly a meadow or strip of beach within driving distance of New York still open to the public. So fierce was their opposition—and so immense their political power—that New York park enthusiasts had stopped thinking of putting parks on Long Island.
But in 1923, after tramping alone for months over sand spits and almost wild tracts of Long Island woodland, Robert Moses mapped out a system of state parks there that would cover forty thousand acres and would be linked together—and to New York City—by broad parkways. And by 1929, Moses had actually built the system he had dreamed of, hacking it out in a series of merciless vendettas against wealth and wealth’s power that became almost a legend—to the public and to public officials and engineers from all over the country who came to Long Island to marvel at his work.
“One must wait until the evening…” In the evening of Robert Moses’ forty-four years of power, New York, so bright with promise forty-four years before, was a city in chaos and despair. His highways and bridges and tunnels were awesome—taken as a whole the most awesome urban improvement in the history of mankind—but no aspect of those highways and bridges and tunnels was as awesome as the congestion on them. He had built more housing than any public official in history, but the city was starved for housing, more starved, if possible, than when he had started building, and the people who lived in that housing hated it—hated it, James Baldwin could write, “almost as much as the policemen, and this is saying a great deal.” He had built great monuments and great parks, but people were afraid to travel to or walk around them.
Would New York have been a better place to live if Robert Moses had never built anything? Would it have been a better city if the man who shaped it had never lived? Any critic who says so ignores the fact that both before and after Robert Moses—both under “reform” mayors such as John Mitchel and John V. Lindsay and under Tammany mayors such as Red Mike Hylan and Jimmy Walker—the city was utterly unable to meet the needs of its people in areas requiring physical construction. Robert Moses may have bent the democratic processes of the city to his own ends to build public works; left to themselves, these processes proved unequal to the building required. The problem of constructing large-scale public works in a crowded urban setting, where such works impinge on the lives of or displace thousands of voters, is one which democracy has not yet solved.
“One must wait until the evening…” In the evening of Robert Moses’ forty-four years of power, New York, so bright with promise forty-four years before, was a city in chaos and despair. His highways and bridges and tunnels were awesome—taken as a whole the most awesome urban improvement in the history of mankind—but no aspect of those highways and bridges and tunnels was as awesome as the congestion on them. He had built more housing than any public official in history, but the city was starved for housing, more starved, if possible, than when he had started building, and the people who lived in that housing hated it—hated it, James Baldwin could write, “almost as much as the policemen, and this is saying a great deal.” He had built great monuments and great parks, but people were afraid to travel to or walk around them.
Would New York have been a better place to live if Robert Moses had never built anything? Would it have been a better city if the man who shaped it had never lived? Any critic who says so ignores the fact that both before and after Robert Moses—both under “reform” mayors such as John Mitchel and John V. Lindsay and under Tammany mayors such as Red Mike Hylan and Jimmy Walker—the city was utterly unable to meet the needs of its people in areas requiring physical construction. Robert Moses may have bent the democratic processes of the city to his own ends to build public works; left to themselves, these processes proved unequal to the building required. The problem of constructing large-scale public works in a crowded urban setting, where such works impinge on the lives of or displace thousands of voters, is one which democracy has not yet solved.
chapter 2 — robert moses at yale
And if he was not included in the more select social circles of the class, he created a circle of his own, a small coterie of persons with like interests, a coterie within which he was the acknowledged leader.
chapter 5 — age of optimism
The enforcement of Moses’ system was in their hands. And these were men from the old Tammany regime who, too smart to give Moskowitz and James “grounds for dismissal” by openly defying them, undermined the system by the subtle but effective tactic of slowness in learning and laxness in enforcing the new rules.
Convinced he was right, he had refused to soil the white suit of idealism with compromise. He had really believed that if his system was right—scientific, logical, fair—and if it got a hearing, the system would be adopted.
Convinced he was right, he had refused to soil the white suit of idealism with compromise. He had really believed that if his system was right—scientific, logical, fair—and if it got a hearing, the system would be adopted.
But Moses had failed in his calculations to give certain factors due weight. He had not sufficiently taken into account greed. He had not sufficiently taken into account self-interest. And, most of all, he had not sufficiently taken into account the need for power.
chapter 6 — curriculum changes
“There was a real divergence of opinion there,” staffers recall. “Moses was very theoretical, always wanting to do exactly what was right, trying to make things perfect, unwilling to compromise. She [Belle Moskowitz] was more practical; she wanted to do the same things as Moses, but she wanted to concentrate on what was possible and not jeopardize the attaining of those things by stirring up trouble in other areas.”
He had always scorned the considerations of “practical” politics. Practical politicians had crushed and destroyed his dreams and had come near to crushing and destroying him. They had done it with an ease that added humiliation to defeat. And now, given a chance to learn their methods, Bob Moses seemed almost enthusiastic about embracing them.
Those who cannot endure the medicine because it is too strong must be content with waste, inefficiency and bungling—and steadily rising cost of government. The system here proposed is more democratic, not more “royal,” than that now in existence. Democracy does not merely mean periodic elections. It means a government held accountable to the people between elections. In order that the people may hold their government to account they must have a government that they can understand. No citizen can hope to understand the present collection of departments, offices, boards and commissions, or the present methods of appropriating money.
He had always scorned the considerations of “practical” politics. Practical politicians had crushed and destroyed his dreams and had come near to crushing and destroying him. They had done it with an ease that added humiliation to defeat. And now, given a chance to learn their methods, Bob Moses seemed almost enthusiastic about embracing them.
Those who cannot endure the medicine because it is too strong must be content with waste, inefficiency and bungling—and steadily rising cost of government. The system here proposed is more democratic, not more “royal,” than that now in existence. Democracy does not merely mean periodic elections. It means a government held accountable to the people between elections. In order that the people may hold their government to account they must have a government that they can understand. No citizen can hope to understand the present collection of departments, offices, boards and commissions, or the present methods of appropriating money.
chapter 7 — change in major
When the reformers were finished with all their hollering and were back in their comfortable homes, the widows of the Fourth Ward would still be forced to give up their children before they could get charity. What good was courage if its only effect was to hurt those you were trying to help? So Smith despised the noncompromisers, the starry-eyed idealists.
Knowing that Moses was working on Smith’s campaign staff, they pointed them [misstatements] out to him. “We were,” recalls one, “absolutely shocked at Bob’s reaction. He threw back his head and laughed at us and said, ‘Why, we know that. But it sounds a hell of a lot better this way, doesn’t it?’ Bob had always been so truthful. Now Bob was telling us that Smith was telling a deliberate lie—and Bob was condoning it.”
Knowing that Moses was working on Smith’s campaign staff, they pointed them [misstatements] out to him. “We were,” recalls one, “absolutely shocked at Bob’s reaction. He threw back his head and laughed at us and said, ‘Why, we know that. But it sounds a hell of a lot better this way, doesn’t it?’ Bob had always been so truthful. Now Bob was telling us that Smith was telling a deliberate lie—and Bob was condoning it.”
chapter 8 — the taste of power
Watching Smith banter with reporters, seeing how much time he devoted to winning their friendship, Moses learned how important the press was in politics. Seeing that Smith used the banter to cover up the fact that he wasn’t telling the reporters anything he didn’t want them to know, Moses learned how the press could be used. He could learn to keep things simple. The Governor wanted no technicalities in his speeches: he himself, with the genius that made him the greatest campaigner of his time, reduced every argument to its most basic terms.
Moses had a taste of power now, and he liked the taste—so obviously that, to some observers, it seemed as if he liked the taste in and for itself.
“when I first used to see Moses in Albany, before he had any power, he was a striking figure, dark and handsome, tall and gangly, striding down the corridors with those long strides of his, but he was withdrawn, he was within himself. But then, when Smith brought him up there, he began to be, quite suddenly and quite noticeably, a lot more arrogant, stiff-necked and self-assertive.” [Reuben Lazarus]
“when I first used to see Moses in Albany, before he had any power, he was a striking figure, dark and handsome, tall and gangly, striding down the corridors with those long strides of his, but he was withdrawn, he was within himself. But then, when Smith brought him up there, he began to be, quite suddenly and quite noticeably, a lot more arrogant, stiff-necked and self-assertive.” [Reuben Lazarus]
chapter 9 — a dream
Before World War I, a seventy-hour factory week had been common; in 1920, the average was sixty hours; in 1929, just before the Crash, it would be forty-eight. The Saturday half holiday was becoming a part of American life; the full holiday was becoming more common; small-town businessmen who hadn’t yet forgotten what was the devil’s handmaiden were muttering at Kiwanis Club luncheons about Henry Ford’s institution of annual vacations—with pay!—for his workers. Before the eyes of America a bright new world of mass leisure was unfolding. […] Their newly acquired leisure time and the mobility to use it to conquer space meant, to the urban masses of America, something very particular. The countryside was no longer inaccessible.
…and headed out of New York City. They headed into disappointment. Most of the land around the city was in private hands and closed to them.
The officials they [robber barons] controlled allowed all public roads not needed for their own access to their estates to fall into disrepair to discourage public use. Lest the public turn instead to rail transportation, a group of them led by Charles Pratt, who had learned how to handle annoyances from his mentor, Rockefeller, bought sufficient stock in the Long Island Rail Road to control its policies—and saw to it that the railroad’s North Shore lines were kept especially antiquated and rickety.
Thanks to the barons and the baymen, the sandy beaches of the South Shore were as thoroughly closed off to New Yorkers as the rocky beaches of the North.
…and headed out of New York City. They headed into disappointment. Most of the land around the city was in private hands and closed to them.
The officials they [robber barons] controlled allowed all public roads not needed for their own access to their estates to fall into disrepair to discourage public use. Lest the public turn instead to rail transportation, a group of them led by Charles Pratt, who had learned how to handle annoyances from his mentor, Rockefeller, bought sufficient stock in the Long Island Rail Road to control its policies—and saw to it that the railroad’s North Shore lines were kept especially antiquated and rickety.
Thanks to the barons and the baymen, the sandy beaches of the South Shore were as thoroughly closed off to New Yorkers as the rocky beaches of the North.
If the city masses no longer were content with communing, if they wanted space not only to meditate but to swing—to swing baseball bats, tennis rackets, golf clubs and the implements of the other sports that their new leisure time had enabled them to learn—this was a desire that had not yet been translated into governmental action in the United States.
An Albany reporter watched the awareness grow on the Governor and his circle. “You could see them beginning to realize that doing what Moses wanted would be politically advantageous,” he recalls. “One of them told me that supporting parks meant that the Governor would be helping the lower- and middle-class people, and thereby winning their support, and that the intellectuals would be for him because they saw parks as part of the new pattern of social progress. So you’d have all three groups supporting you. And besides, ‘parks’ was a word like ‘motherhood.’ It was just something nobody could be against.”
And he wanted the parkways to be broader and more beautiful than any roads the world had ever seen, landscaped as private parks are landscaped so that they would be in themselves parks, “ribbon parks,” so that even as people drove to parks, they would be driving through parks.
And he wanted the parkways to be broader and more beautiful than any roads the world had ever seen, landscaped as private parks are landscaped so that they would be in themselves parks, “ribbon parks,” so that even as people drove to parks, they would be driving through parks.
chapter 10 — the best bill drafter
The commission had the right to operate parks, section eight said. But section nine said that “the term…parks as used in this act…shall be deemed to include…parkways…boulevards and also entrances and approaches thereto, docks and piers, and bridges…and such other…appurtenances as the…commission shall utilize…” And the term “parkways” was significant. The Legislature had specifically written into the State Highway Law provision that the supervisors of each county had veto power over the location of highways within its borders. But, because parkways hadn’t existed when the provision was written, the Highway Law didn’t mention parkways—and there was no local check over their location.
Just to make sure he wouldn’t have much time to even if he wanted to, Moses delayed giving him the bills until the last week of the session. “I never realized what the word ‘appropriation’ meant,” Davison recalls. “I thought it meant what it had always meant, so far as I knew: appropriation of money to be spent. Whenever someone asked me what it meant, I told them that’s what it meant.”
Just to make sure he wouldn’t have much time to even if he wanted to, Moses delayed giving him the bills until the last week of the session. “I never realized what the word ‘appropriation’ meant,” Davison recalls. “I thought it meant what it had always meant, so far as I knew: appropriation of money to be spent. Whenever someone asked me what it meant, I told them that’s what it meant.”
chapter 11 — the majesty of the law
But Macy was handicapped by principles. When a reporter from the New York Herald Tribune asked him to show him around the Taylor Estate so that he could see if it was really inaccessible and unsuitable for a park, Macy disdained to seize this opportunity to sway the press. No, he told the reporter, he did not want to influence his thinking. He was sure the truth would be obvious. He would not accompany him. “Macy,” Moses was to say, “was the amateur in politics.” Once, Moses had been the amateur. But he wasn’t any longer. And he knew how to take advantage of someone who was—as became apparent on January 8, 1925, on the front page of The New York Times.
But the ultimate court in which the fate of Moses and his dream was to be resolved would be the court of public opinion. And in this court, Robert Moses had close to hand three formidable weapons. One was the fact that, like motherhood, parks symbolized something good, and therefore anyone who fought for parks fought under the shield of the presumption that he was fighting for the right—and anyone who opposed him, for the wrong. The second was the fact that it was possible to paint the issue, as Moses had already done, not only as park supporters vs. park deniers, but also as wealth vs. lack of wealth, privilege vs. impotence, influence vs. helplessness, “rich golfers” vs. the sweating masses of the cities. The third was the ultimate political weapon: Alfred Emanuel Smith.
But the ultimate court in which the fate of Moses and his dream was to be resolved would be the court of public opinion. And in this court, Robert Moses had close to hand three formidable weapons. One was the fact that, like motherhood, parks symbolized something good, and therefore anyone who fought for parks fought under the shield of the presumption that he was fighting for the right—and anyone who opposed him, for the wrong. The second was the fact that it was possible to paint the issue, as Moses had already done, not only as park supporters vs. park deniers, but also as wealth vs. lack of wealth, privilege vs. impotence, influence vs. helplessness, “rich golfers” vs. the sweating masses of the cities. The third was the ultimate political weapon: Alfred Emanuel Smith.
chapter 12 — robert moses and the creature of the machine
The young Robert Moses, the idealist of Yale and Oxford and the Municipal Civil Service Commission, would not have even considered trading contracts or information for approval. Even the older Robert Moses of the New York State Association, a Moses more admiring of the ways of politicians, would not have done it … .
But in late 1925, the dream [of Jones beach] all but dead, Moses held a series of private meetings with Doughty. There is, of course, no record of what transpired at these meetings, and no proof that any deal was entered into. But certain developments ensued … .
By the time the higher courts came to rule on the question of whether the Taylor Estate was a park, it was a park. What was a judge to do? Tell the state to tear up the roads and tear down the buildings, to destroy what hundreds of thousands of dollars of the public’s money had been spent to build? Tell the people who had visited the Taylor Estate that they could visit it no more? In theory, of course, judges should not be influenced by such considerations. But judges are human. And their susceptibility to such considerations was undoubtedly increased by Moses’ willingness to attack publicly those of them who ruled against him, as he had done to the “local judge,” thereby letting the public know exactly who it was who was closing the park to them.
Once you did something physically, it was very hard for even a judge to undo it.
And he wanted the bathhouses designed with as much care as the finest public buildings in America. With this difference: most public buildings in America were too heavy and stodgy, designed only to impress and awe. The bathhouses would have to be quite large, of course, but they were buildings for people to have a good time in; the architecture must encourage people to have fun. It must be airy and light, gay and pleasant. There must be a thousand little touches to make people feel happy and relaxed. And he didn’t want the bathhouses to spoil the panorama. Let them be designed to complement it, not dominate it. The panorama was long, low lines of sand and dunes and the sweep of the ocean. Let the lines of the bathhouses be long, low and sweeping, he said, horizontal rather than vertical. One other thing, he said. The bathhouses were going to have at least one innovation never included in any public or private building in America: diaper-changing rooms. He had designed them himself, he said.
The men gathered around Moses included some of the biggest names in American architecture, but they didn’t think big enough for him. When they began drawing up tentative plans, the plans naturally included a water tower; fresh water had to be provided in great quantities in any large park, of course. But their water towers were conventional water towers: aluminum storage tanks set on four spindly uprights, they were exactly like the ones that, in other parks, were invariably the unsightliest feature of the landscape. […]
On the next trip to the beach, Harvey Corbett suggested that the water tower be designed as an Italian campanile, or church bell tower. There were many different types, Corbett said, and started to reel them off. As he was reeling, he mentioned the one in Venice. Venice! “I like the one in Venice best,” Moses said. According to one of the men there, “he pulled out another one of his envelopes and sketched the campanile in Venice right there—and that’s how the water tower was done. And that’s the way ‘most everything was done. He had the architects and engineers there, but he was the architect and the engineer of Jones Beach.
But in late 1925, the dream [of Jones beach] all but dead, Moses held a series of private meetings with Doughty. There is, of course, no record of what transpired at these meetings, and no proof that any deal was entered into. But certain developments ensued … .
By the time the higher courts came to rule on the question of whether the Taylor Estate was a park, it was a park. What was a judge to do? Tell the state to tear up the roads and tear down the buildings, to destroy what hundreds of thousands of dollars of the public’s money had been spent to build? Tell the people who had visited the Taylor Estate that they could visit it no more? In theory, of course, judges should not be influenced by such considerations. But judges are human. And their susceptibility to such considerations was undoubtedly increased by Moses’ willingness to attack publicly those of them who ruled against him, as he had done to the “local judge,” thereby letting the public know exactly who it was who was closing the park to them.
Once you did something physically, it was very hard for even a judge to undo it.
And he wanted the bathhouses designed with as much care as the finest public buildings in America. With this difference: most public buildings in America were too heavy and stodgy, designed only to impress and awe. The bathhouses would have to be quite large, of course, but they were buildings for people to have a good time in; the architecture must encourage people to have fun. It must be airy and light, gay and pleasant. There must be a thousand little touches to make people feel happy and relaxed. And he didn’t want the bathhouses to spoil the panorama. Let them be designed to complement it, not dominate it. The panorama was long, low lines of sand and dunes and the sweep of the ocean. Let the lines of the bathhouses be long, low and sweeping, he said, horizontal rather than vertical. One other thing, he said. The bathhouses were going to have at least one innovation never included in any public or private building in America: diaper-changing rooms. He had designed them himself, he said.
The men gathered around Moses included some of the biggest names in American architecture, but they didn’t think big enough for him. When they began drawing up tentative plans, the plans naturally included a water tower; fresh water had to be provided in great quantities in any large park, of course. But their water towers were conventional water towers: aluminum storage tanks set on four spindly uprights, they were exactly like the ones that, in other parks, were invariably the unsightliest feature of the landscape. […]
On the next trip to the beach, Harvey Corbett suggested that the water tower be designed as an Italian campanile, or church bell tower. There were many different types, Corbett said, and started to reel them off. As he was reeling, he mentioned the one in Venice. Venice! “I like the one in Venice best,” Moses said. According to one of the men there, “he pulled out another one of his envelopes and sketched the campanile in Venice right there—and that’s how the water tower was done. And that’s the way ‘most everything was done. He had the architects and engineers there, but he was the architect and the engineer of Jones Beach.
chapter 13 — driving
As always, it was on Jones Beach that Moses’ imagination focused. He thought himself of many little touches to make people feel happy and relaxed there. The dunes, he said one day, were a natural protective wall for an archery range, so archery should be included as one of the sports offered at the beach. And why just have ordinary targets? he said. Why not let kids shooting arrows feel they were really in the Middle Ages, when archers stormed castles? Let some of the targets be cutouts in the shape of enemy bowmen crouching behind castle turrets. Why just have signs directing people to various activities? he asked. Why not decorate the signs with ironwork showing the activities—and showing them in humorous fashion? One day, a designer rather hesitantly showed him a design for the directional signs to the men’s rooms. The design was the silhouette of a man, obviously in a desperate hurry, rushing to a bathroom so fast that the little boy he was dragging behind had his feet pulled off the ground. It was, of course, a little daring, the designer began. Daring! Moses said. He wanted his designers to be daring. This was a great design, he said. It would be used.
Moses’ lionization in the press had a practical benefit. It insured that he would be allowed to finish the job he had started. No one would dare stop it now. The Long Island dream was safe.
Moses’ lionization in the press had a practical benefit. It insured that he would be allowed to finish the job he had started. No one would dare stop it now. The Long Island dream was safe.
chapter 14 — changing
Lashed by his desire for the realization of his dreams, Bob Moses had changed even before he became president of the Long Island State Park Commission on April 18, 1924, from the idealist who put his faith in truth and reason to the pragmatist who put his faith in power. But the acquisition of power in his own name on that date, and his use of power thereafter, broadened the change, accelerated it, intensified it, raised it to an entirely new level.
But even sharp-eyed men could not be prepared for the extent of the transformation. For adulthood was, after all, only a part of the pattern of Moses’ life, and they had not seen the other part of the pattern. They could not know, therefore, how far back in the over-all pattern the dark thread ran. They could not know how inextricably it was knotted into the pattern’s most central design. They had seen Moses’ fingers drum impatiently on a table when someone dared to disagree with him, but they had never seen drumming impatiently another set of fingers. They had seen Bob Moses tilt back his head and look down his nose in the prosecutor’s stance, but, not having known Moses in his boyhood, they couldn’t know where the tilt came from. They may have known Bob Moses, but they did not know Bob Moses’ mother. They did not know Bob Moses’ grandmother. And therefore they could not know the origin—or the depth—of his susceptibility to the infection of power.
Moses had always displayed contempt for people he felt were considerably beneath him, the colored “subject people” of the British Empire, for example, or civil servants who hadn’t attended Oxford or Cambridge. At the Municipal Civil Service Commission, his irritation at having to interrupt his work for public hearings indicated a tendency to feel that the public he was serving was beneath him, that its suggestions about its own destiny were not worth listening to.
In politics, power vacuums are always filled. And the power vacuum in parks was filled by Robert Moses. The old park men saw beauty in their parks. Moses saw beauty there, too, but he also saw power, saw it lying there in those parks unwanted. And he picked it up—and turned it as a weapon on those who had not thought it important and destroyed them with it. Whether or not he so intended, he turned parks, the symbol of man’s quest for serenity and peace, into a source of power.
Moses had always displayed contempt for people he felt were considerably beneath him, the colored “subject people” of the British Empire, for example, or civil servants who hadn’t attended Oxford or Cambridge. At the Municipal Civil Service Commission, his irritation at having to interrupt his work for public hearings indicated a tendency to feel that the public he was serving was beneath him, that its suggestions about its own destiny were not worth listening to.
In politics, power vacuums are always filled. And the power vacuum in parks was filled by Robert Moses. The old park men saw beauty in their parks. Moses saw beauty there, too, but he also saw power, saw it lying there in those parks unwanted. And he picked it up—and turned it as a weapon on those who had not thought it important and destroyed them with it. Whether or not he so intended, he turned parks, the symbol of man’s quest for serenity and peace, into a source of power.
chapter 15 — curator of cauliflowers
Robert Moses himself was conspicuously uninterested in social welfare reforms. But these reforms would have been impossible of attainment without the executive budget and departmental consolidation and reorganization. Even more impossible of attainment would have been another Smith achievement: while expanding manyfold the state’s role in helping its people meet their needs, he succeeded, over the course of his four terms, in substantially cutting state taxes. Walter Lippmann called the reorganization of New York’s administrative machinery “one of the greatest achievements in modern American politics.” Robert F. Wagner, Sr., asked to name Smith’s most important achievement, said flatly: “The reorganization.”
Most of Moses’ achievements were highly visible achievements—monuments of concrete and steel—which may be expected to endure in the public consciousness for as long as they stand. But his achievement in reshaping the machinery by which New York State’s millions of inhabitants are governed to make it substantially more responsive to the changing and growing needs of those millions is an episode all but lost to history. And it may be that this achievement is at least the equal of any of the others.
“The first thing you’ve got to learn,” he said, “is that no one is interested in plans. No one is interested in details. The first thing you’ve got to learn is to keep your presentations simple.”
There were stories of nervous breakdowns within the ranks and of marital difficulties caused by men’s inability to work at the pace Moses required and still find time for their families. There was at least one suicide. But those who didn’t break were rewarded. Advancement was rapid. And he had the knack, the knack of the great executive, of delegating authority completely. His men learned that once a policy in their area of authority had been hammered out by Moses, the details of implementing that policy were strictly up to them; all their boss cared about was that they get it done. They therefore had considerable power of their own, and this was incentive to those of them who wanted power.
The rewards Moses offered his men were not only power and money. If they gave him loyalty, he returned it manyfold. Moses might criticize his men himself, but if an outsider tried it—even if the outsider was right, and Moses privately told his aide so—Moses would publicly defend him without qualification.
And the most valued reward—the thread that bound his men most closely to him—was still more intangible. “We were caught up in his sense of purpose,” Latham explained. “He made you feel that what we were doing together was tremendously important for the public, for the welfare of people.” The purposes were, after all, the purposes for which they had been trained. They were engineers and architects; engineers and architects want to build, and all Moses’ efforts were aimed at building. Men who worked for him had the satisfaction not only of seeing their plans turned into steel and concrete, but also of seeing the transformation take place so rapidly that the fulfillment was all the more satisfying. Moses’ men feared him, but they also admired and respected him—many of them seemed to love him.
Most of Moses’ achievements were highly visible achievements—monuments of concrete and steel—which may be expected to endure in the public consciousness for as long as they stand. But his achievement in reshaping the machinery by which New York State’s millions of inhabitants are governed to make it substantially more responsive to the changing and growing needs of those millions is an episode all but lost to history. And it may be that this achievement is at least the equal of any of the others.
“The first thing you’ve got to learn,” he said, “is that no one is interested in plans. No one is interested in details. The first thing you’ve got to learn is to keep your presentations simple.”
There were stories of nervous breakdowns within the ranks and of marital difficulties caused by men’s inability to work at the pace Moses required and still find time for their families. There was at least one suicide. But those who didn’t break were rewarded. Advancement was rapid. And he had the knack, the knack of the great executive, of delegating authority completely. His men learned that once a policy in their area of authority had been hammered out by Moses, the details of implementing that policy were strictly up to them; all their boss cared about was that they get it done. They therefore had considerable power of their own, and this was incentive to those of them who wanted power.
The rewards Moses offered his men were not only power and money. If they gave him loyalty, he returned it manyfold. Moses might criticize his men himself, but if an outsider tried it—even if the outsider was right, and Moses privately told his aide so—Moses would publicly defend him without qualification.
And the most valued reward—the thread that bound his men most closely to him—was still more intangible. “We were caught up in his sense of purpose,” Latham explained. “He made you feel that what we were doing together was tremendously important for the public, for the welfare of people.” The purposes were, after all, the purposes for which they had been trained. They were engineers and architects; engineers and architects want to build, and all Moses’ efforts were aimed at building. Men who worked for him had the satisfaction not only of seeing their plans turned into steel and concrete, but also of seeing the transformation take place so rapidly that the fulfillment was all the more satisfying. Moses’ men feared him, but they also admired and respected him—many of them seemed to love him.
chapter 16 — the featherduster
As he had done in the little world of Yale, Robert Moses had erected within New York State a power structure all his own, an agency ostensibly part of the state government but only minimally responsive to its wishes. The structure might appear flimsy but it was shored up with buttresses of the strongest material available in the world of politics: public opinion.
chapter 17 — the mother of accommodation
“It is in the smaller things that Mr. Moses is at his very best,” Architectural Forum was to say. “Usually a public institution of any kind in this country has been the occasion for especially dull architecture and walls of cheerless dimensions which invite only the scribbling of small obscenities. But Mr. Moses, being essentially a romanticist, has revived the handicraft spirit in his designers, with the result that the equipment at Jones Beach exhibits irrelevant and endearing good spirits. The architecture has the great virtue of being scaled down to the size of a good time.”
In this context, moreover, Moses’ arrogance toward opposition was an asset rather than a liability to an elected official. Almost all public works arouse some opposition—roads require land, and some of the citizens from whom the land must be taken do not want it taken—and if the opposition is directed at an elected official, it can be translated into votes against him the next time his name appears on a ballot. But by leaping to deal with opposition himself, and by dealing with it in a way that antagonized the opposition, Moses made himself a lightning rod, drawing the anger at the project onto himself and leaving the elected official unscathed. The official therefore could bask in the credit—at least some of the credit—from the majority of voters, who until the 1960’s worshipped public works projects in and for themselves, while escaping the wrath of the minority who opposed it.
Underlying Moses’ strikingly strict policing for cleanliness in his parks was, Frances Perkins realized with “shock,” deep distaste for the public that was using them. “He doesn’t love the people,” she was to say. “It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people…. He’d denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. ‘I’ll get them! I’ll teach them!’…He loves the public, but not as people. The public is just the public. It’s a great amorphous mass to him; it needs to be bathed, it needs to be aired, it needs recreation, but not for personal reasons—just to make it a better public.”
In this context, moreover, Moses’ arrogance toward opposition was an asset rather than a liability to an elected official. Almost all public works arouse some opposition—roads require land, and some of the citizens from whom the land must be taken do not want it taken—and if the opposition is directed at an elected official, it can be translated into votes against him the next time his name appears on a ballot. But by leaping to deal with opposition himself, and by dealing with it in a way that antagonized the opposition, Moses made himself a lightning rod, drawing the anger at the project onto himself and leaving the elected official unscathed. The official therefore could bask in the credit—at least some of the credit—from the majority of voters, who until the 1960’s worshipped public works projects in and for themselves, while escaping the wrath of the minority who opposed it.
Underlying Moses’ strikingly strict policing for cleanliness in his parks was, Frances Perkins realized with “shock,” deep distaste for the public that was using them. “He doesn’t love the people,” she was to say. “It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people…. He’d denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. ‘I’ll get them! I’ll teach them!’…He loves the public, but not as people. The public is just the public. It’s a great amorphous mass to him; it needs to be bathed, it needs to be aired, it needs recreation, but not for personal reasons—just to make it a better public.”
chapter 19 — to power in the city
Reuben Lazarus, who often watched him sitting in the club bar listening raptly to the club’s non-honorary members talk about their achievements, says, “Engineers were his gods.” And, although he hardly knew Moses, Moses’ achievements especially awed him. He told Windels that he had, more than once, driven over the Long Island parkways “for inspiration.” Other explanations for La Guardia’s invitation to Moses were rooted in politics.
But that didn’t mean it should look like the Jones Beach bathhouses, he said; if his men looked around him, they would see that the setting here was very different from that at Jones Beach. The setting there was the long, low sweep of sand and sea; here it was hills and trees. The Jones Beach bathhouse had been long and low, its lines horizontal; the lines here should be more vertical—perhaps they should start thinking about columns, maybe even a colonnade. He would leave it to them, but he didn’t want any of them forgetting that the function of a bathhouse wasn’t to impress or overawe; it was to help people have a good time—he wanted it light, airy and gay. And for God’s sake, he said, use this kind of imagination on the city’s other parks—all the city’s parks.
But that didn’t mean it should look like the Jones Beach bathhouses, he said; if his men looked around him, they would see that the setting here was very different from that at Jones Beach. The setting there was the long, low sweep of sand and sea; here it was hills and trees. The Jones Beach bathhouse had been long and low, its lines horizontal; the lines here should be more vertical—perhaps they should start thinking about columns, maybe even a colonnade. He would leave it to them, but he didn’t want any of them forgetting that the function of a bathhouse wasn’t to impress or overawe; it was to help people have a good time—he wanted it light, airy and gay. And for God’s sake, he said, use this kind of imagination on the city’s other parks—all the city’s parks.
chapter 20 — one year
No profession had been hit harder than architecture and engineering. Engineers were particularly reluctant to accept relief. “I simply had to murder my pride,” one said. “We’d lived on bread and water for three weeks before I could make myself do it.” But The Nation estimated that fully half of all engineers were out of work—and six out of seven architects.
Sometimes, now, the laborers were even performing the construction phenomenon known as “working ahead of plans.” By February, there were more than 800 architects and engineers in the Arsenal and they had become accustomed to working fourteen-hour days. But often, after they had finished a blueprint and it had been approved by Clarke, Embury, Andrews or some other supervisor and they rushed it themselves out to the project site, they would find that the work crews had already begun, or finished, digging ditches for pipes and foundations, or other preliminary work, and they would have to sit down on the spot and draw new plans to fit in with the work that had already been completed.
[1934] Seventeen hundred of the eighteen hundred renovation projects had been completed. Every structure in every park in the city had been repainted. Every tennis court had been resurfaced. Every lawn had been reseeded. Eight antiquated golf courses had been reshaped, eleven miles of bridle paths rebuilt, thirty-eight miles of walks repaved, 145 comfort stations renovated, 284 statues refurbished, 678 drinking fountains repaired, 7,000 wastepaper baskets replaced, 22,500 benches reslatted, 7,000 dead trees removed, 11,000 new ones planted in their place and 62,000 others pruned, eighty-six miles of fencing, most of it unnecessary, torn down and nineteen miles of new fencing installed in its place. Every playground in the city had been resurfaced, not with cinders but with a new type of asphalt that Moses’ engineers assured him would prevent skinned knees, and every playground had been re-equipped with jungle gyms, slides and sandboxes for children and benches for their mothers. And around each playground had been planted trees for shade.
Sometimes, now, the laborers were even performing the construction phenomenon known as “working ahead of plans.” By February, there were more than 800 architects and engineers in the Arsenal and they had become accustomed to working fourteen-hour days. But often, after they had finished a blueprint and it had been approved by Clarke, Embury, Andrews or some other supervisor and they rushed it themselves out to the project site, they would find that the work crews had already begun, or finished, digging ditches for pipes and foundations, or other preliminary work, and they would have to sit down on the spot and draw new plans to fit in with the work that had already been completed.
[1934] Seventeen hundred of the eighteen hundred renovation projects had been completed. Every structure in every park in the city had been repainted. Every tennis court had been resurfaced. Every lawn had been reseeded. Eight antiquated golf courses had been reshaped, eleven miles of bridle paths rebuilt, thirty-eight miles of walks repaved, 145 comfort stations renovated, 284 statues refurbished, 678 drinking fountains repaired, 7,000 wastepaper baskets replaced, 22,500 benches reslatted, 7,000 dead trees removed, 11,000 new ones planted in their place and 62,000 others pruned, eighty-six miles of fencing, most of it unnecessary, torn down and nineteen miles of new fencing installed in its place. Every playground in the city had been resurfaced, not with cinders but with a new type of asphalt that Moses’ engineers assured him would prevent skinned knees, and every playground had been re-equipped with jungle gyms, slides and sandboxes for children and benches for their mothers. And around each playground had been planted trees for shade.
chapter 21 — the candidate
The qualifications required (in addition to respect for the sanctity of holding companies) were quite explicit: What was needed, said an Old Guard-sponsored magazine, was “a candidate who symbolizes the spirit of uncompromising courageous opposition to the whole Roosevelt socialistic program.” There was a catch, however. While the Old Guard was determined to have a candidate who shared its views, 1934 was no year to have a candidate who was publicly identified with those views; what was wanted, in short, was a candidate who was actually a reactionary conservative—but who the public believed was a radical liberal. What was wanted was a front man, someone whose reputation would give protective coloration to their attempt. They turned to Robert Moses.
Moses had cemented his relationship with the barons by entertaining them in reserved portions of Jones Beach and by displaying during dinner parties at their mansions a hatred for the President equal to theirs. Reported The North Shore Almanack, a weekly newspaper that echoed the political views of the Gold Coast: “He is not a New Deal radical. He doesn’t believe that the New Deal is working or can work. Finally, his friends say that he doesn’t like Mr. Roosevelt at all.” Moses’ view of the “people,” they found, was, in fact, as strikingly similar to theirs as was his view of the people’s President. Just as important to the Old Guard as this facet of Moses’ personality was the fact that the public didn’t know about it. Thanks to his genius for public relations, to the people he was still the fighter for parks and against privilege.
Because of his name, they simply assumed he was of their faith. Assumed it, that is, until his first speech, in which, apparently stung by a similar assumption by the press, he brought up the subject of religion himself, and brought it up in a way deeply offensive to Jews. “Moses didn’t say, ‘I’m a Jew and I’m proud of it,’ as he should have,” recalls Paul Windels. “Instead, he said, ‘It’s nobody’s business what my religion is.’ And that got a lot of people very angry.” Soon, in shabby shuls in the Bronx as well as at Temple Emanu-El, Robert Moses was being called by a term which comes close to being the ultimate insult among pious Jews. Moses, they said, was an apicoris, “a man who says he isn’t what he is.”
It wasn’t what Moses said that most antagonized voters; it was how he said it. He let his contempt for the public show. “As bad as his speeches read,” one observer recalls, “they read a lot better than he read them.” … But if Moses was a powerful figure, he was not a pleasant one.
Moses had cemented his relationship with the barons by entertaining them in reserved portions of Jones Beach and by displaying during dinner parties at their mansions a hatred for the President equal to theirs. Reported The North Shore Almanack, a weekly newspaper that echoed the political views of the Gold Coast: “He is not a New Deal radical. He doesn’t believe that the New Deal is working or can work. Finally, his friends say that he doesn’t like Mr. Roosevelt at all.” Moses’ view of the “people,” they found, was, in fact, as strikingly similar to theirs as was his view of the people’s President. Just as important to the Old Guard as this facet of Moses’ personality was the fact that the public didn’t know about it. Thanks to his genius for public relations, to the people he was still the fighter for parks and against privilege.
Because of his name, they simply assumed he was of their faith. Assumed it, that is, until his first speech, in which, apparently stung by a similar assumption by the press, he brought up the subject of religion himself, and brought it up in a way deeply offensive to Jews. “Moses didn’t say, ‘I’m a Jew and I’m proud of it,’ as he should have,” recalls Paul Windels. “Instead, he said, ‘It’s nobody’s business what my religion is.’ And that got a lot of people very angry.” Soon, in shabby shuls in the Bronx as well as at Temple Emanu-El, Robert Moses was being called by a term which comes close to being the ultimate insult among pious Jews. Moses, they said, was an apicoris, “a man who says he isn’t what he is.”
It wasn’t what Moses said that most antagonized voters; it was how he said it. He let his contempt for the public show. “As bad as his speeches read,” one observer recalls, “they read a lot better than he read them.” … But if Moses was a powerful figure, he was not a pleasant one.
Why did Robert Moses, previously so talented at public relations, antagonize the public during the episode in his career in which he most needed its support?
In part, because his success in public relations had been due primarily to his masterful utilization of a single public relations technique: identifying himself with a popular cause. This technique was especially advantageous to him because his philosophy—that accomplishment, Getting Things Done, is the only thing that matters, that the end justifies any means, however ruthless—might not be universally popular. By keeping the public eye focused on the cause, the end, the ultimate benefit to be obtained, the technique kept the public eye from focusing on the methods by which the benefit was to be obtained. The technique was also especially advantageous to him because its focus on the cause kept his personality safely blurred.
Everything he did, he said, was in the name of parks (and, of course, of parkways and bridges that helped people reach parks), and the public believed this. After a while he began—also consciously—to identify himself with related battles against crooked politicians and red-taping bureaucrats—and so cleverly did he make this additional identification that the public accepted it, too. During those years, the public never saw Robert Moses the man.
But in a race for public office, the public focus is more on the individuals involved. Causes championed by a candidate are important to voters, but mainly as they help illuminate his personality and philosophy. It was a man they were voting for, not a constitutional amendment. They wanted to see the man.
But in a race for public office, the public focus is more on the individuals involved. Causes championed by a candidate are important to voters, but mainly as they help illuminate his personality and philosophy. It was a man they were voting for, not a constitutional amendment. They wanted to see the man.
The answer to this question lies somewhere deep in Robert Moses’ nature.
In part, it lies in the arrogance that was that nature’s most striking manifestation. Robert Moses’ arrogance was first of all intellectual; he had consciously compared his mental capacity with other men’s and had concluded that its superiority was so great that it was a waste of time for him to discuss, to try to understand or even to listen to their opinions. But there was more to his arrogance than that. Had it been merely a product of a consciously reasoned comparison, it would have been governable by reason, reason that must have informed him that if he hoped to win the prize he so desperately wanted he must for a period of a few weeks conceal his contempt for the public. Had his arrogance been merely intellectual, he could have disciplined himself—this man with a will strong enough to discipline himself to a life of unending toil—for the few weeks necessary to give him a chance at the Governorship. But his arrogance was emotional, visceral, a driving force created by heredity and hardened by living, a force too strong to be tamed by intellect, a force that drove him to do things for which there is no wholly rational explanation. It wasn’t just that Robert Moses didn’t want to listen to the public. It was that he couldn’t listen, couldn’t—even for the sake of the power he coveted—try to make people feel that he understood and sympathized with them.
And there was something else behind Robert Moses’ arrogance, a strange, flickering shadow. For not only could Robert Moses not help showing his contempt for others, he seemed actually to take pleasure in showing this contempt—a deep, genuine pleasure, a pleasure whose intensity leads to the suspicion that, in a way, he needed to display his superiority, with a need so great that he simply could not dissemble it. How else to explain the fact that, even when he was appearing before the public to ask for its support, he could not help ostentatiously flaunting condescension and boredom—boredom even at its applause? Robert Moses may, moreover, have understood that he had this need. He may have understood that he would not be able to appear before the voters without having to show them—so clearly that there could be no mistake about it—how much he despised them. For such self-knowledge would explain—and it is difficult to find another explanation—his decision to shun, to so perhaps unprecedented an extent, all public appearances save for a few formal speeches.
chapter 23 — in the saddle
“You’d see the two of them in the goddamnedest argument and then five hours later they could go and have a drink together and you’d never know they had fought,” Jack Madigan says. Finally, he says, he came to understand why this was possible: “Other people dealt with personal feelings and emotions, got emotional about personal feelings, see, but these two fellows here, they dealt with subject matter—that was what they got emotional about—and when the subject was over, they could be friends again—unless one of them brought up the subject matter again.” Because accomplishment was so important to both of them, when one flew into a fury over opposition, must not the other have understood how infuriating opposition could be? In a posed, formal picture of the top officials of the La Guardia administration, there are thirty-one neatly dressed men—and two, the Mayor and his Park Commissioner, with ties askew and collar points jabbing out beyond their lapels. And their habitual lack of neatness was symbolic, for neither of the two men was at all interested in clothes or other material trappings of life.
There would be hundreds of mayors there, and most of them would have come with grandiose plans—but when they were confronted with the blunt questions of the Army engineers WPA chief Harry Hopkins had brought in to screen proposed projects, they had to confess that the blueprints weren’t ready, or the specifications weren’t ready, or the topographical surveys weren’t ready. La Guardia watched many of them walk out of the conferences humiliated and without the money they were asking for. But he had blueprints. He had specifications. He had topographical surveys. He had every piece of paper that even the hardest-eyed Army engineer could desire. And he had them because of Moses.
His usual technique with Mrs. Sulzberger was {not to walk away but to walk with}—to take her himself, or have Madigan or Andrews take her—on a tour of the area in dispute to try to sell her on his idea of how it should be developed.
Mrs. Sulzberger’s influence on the newspaper of which her father had been, and her husband was, publisher was not overt. Intrusiveness was not her style, which was so reasonable, dignified and soft-spoken that people sometimes mistook her gentleness for timidity.
Mrs. Sulzberger believed that Moses came “close to our ideal of what a Park Commissioner should be”; the Times evidently believed so, too. Its reporters and editors may never have been directly ordered to give Moses special treatment but, during the Thirties as during the Twenties, they were not so insensitive as not to know what was expected of them. Moses’ press releases were treated with respect, being given prominent treatment and often being printed in full. There was no investigating of the “facts” presented in those press releases, no attempt at detailed analysis of his theories of recreation and transportation, no probing of the assumptions on which the city was building and maintaining recreational facilities and roads. The Times ran more than one hundred editorials on Moses and his programs during the twelve-year La Guardia administration—overwhelmingly favorable editorials.
Because the Mayor needed plans and needed them fast, he had no choice but to give priority not to those projects which were most urgently needed, but to those projects for which plans were available—and to a considerable extent not he but Robert Moses decided which projects those would be. … La Guardia was forced to cut back his planned programs of construction of almost every type of municipal institution except parks—Robert Moses’ parks—and bridges—Robert Moses’ bridges—and roads—Robert Moses’ roads.
There would be hundreds of mayors there, and most of them would have come with grandiose plans—but when they were confronted with the blunt questions of the Army engineers WPA chief Harry Hopkins had brought in to screen proposed projects, they had to confess that the blueprints weren’t ready, or the specifications weren’t ready, or the topographical surveys weren’t ready. La Guardia watched many of them walk out of the conferences humiliated and without the money they were asking for. But he had blueprints. He had specifications. He had topographical surveys. He had every piece of paper that even the hardest-eyed Army engineer could desire. And he had them because of Moses.
His usual technique with Mrs. Sulzberger was {not to walk away but to walk with}—to take her himself, or have Madigan or Andrews take her—on a tour of the area in dispute to try to sell her on his idea of how it should be developed.
Mrs. Sulzberger’s influence on the newspaper of which her father had been, and her husband was, publisher was not overt. Intrusiveness was not her style, which was so reasonable, dignified and soft-spoken that people sometimes mistook her gentleness for timidity.
Mrs. Sulzberger believed that Moses came “close to our ideal of what a Park Commissioner should be”; the Times evidently believed so, too. Its reporters and editors may never have been directly ordered to give Moses special treatment but, during the Thirties as during the Twenties, they were not so insensitive as not to know what was expected of them. Moses’ press releases were treated with respect, being given prominent treatment and often being printed in full. There was no investigating of the “facts” presented in those press releases, no attempt at detailed analysis of his theories of recreation and transportation, no probing of the assumptions on which the city was building and maintaining recreational facilities and roads. The Times ran more than one hundred editorials on Moses and his programs during the twelve-year La Guardia administration—overwhelmingly favorable editorials.
Because the Mayor needed plans and needed them fast, he had no choice but to give priority not to those projects which were most urgently needed, but to those projects for which plans were available—and to a considerable extent not he but Robert Moses decided which projects those would be. … La Guardia was forced to cut back his planned programs of construction of almost every type of municipal institution except parks—Robert Moses’ parks—and bridges—Robert Moses’ bridges—and roads—Robert Moses’ roads.
chapter 24 — driving
In the hands of a man for whom the press acted as a gigantic sounding board, repeating and amplifying his words, the smear was a terrible weapon—particularly when those words were as caustic and cutting as Moses’. At Yale, his poetry had revealed an undeniable gift for language. During the decades since Yale, Moses had turned this gift from imagery to invective, and that invective had been honed by years of use to an edge as cruelly sharp as that of a razor with a jagged edge.
Moses applied these labels generously, branding them not only onto labor leaders (“radical, left-wing”) and New Deal Brain Trusters (Rexford Tugwell he assailed as a “Planning Red”) and urban planners who dared to offer suggestions for the future of New York City (“regarded in Russia as our greatest builder,” was how he characterized Frank Lloyd Wright; he called Lewis Mumford “an outspoken revolutionary”; Walter Gropius, he said, was seeking to change the American system by advocating “a philosophy which doesn’t belong here”; planners in general, he said, are “socialists,” “revolutionaries” who “do not reach the masses directly but through familiar subsurface activity.
If Robert Moses was a pioneer in the fields of parks and highways, he was also a pioneer in McCarthyism, twenty years before McCarthy.
The lesson wasn’t lost on Chanler. “If you stood right up to him, he backed right down,” he says. “He was just a natural bully. So whenever he tried something, I’d pretend to lose my temper. And after a while, he didn’t try any more.”
Moses applied these labels generously, branding them not only onto labor leaders (“radical, left-wing”) and New Deal Brain Trusters (Rexford Tugwell he assailed as a “Planning Red”) and urban planners who dared to offer suggestions for the future of New York City (“regarded in Russia as our greatest builder,” was how he characterized Frank Lloyd Wright; he called Lewis Mumford “an outspoken revolutionary”; Walter Gropius, he said, was seeking to change the American system by advocating “a philosophy which doesn’t belong here”; planners in general, he said, are “socialists,” “revolutionaries” who “do not reach the masses directly but through familiar subsurface activity.
If Robert Moses was a pioneer in the fields of parks and highways, he was also a pioneer in McCarthyism, twenty years before McCarthy.
The lesson wasn’t lost on Chanler. “If you stood right up to him, he backed right down,” he says. “He was just a natural bully. So whenever he tried something, I’d pretend to lose my temper. And after a while, he didn’t try any more.”
Things were different in the city. The crucial factor in the building of public works on Long Island was space, vast, endless tracts of uncluttered openness; in the city the crucial factor was lack of space and the fact that space was not merely filled but filled with people, people with their endlessly intertwined, hopelessly snarled tangles of aspirations and antagonisms, hopes and fears, dreams and dreads. People on the site would have to be removed—evicted, dispossessed, thrown out, relocated—and removal would rend the fabric of their lives. The lives of those near the site might not be rent but they would certainly be altered, for the physical environment which did so much to shape their daily existence would be altered, not only in dramatic ways such as the razing of a block of tenements for a bridge anchorage, but in ways subtle and endlessly various: the construction of almost any public work inevitably added to or subtracted from that delicate balance of humanity that was a city neighborhood ingredients that would change that balance forever, change the neighborhood’s economic or ethnic composition, make it quieter or noisier, cleaner or dirtier, cut one part of it off from the rest, fill it with new life or drain it of its vitality, turn it into something different—possibly better but also possibly worse—than it was before.
Therefore, unlike a public work on Long Island, a public work in the city had to be planned not only in terms of itself but in terms of its environment, the neighborhood in which it was located. It had to be judged not only in physical terms—highway as highway, park as park—but also in social terms: in terms of its effect on the human beings who had to live around it. If in creating public works on Long Island, one could paint on a clean and empty canvas, in creating public works in New York City one had to paint over an already existing mural, a mural whose brush strokes were tiny and intricate and often, when one looked closely, quite wonderful, lending to the vast urban panorama subtle shadings and delicate tints and an endless variety, so that if it was crowded and confused and ugly it was also full of life and very human, so much so, in fact, that while the painting as a whole might lack beauty, order, balance, perspective, a unifying principle and an over-all effect commensurate with its size, it nonetheless possessed many charming little touches and an over-all vitality, a brio, that made it unique and should not be lost. If Moses attempted to employ on the canvas of New York City the same broad brush strokes that he had used on the canvas of Long Island, he would be obliterating the city’s intricacies indiscriminately instead of working around those that were worth keeping and preserving them—and while this method might result in the creation of something beautiful and good, adding to the mural new values, it would also almost certainly destroy many existing values. A public work in the city might in terms of itself—Moses’ terms—be an excellent public work while in broader terms being a poor public work: a highway, for example, that, however magnificently designed, was damaging either to the adjacent neighborhood—shattering its essential unity, cutting its homes off from its playground or from its churches and shopping areas, filling its quiet residential areas with noise and gasoline fumes that made them no longer nice places to live and to bring up children—or to the city as a whole: a highway, for example, through a hitherto sparsely inhabited area that initiated a sudden influx of subdivisions and apartment houses, loading it with people, before the city had provided the sewers and subways and schools those people needed, and that by boosting land costs made it immensely difficult for a financially hard-pressed city to provide such services—services which could, if installed before the highway was built, have been installed at a price within the city’s means.
If one tried to plan public works in New York City by the same simplistic formula by which the public works of Long Island had been planned, the public works thus created might well destroy what was good in New York even while it was supposed to be improving the city.
Moses himself had been uninterested in a park’s “natural” functions. His mind saw people in the mass, running, jumping, swinging tennis rackets or baseball bats; one reason he wanted Triborough Stadium so big was that he wanted it large enough for mass calisthenics on the Third Reich scale. His vision never focused on the individual wandering alone through a forest or on the family sprawling in solitude in a meadow; in thinking of parks he did not, except incidentally, think of them as places of forests or meadows or solitude.
But even small plots were enormously expensive to maintain and supervise, far more expensive per square foot than large parks. Given the hard fact that the city would never be able to create nearly enough parks for its people, was there any sense in developing a large number of small parks? Where did you sink those resources that were available—into large parks that could be developed relatively economically or into small parks that alone could provide recreation for that portion of the city’s people that most needed recreation? The needs of providing recreation for the city’s poor must be weighed against the cost of that provision.
But Robert Moses wouldn’t allow any discussion. He wouldn’t allow discussion because discussion would have slowed down his building programs, and he felt that he couldn’t allow them to be slowed down. And he wouldn’t allow discussion because he had no respect for the opinions of the public that he would have had to admit to the discussions. And even if he limited discussion to the experts who were interested in the various fields, he had no respect for their opinions, either. Robert Moses had no respect for anyone’s opinion but his own.
Once Moses had at least listened to his own aides, allowed them to argue with him, tested his opinions against theirs. But now that had changed, too. In the first days of his power, he had hired aides whose opinions were worth listening to. He had selected men for ability, engineering ability, legal ability. The aides he was hiring now had also to possess an additional ability: the ability to say, “Yes, sir.”
The effect of such a hiring policy was predictable. The aides he had hired in the 1920’s, the Art Howlands, Sid Shapiros, Bill Lathams, Bill Chapins and George Spargos, became legendary throughout state and city government for their ability, drive and indefatigability. The aides he hired in the 1930’s were quite another story. … Moses’ sensitivity to criticism had impressed itself on such men. They didn’t criticize anything he said. They saw he was less than receptive to suggestions—and they didn’t make suggestions.
But even small plots were enormously expensive to maintain and supervise, far more expensive per square foot than large parks. Given the hard fact that the city would never be able to create nearly enough parks for its people, was there any sense in developing a large number of small parks? Where did you sink those resources that were available—into large parks that could be developed relatively economically or into small parks that alone could provide recreation for that portion of the city’s people that most needed recreation? The needs of providing recreation for the city’s poor must be weighed against the cost of that provision.
But Robert Moses wouldn’t allow any discussion. He wouldn’t allow discussion because discussion would have slowed down his building programs, and he felt that he couldn’t allow them to be slowed down. And he wouldn’t allow discussion because he had no respect for the opinions of the public that he would have had to admit to the discussions. And even if he limited discussion to the experts who were interested in the various fields, he had no respect for their opinions, either. Robert Moses had no respect for anyone’s opinion but his own.
Once Moses had at least listened to his own aides, allowed them to argue with him, tested his opinions against theirs. But now that had changed, too. In the first days of his power, he had hired aides whose opinions were worth listening to. He had selected men for ability, engineering ability, legal ability. The aides he was hiring now had also to possess an additional ability: the ability to say, “Yes, sir.”
The effect of such a hiring policy was predictable. The aides he had hired in the 1920’s, the Art Howlands, Sid Shapiros, Bill Lathams, Bill Chapins and George Spargos, became legendary throughout state and city government for their ability, drive and indefatigability. The aides he hired in the 1930’s were quite another story. … Moses’ sensitivity to criticism had impressed itself on such men. They didn’t criticize anything he said. They saw he was less than receptive to suggestions—and they didn’t make suggestions.
If Moses refused to accept ideas from public, experts or aides—from, in general, anyone at all—the source of his ideas, his concept of public works for New York City, could be only his own mind. The mind was brilliant, but even a brilliant mind is only as good as the material—the input—fed into it.
He had found time—made time, to be more precise, made it by devoting to his work the hours when other men play or relax or sleep, or lunch, made it by working fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year—he had found time to oversee every detail of design, to present his architects and engineers with the basic concepts he wanted followed, to insist during the fleshing out of those concepts on a standard of excellence, of boldness and daring far above that common for public works and to inspire the architects and engineers (“I know you can do drawbridges. Can you do beautiful drawbridges?”) to raise their work to that standard. And besides furnishing inspiration, he furnished ideas; many of the most brilliant touches at Jones Beach had been his ideas. He had found time—made time—to infuse the brick and concrete and sandstone of that park, and of other Long Island parks from Valley Stream to Montauk—and of other state parks from Palisades to Niagara—with his personal genius. [...] It was not possible for him to make for himself any more time than he had already made. There were no more days in a week than seven or weeks in a year than fifty-two, and he was working all those days and weeks already. He had already sloughed off all social life and most family life; there was nothing more in his life that could be sloughed off. He was already, with his use of his limousine as an office and conference room, making use of every available minute; there were no more minutes to be found unless he drove himself beyond the limit of his physical and mental and emotional strength—and the “almost nervous breakdown” of December 1934 had shown how close he was crowding that limit.
[Aymar] Embury may well have been correct: the offhand taste even of a genius is offhand taste. Working incredibly fast, Moses had managed to make the Long Island projects public works of genius. Now he was trying to work even faster—and he was working too fast to do even a good job.
…Moses was simply too busy to see it.
At Embury’s drawings, Moses at least had time to glance. For more and more small park projects, even a glance could not be spared. Moses found himself forced to delegate all authority for them to subordinates. Authority is delegatable; genius is not.
A standard Park Department playground design was evolved and architects were given little leeway to deviate from it. If there was to be an indoor playhouse in the playground, there was a standard design for that, too, and if the architect wanted to make variations in it they had better be small ones.
Moses had always thought on the grand scale—that was his genius: the ability to grasp the needs of a whole city or state and devise a means of satisfying them—and this quality of mind made it difficult for him to take much interest in something small. There was something inherently good in size itself, he seemed to feel. If the reward was public applause, the size of the reward for building a vest-pocket park was small indeed; editorial writers didn’t get nearly as excited about a tiny park as they did about a Randall’s Island or Orchard Beach; it was the great projects that awed them: size seemed to signify significance to them, too.
Any playing that the children of the slums did would have to be done in the slums; kids have to play: that is what being a kid is—and if there were no parks in the slums for them to play in, they would have to play in the streets; if there were no jungle gyms, they would have to swing on rusty fire escapes; if there were no indoor playhouses in which they could play on rainy days, they would have to find shelter somewhere else, and that meant deserted or burnt-out tenements, the lair of the winos and the junkies and the perverts.
And parks meant more in the slums than even beauty or play space; they had other values more intangible but also more important.
They were a sign to the urban poor, the reformers said, that society cared for them, that the city in which they had been trampled so brutally low was holding out a hand to help them to their feet.
Knowing how important small parks were to the city’s poor, the reformers could hardly believe the implications of Moses’ policies when they began to discern them. By banning public transportation, he had barred the poor from the state parks. In the same way, he was barring the poor from the best of the city parks, the big parks on the city’s outskirts such as Jacob Riis and Alley Pond. And now he was saying that he would not provide the poor even with small parks. He was pouring tens of millions of dollars into creating new parks in New York—but he was creating almost none for the people who needed parks most. The philosophy that parks were only for the “comfortable middle class” had been outdated for at least ten years. But, they began to see, that was the philosophy Moses was following.
Many reformers—far more than had ever disagreed with Moses before—did not accept it. A park did not have to be three acres to help a slum, they said. It could be the smallest crevice in the grim wall of tenements; even a space the size of a single 100-foot-by-20-foot building lot—or smaller—could if planted with grass and a few trees or if equipped with a few benches mean so much to the people of the block on which it was located. Something doesn’t have to be big to brighten something that is drab, to bring pride to a place without any pride.
At Embury’s drawings, Moses at least had time to glance. For more and more small park projects, even a glance could not be spared. Moses found himself forced to delegate all authority for them to subordinates. Authority is delegatable; genius is not.
A standard Park Department playground design was evolved and architects were given little leeway to deviate from it. If there was to be an indoor playhouse in the playground, there was a standard design for that, too, and if the architect wanted to make variations in it they had better be small ones.
Moses had always thought on the grand scale—that was his genius: the ability to grasp the needs of a whole city or state and devise a means of satisfying them—and this quality of mind made it difficult for him to take much interest in something small. There was something inherently good in size itself, he seemed to feel. If the reward was public applause, the size of the reward for building a vest-pocket park was small indeed; editorial writers didn’t get nearly as excited about a tiny park as they did about a Randall’s Island or Orchard Beach; it was the great projects that awed them: size seemed to signify significance to them, too.
Any playing that the children of the slums did would have to be done in the slums; kids have to play: that is what being a kid is—and if there were no parks in the slums for them to play in, they would have to play in the streets; if there were no jungle gyms, they would have to swing on rusty fire escapes; if there were no indoor playhouses in which they could play on rainy days, they would have to find shelter somewhere else, and that meant deserted or burnt-out tenements, the lair of the winos and the junkies and the perverts.
And parks meant more in the slums than even beauty or play space; they had other values more intangible but also more important.
They were a sign to the urban poor, the reformers said, that society cared for them, that the city in which they had been trampled so brutally low was holding out a hand to help them to their feet.
Knowing how important small parks were to the city’s poor, the reformers could hardly believe the implications of Moses’ policies when they began to discern them. By banning public transportation, he had barred the poor from the state parks. In the same way, he was barring the poor from the best of the city parks, the big parks on the city’s outskirts such as Jacob Riis and Alley Pond. And now he was saying that he would not provide the poor even with small parks. He was pouring tens of millions of dollars into creating new parks in New York—but he was creating almost none for the people who needed parks most. The philosophy that parks were only for the “comfortable middle class” had been outdated for at least ten years. But, they began to see, that was the philosophy Moses was following.
Many reformers—far more than had ever disagreed with Moses before—did not accept it. A park did not have to be three acres to help a slum, they said. It could be the smallest crevice in the grim wall of tenements; even a space the size of a single 100-foot-by-20-foot building lot—or smaller—could if planted with grass and a few trees or if equipped with a few benches mean so much to the people of the block on which it was located. Something doesn’t have to be big to brighten something that is drab, to bring pride to a place without any pride.
chapter 25 — changing
Power is being able to ruin people, to ruin their careers and their reputations and their personal relationships. Moses had this power, and he seemed to use it even when there was no need to, going out of his way to use it, so that it is difficult to escape the conclusion that he enjoyed using it.
He may have felt it was necessary to turn the power of his vituperation on men whom he felt posed a threat to his dreams, but he turned it also on individuals who posed no such threat.
[only stats] In a city in which there had been only 119 playgrounds, he built 255 new ones. In a city in which not a mile of new arterial highway had been built in fifteen years, he built fifty miles of arterial highway. In a city in which a new bridge had not been built in a quarter of a century he built not only the three new big bridges—Triborough, Henry Hudson and Marine Parkway—but 110 smaller ones to carry local streets across his parkways.
Robert Moses built 255 neighborhood playgrounds in New York City during the 1930’s. [...] The areas of the maps on which the dots were clustered most thickly corresponded in the main to those areas inhabited by families that were well-to-do or at least “comfortable.” The areas of the maps on which the dots were sprinkled most thinly corresponded in part to undeveloped outlying areas of the city that did not really need playgrounds, but they corresponded also to some of the city’s most congested areas, to the tenement neighborhoods and slums inhabited by families that were poor—to areas that needed playgrounds desperately.
The Wantagh State Parkway Extension did not receive its first real test of traffic-easing capacity until the first warm weekend morning of 1939. On that morning, it was jammed bumper to bumper for more than three miles. Traffic experts could not understand where those cars had come from. The other Long Island parkways, after all, were just as jammed as ever.
Somehow, the new bridge [Bronx–Whitestone] had generated, in a single year, more than 6,000,000 new on-and-off-Island motor trips. It had not improved the traffic situation on the old bridges at all. What had been the net effect of its $17,785,000 construction—or, in fact, of the construction of both it and the Triborough Bridge—on the traffic problem these bridges were built to solve? Before they existed, four bridges had connected Long Island with the rest of the world, and they had all been jammed. Now six bridges connected Long Island with the rest of the world. And they were all jammed.
[Gowanus Parkway result] The vicious gyre of urban decay began—and widened. Because there weren’t as many people shopping on Third Avenue, there weren’t enough to support the avenue’s stores and restaurants—not even the half of the stores and restaurants that remained after the widening. One by one they began to close. Because there weren’t as many stores and restaurants, people began doing their shopping and dining out elsewhere, and then there were even fewer people on Third Avenue. Because the streets in the evening were no longer filled with people, more people who might have gone to Third Avenue in the evening stayed away. Fewer people meant even less business. One by one the shops and restaurants closed. The shop that had raffled off twenty-five turkeys raffled off ten now and then one—and then it was gone. And since the owners of many of the stores had lived in the apartments over them, when they were forced to move their businesses out of the neighborhood, they were forced to move their families out, too, and those families had provided customers for other stores.
Moses’ had been formed in a different age, the age, twenty years and more in the past, when he had been a young reformer. To understand his dream for the West Side Improvement, one had to understand the age in which he had dreamed it.
In that age, parks had been for the upper and “comfortable middle” classes and one of the things those classes wanted most to do in parks was to drive through them—at the slow, leisurely speeds of the era—and enjoy their scenery. In that age, therefore, it made sense for a road through a park to be placed at its most scenic location—in the case of Riverside Park, at the river’s edge.
But things had changed. There had been 125,101 motor vehicles in New York City in 1914; there were 804,620 in New York City in 1934—and additional hundreds of thousands in the Westchester and New Jersey suburbs that would also pour cars onto the Henry Hudson Parkway. Heavy traffic on Moses’ Long Island parkways was already beginning to make driving on them less and less a source of pleasure and more and more a source of pain—or at least irritation; their value as a source of beauty and pleasure in themselves was already clearly diminishing.
Cities were growing. Their people were being cut off more and more from nature. They needed every chance they could be given to see it and feel it around them. “Recreation” had been the key word among park enthusiasts when Moses had started building parks; now, “conservation” was being heard more and more. In a New York in which concrete was devouring green grass and trees more hungrily every year, nothing was more necessary of conservation than the last piece of natural woodland on Manhattan, or a beautiful and unique swamp in Van Cortlandt Park—and its waterfront.
“Always the man in the car has the river in full view,” wrote a newspaperman. That was true. But to give the man in the car that view, fleeting at best and harried, to let him enjoy a brief glimpse of beauty as he passed by it, hurriedly and with his mind on other things, Moses had taken it away from the man not in the car, the pedestrian walking beside the river or sitting beside it, picnicking or just looking at it, soaking it in for long minutes and hours, the man who would have had time to enjoy and savor the view, the man whose life could have been enriched by it.
The media, whose amplification of his statements without analysis or correction played so vital a role in making the public susceptible to the blandishments of his policies, carried out the same effective if unintentional propaganda for his personality. Continually, in five- or six-part series or Sunday-supplement feature stories or long interviews, it said he was totally honest and incorruptible, tireless in working sixteen- and eighteen-hour days for the public, and it allowed him to repeat or repeated itself the myths with which he had surrounded himself—that he was absolutely free of personal ambition or any desire for money or power, that he was motivated solely by the desire to serve the public, that, despite unavoidable daily contact with politicians, he kept himself free from any contamination by the principles of politics. His flaws reporters and editorialists made into virtues: his vituperation and personal attacks on anyone who dared to oppose him were “outspokenness”; his refusal to obey the rules and regulations of the WPA or laws he had sworn to uphold was “independence” and a refusal to let the public interest be hampered by “red tape” and “bureaucrats”; his disregard of the rights of individuals or groups who stood in the way of completion of his projects was refusal to let anything stand in the way of accomplishment for the public interest. If he insisted that he knew best what that interest was, they assured the public that was indeed the case. If there were larger, disturbing implications in these flaws—they implied that he was above the law, that the end justifies the means, and that only he should determine the end—they ignored these implications or joked about them; columnist Westbrook Pegler dubbed Moses’ technique of driving stakes without legal authorization and then defying anyone to do anything about them, the “Oops, Sorry” technique.
He may have felt it was necessary to turn the power of his vituperation on men whom he felt posed a threat to his dreams, but he turned it also on individuals who posed no such threat.
[only stats] In a city in which there had been only 119 playgrounds, he built 255 new ones. In a city in which not a mile of new arterial highway had been built in fifteen years, he built fifty miles of arterial highway. In a city in which a new bridge had not been built in a quarter of a century he built not only the three new big bridges—Triborough, Henry Hudson and Marine Parkway—but 110 smaller ones to carry local streets across his parkways.
Robert Moses built 255 neighborhood playgrounds in New York City during the 1930’s. [...] The areas of the maps on which the dots were clustered most thickly corresponded in the main to those areas inhabited by families that were well-to-do or at least “comfortable.” The areas of the maps on which the dots were sprinkled most thinly corresponded in part to undeveloped outlying areas of the city that did not really need playgrounds, but they corresponded also to some of the city’s most congested areas, to the tenement neighborhoods and slums inhabited by families that were poor—to areas that needed playgrounds desperately.
The Wantagh State Parkway Extension did not receive its first real test of traffic-easing capacity until the first warm weekend morning of 1939. On that morning, it was jammed bumper to bumper for more than three miles. Traffic experts could not understand where those cars had come from. The other Long Island parkways, after all, were just as jammed as ever.
Somehow, the new bridge [Bronx–Whitestone] had generated, in a single year, more than 6,000,000 new on-and-off-Island motor trips. It had not improved the traffic situation on the old bridges at all. What had been the net effect of its $17,785,000 construction—or, in fact, of the construction of both it and the Triborough Bridge—on the traffic problem these bridges were built to solve? Before they existed, four bridges had connected Long Island with the rest of the world, and they had all been jammed. Now six bridges connected Long Island with the rest of the world. And they were all jammed.
[Gowanus Parkway result] The vicious gyre of urban decay began—and widened. Because there weren’t as many people shopping on Third Avenue, there weren’t enough to support the avenue’s stores and restaurants—not even the half of the stores and restaurants that remained after the widening. One by one they began to close. Because there weren’t as many stores and restaurants, people began doing their shopping and dining out elsewhere, and then there were even fewer people on Third Avenue. Because the streets in the evening were no longer filled with people, more people who might have gone to Third Avenue in the evening stayed away. Fewer people meant even less business. One by one the shops and restaurants closed. The shop that had raffled off twenty-five turkeys raffled off ten now and then one—and then it was gone. And since the owners of many of the stores had lived in the apartments over them, when they were forced to move their businesses out of the neighborhood, they were forced to move their families out, too, and those families had provided customers for other stores.
Moses’ had been formed in a different age, the age, twenty years and more in the past, when he had been a young reformer. To understand his dream for the West Side Improvement, one had to understand the age in which he had dreamed it.
In that age, parks had been for the upper and “comfortable middle” classes and one of the things those classes wanted most to do in parks was to drive through them—at the slow, leisurely speeds of the era—and enjoy their scenery. In that age, therefore, it made sense for a road through a park to be placed at its most scenic location—in the case of Riverside Park, at the river’s edge.
But things had changed. There had been 125,101 motor vehicles in New York City in 1914; there were 804,620 in New York City in 1934—and additional hundreds of thousands in the Westchester and New Jersey suburbs that would also pour cars onto the Henry Hudson Parkway. Heavy traffic on Moses’ Long Island parkways was already beginning to make driving on them less and less a source of pleasure and more and more a source of pain—or at least irritation; their value as a source of beauty and pleasure in themselves was already clearly diminishing.
Cities were growing. Their people were being cut off more and more from nature. They needed every chance they could be given to see it and feel it around them. “Recreation” had been the key word among park enthusiasts when Moses had started building parks; now, “conservation” was being heard more and more. In a New York in which concrete was devouring green grass and trees more hungrily every year, nothing was more necessary of conservation than the last piece of natural woodland on Manhattan, or a beautiful and unique swamp in Van Cortlandt Park—and its waterfront.
“Always the man in the car has the river in full view,” wrote a newspaperman. That was true. But to give the man in the car that view, fleeting at best and harried, to let him enjoy a brief glimpse of beauty as he passed by it, hurriedly and with his mind on other things, Moses had taken it away from the man not in the car, the pedestrian walking beside the river or sitting beside it, picnicking or just looking at it, soaking it in for long minutes and hours, the man who would have had time to enjoy and savor the view, the man whose life could have been enriched by it.
The media, whose amplification of his statements without analysis or correction played so vital a role in making the public susceptible to the blandishments of his policies, carried out the same effective if unintentional propaganda for his personality. Continually, in five- or six-part series or Sunday-supplement feature stories or long interviews, it said he was totally honest and incorruptible, tireless in working sixteen- and eighteen-hour days for the public, and it allowed him to repeat or repeated itself the myths with which he had surrounded himself—that he was absolutely free of personal ambition or any desire for money or power, that he was motivated solely by the desire to serve the public, that, despite unavoidable daily contact with politicians, he kept himself free from any contamination by the principles of politics. His flaws reporters and editorialists made into virtues: his vituperation and personal attacks on anyone who dared to oppose him were “outspokenness”; his refusal to obey the rules and regulations of the WPA or laws he had sworn to uphold was “independence” and a refusal to let the public interest be hampered by “red tape” and “bureaucrats”; his disregard of the rights of individuals or groups who stood in the way of completion of his projects was refusal to let anything stand in the way of accomplishment for the public interest. If he insisted that he knew best what that interest was, they assured the public that was indeed the case. If there were larger, disturbing implications in these flaws—they implied that he was above the law, that the end justifies the means, and that only he should determine the end—they ignored these implications or joked about them; columnist Westbrook Pegler dubbed Moses’ technique of driving stakes without legal authorization and then defying anyone to do anything about them, the “Oops, Sorry” technique.
chapter 26 — two brothers
Robert’s concept of help was that of the mother he imitated, the patronizing “Lady Bountiful” who never forgot that the lower classes were lower. … It was not his attitude. His brother wanted class distinctions made more rigid; Paul wanted them eliminated.
Robert may have previously refused to compromise with the practical politicians he scorned, but when, at the age of thirty, Belle Moskowitz gave him one last chance, he compromised. … Paul never learned that lesson.
Robert may have previously refused to compromise with the practical politicians he scorned, but when, at the age of thirty, Belle Moskowitz gave him one last chance, he compromised. … Paul never learned that lesson.
chapter 27 — changing
Always before, Moses had conceived a public work, and then had sought the power to bring it into reality. In the Tunnel Authority fight, someone else conceived the public work. Moses sought the power to take it over. Before, his motivation had always been the work—the project, the achievement, the dream. Now the motivation was power.
And the Tunnel Authority fight also revealed the lengths to which Robert Moses was now prepared to go to gain power. Wrecking the Authority would have cost the city not only $ 58,000,000, money which would provide a lot of jobs in Depression-wracked New York, but also the tunnel, a public work badly needed in terms of Moses’ own aims—the elimination of traffic congestion in New York City. But these considerations did not deter him. If he couldn’t build the tunnel, his actions said, no one was going to build it. If he couldn’t take it over, he would destroy it.
In transportation, La Guardia had had a vague feeling ever since the beginning of his mayoralty that great road-building projects must be accompanied by corresponding improvements in mass transportation, but because he admired Moses’ parkways and bridges, he had not pressed the Commissioner to include provision for mass transportation on them. But as new parkways and bridges became jammed as quickly as they opened, the vague feelings hardened; by 1939, La Guardia would be pressing Moses hard indeed as to why he was not paying more attention to the suggestions of the Regional Plan Association.
Of all the remarkable qualities of Robert Moses’ matchless mind, one of the most striking was its ability to take an institution with little or no power, and, seemingly, with little or no potential for more power (at Yale, an unprestigious literary magazine; in state government, the Long Island State Park Commission) and to transform it into an institution with immense power, power insulated from and hence on a par with the power of the forces that had originally created it. And now the mind of Robert Moses had begun focusing on the institution known as the “public authority.”
And the Tunnel Authority fight also revealed the lengths to which Robert Moses was now prepared to go to gain power. Wrecking the Authority would have cost the city not only $ 58,000,000, money which would provide a lot of jobs in Depression-wracked New York, but also the tunnel, a public work badly needed in terms of Moses’ own aims—the elimination of traffic congestion in New York City. But these considerations did not deter him. If he couldn’t build the tunnel, his actions said, no one was going to build it. If he couldn’t take it over, he would destroy it.
In transportation, La Guardia had had a vague feeling ever since the beginning of his mayoralty that great road-building projects must be accompanied by corresponding improvements in mass transportation, but because he admired Moses’ parkways and bridges, he had not pressed the Commissioner to include provision for mass transportation on them. But as new parkways and bridges became jammed as quickly as they opened, the vague feelings hardened; by 1939, La Guardia would be pressing Moses hard indeed as to why he was not paying more attention to the suggestions of the Regional Plan Association.
Of all the remarkable qualities of Robert Moses’ matchless mind, one of the most striking was its ability to take an institution with little or no power, and, seemingly, with little or no potential for more power (at Yale, an unprestigious literary magazine; in state government, the Long Island State Park Commission) and to transform it into an institution with immense power, power insulated from and hence on a par with the power of the forces that had originally created it. And now the mind of Robert Moses had begun focusing on the institution known as the “public authority.”
chapter 28 — the warp on the loom
“It never ceases to amaze me how you can talk and talk and talk to some guy about something you’ve got in mind, and he isn’t very impressed, and then you bring in a beautiful picture of it or, better yet, a scale model with the bridge all in white and the water nice and blue, see, and you can see his eyes light up,” Jack Madigan says.
The existence of the Triborough Authority “shall continue only until all its bonds have been paid in full,” the act said. But, because of Moses’ amendments, the Authority no longer had to pay its bonds in full.
Quite possibly, in fact, one could say that any major thoroughfare in the city “connected” with any other. And if one could say that, one could say that the act that Moses was so carefully drafting would mean that the Triborough Authority would have the right to construct highways throughout the city, in many respects exactly as if it were the city government itself.
After the 1934 debacle, however, it was obvious that this path to power was forever barred to him. His voter-antagonizing personality meant that he was never going to be able to obtain that supreme power which, in a democratic society, only the people can, through their votes, confer.
In short, Moses had discovered a governmental institution that was not only uniquely suited to his purposes but was, in institutional terms, an embodiment of his personality, an extension of himself. “An institution,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, “is the lengthened shadow of one man.” The institution named “the public authority” was, in the form it took after Moses’ eyes focused on it in 1937 and 1938, the lengthened shadow of Robert Moses.
Quite possibly, in fact, one could say that any major thoroughfare in the city “connected” with any other. And if one could say that, one could say that the act that Moses was so carefully drafting would mean that the Triborough Authority would have the right to construct highways throughout the city, in many respects exactly as if it were the city government itself.
After the 1934 debacle, however, it was obvious that this path to power was forever barred to him. His voter-antagonizing personality meant that he was never going to be able to obtain that supreme power which, in a democratic society, only the people can, through their votes, confer.
In short, Moses had discovered a governmental institution that was not only uniquely suited to his purposes but was, in institutional terms, an embodiment of his personality, an extension of himself. “An institution,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson, “is the lengthened shadow of one man.” The institution named “the public authority” was, in the form it took after Moses’ eyes focused on it in 1937 and 1938, the lengthened shadow of Robert Moses.
chapter 33 — leading out the regiment
In terms of money, the terms in which corruption is usually measured, Robert Moses was not himself corrupt. He was, in fact, as uninterested in obtaining payoffs for himself as any public servant who ever lived. In the politicians’ phrase, he was “money honest.” But in terms of power, Robert Moses was corrupt. Coveting it, he used money to get it. And because he had so much money (in his fields, far more than the city) and so much freedom (in his fields, far more than the city) in spending it, within the city he became the locus of corruption: money corruption.
Sometimes people have to be tough with you. How the hell else you gonna get it done? Today they have fights over every park, every road, every playground—you say who the hell can be against a playground for kids, but the nuts, the protesters—they’re against them. Playgrounds used to be like motherhood, but today they even attack motherhood. The thing about Moses is he’s a guy who gets things done. [With him] things are getting done, and we’re getting some benefit out of it.
In New York, this predisposition was reinforced by the Roosevelt-La Guardia alliance that resulted in the funneling of all federal public works contracts through City Hall instead of the borough presidents’ offices. Handling the new scale of construction required a new scale of contractors, industrial giants with enough financial resources to fulfill cities’ bonding requirements, and enough technical expertise to handle previously unprecedented engineering, architectural and construction problems. And since such corporations received their contracts through City, not Borough, Hall, they gave their campaign contributions to City, not Borough, Hall and hired outside architects, engineers and bonding firms that City Hall recommended. The 1961 Charter transferred most of what remained of Borough Hall’s power over public works to the mayor, and Charter revisions step by step pared away to a relative handful the number of administrative jobs over which they had direct appointive power. The borough presidents found it increasingly difficult—in the postwar era impossible—to give satisfaction to their constituencies. They could not provide jobs for individuals, could not give work to local architects or engineers, could not oversee the dispensing of orders to local construction-materials suppliers or of policies to local insurance brokers and bonding firms.
There was, of course, a price on the package: if you wanted it, you had to take it as is. You couldn’t ask for alterations. The borough president knew his borough better than did Moses or Moses’ engineers. He knew its people, and where they went to shop, and to worship, and to play and walk in the evenings. He knew the communities in which they lived. Therefore he might know that putting a highway where Moses wanted it would isolate a neighborhood from its shopping area or its churches, while a route just two blocks away would neatly divide two neighborhoods, which had little social intercourse anyhow. Moses didn’t know—and he didn’t care to learn.
Imperfect as New York’s old political system may have been, the public will was never insignificant within it. The borough presidents and other elected officials who had exercised power under it were kept in power only by the public’s votes, and they were therefore responsible and responsive to the public. Such responsiveness was built into the old system’s innermost core.
Sometimes people have to be tough with you. How the hell else you gonna get it done? Today they have fights over every park, every road, every playground—you say who the hell can be against a playground for kids, but the nuts, the protesters—they’re against them. Playgrounds used to be like motherhood, but today they even attack motherhood. The thing about Moses is he’s a guy who gets things done. [With him] things are getting done, and we’re getting some benefit out of it.
In New York, this predisposition was reinforced by the Roosevelt-La Guardia alliance that resulted in the funneling of all federal public works contracts through City Hall instead of the borough presidents’ offices. Handling the new scale of construction required a new scale of contractors, industrial giants with enough financial resources to fulfill cities’ bonding requirements, and enough technical expertise to handle previously unprecedented engineering, architectural and construction problems. And since such corporations received their contracts through City, not Borough, Hall, they gave their campaign contributions to City, not Borough, Hall and hired outside architects, engineers and bonding firms that City Hall recommended. The 1961 Charter transferred most of what remained of Borough Hall’s power over public works to the mayor, and Charter revisions step by step pared away to a relative handful the number of administrative jobs over which they had direct appointive power. The borough presidents found it increasingly difficult—in the postwar era impossible—to give satisfaction to their constituencies. They could not provide jobs for individuals, could not give work to local architects or engineers, could not oversee the dispensing of orders to local construction-materials suppliers or of policies to local insurance brokers and bonding firms.
There was, of course, a price on the package: if you wanted it, you had to take it as is. You couldn’t ask for alterations. The borough president knew his borough better than did Moses or Moses’ engineers. He knew its people, and where they went to shop, and to worship, and to play and walk in the evenings. He knew the communities in which they lived. Therefore he might know that putting a highway where Moses wanted it would isolate a neighborhood from its shopping area or its churches, while a route just two blocks away would neatly divide two neighborhoods, which had little social intercourse anyhow. Moses didn’t know—and he didn’t care to learn.
Imperfect as New York’s old political system may have been, the public will was never insignificant within it. The borough presidents and other elected officials who had exercised power under it were kept in power only by the public’s votes, and they were therefore responsible and responsive to the public. Such responsiveness was built into the old system’s innermost core.
chapter 34 — moses and the mayors
“Commissioner Moses really gave the case away when he… explained that he wanted the subways made self-liquidating… so as to release $ 425,000,000 from the debt limit; so that the city can spend a very substantial part of this huge sum on new express highways, throughways and bridges for the motorist, who will not be asked to pay a penny toward the capital cost. These highways are furnished him free of charge. The unfairness of this seems obvious to me.” Stanley Isaacs
More important, who would benefit from highways, throughways and bridges? The same upper and middle classes—suburbanites, and the two thirds of a city that could afford to own an automobile—the same classes which, under Moses’ proposal, would be freed from supporting the subways through their real estate taxes. The city’s wealthier classes—its car-owning classes—would be subsidized at the expense of the poorer classes. If you insisted on increasing the subway fare, at least spend the money from the increase on subways. With $ 425,000,000 you could, in 1946, have modernized all moving equipment on New York’s subways and made possible the construction of comfortable, modern stations—and could, in addition, have sufficient left over to build the more urgently needed new lines. Spending the money from the subway fare on highways would compound the inequities already existing in the city’s transportation setup.
Just to make the most minimal repairs on the outmoded school plants required between $ 15,000,000 and $ 20,000,000 per year. During the O’Dwyer administration less than $ 5,000,000 per year had been allocated for this purpose, with the result that by the end of that administration, the backlog in minimal repairs, a staggering $ 30,000,000 at the beginning of that administration, had mounted to $ 75,000,000.
Bridges were painted every three years. Rare was the school that was painted that often. Rare was the school that was painted every five years.
More important, who would benefit from highways, throughways and bridges? The same upper and middle classes—suburbanites, and the two thirds of a city that could afford to own an automobile—the same classes which, under Moses’ proposal, would be freed from supporting the subways through their real estate taxes. The city’s wealthier classes—its car-owning classes—would be subsidized at the expense of the poorer classes. If you insisted on increasing the subway fare, at least spend the money from the increase on subways. With $ 425,000,000 you could, in 1946, have modernized all moving equipment on New York’s subways and made possible the construction of comfortable, modern stations—and could, in addition, have sufficient left over to build the more urgently needed new lines. Spending the money from the subway fare on highways would compound the inequities already existing in the city’s transportation setup.
Just to make the most minimal repairs on the outmoded school plants required between $ 15,000,000 and $ 20,000,000 per year. During the O’Dwyer administration less than $ 5,000,000 per year had been allocated for this purpose, with the result that by the end of that administration, the backlog in minimal repairs, a staggering $ 30,000,000 at the beginning of that administration, had mounted to $ 75,000,000.
Bridges were painted every three years. Rare was the school that was painted that often. Rare was the school that was painted every five years.
chapter 35 — “RM”
The setting at such luncheons was relentlessly social: friendly, easy, gracious. For most men, this setting made disagreement difficult. It is more difficult to challenge a man’s facts over cocktails than over a conference table, more difficult to flatly give the lie to a statement over a gleaming white tablecloth, filet mignon and fine wine than it would have been to do so over a hard-polished board-room table and legal pads. It was more difficult still to disagree when most if not all of the other guests agreed: there was strategy as well as ego in Moses’ stacking his luncheons with a claque of yesing assistants; he may have felt that their presence heightened his stature but he also knew that their presence created an atmosphere in which the dissenter felt acutely that he was representing a distinctly minority view.
And Moses carefully kept the atmosphere social, even while using it for business ends. He would present a problem and his proposed solution to it, and then call on various of his engineers to present facts and figures supporting his arguments. Then he would say, with an easy, charming smile, “Well, since we’re all agreed about this…,” and move on to the next item. “Well, maybe everyone there didn’t agree,” Orton says. “But in that setting, who could get up and start arguing? This was an exercise of power by assumption or inference. And it was damned effective.”
And Moses carefully kept the atmosphere social, even while using it for business ends. He would present a problem and his proposed solution to it, and then call on various of his engineers to present facts and figures supporting his arguments. Then he would say, with an easy, charming smile, “Well, since we’re all agreed about this…,” and move on to the next item. “Well, maybe everyone there didn’t agree,” Orton says. “But in that setting, who could get up and start arguing? This was an exercise of power by assumption or inference. And it was damned effective.”
The metropolitan area that Moses was now attempting to shape was not the metropolitan area that he had begun shaping; there were more people in it, so many more that the very fact of their numbers alone changed all the dimensions of life in the area; they covered so much more of its land surface with their homes; they were, moreover, a different people: the population of the area had been transformed; to mention just one change, there had been fewer than 200,000 nonwhites in the area when Moses had begun his public career, there were more than 2,000,000 now; embarking on a recreational policy that deliberately excluded nonwhites from most parks may have had in Moses’ mind some sort of rationale in 1923; it is difficult to believe that that mind would formulate the same policy in 1953; Moses was nothing if not realistic, and excluding so large a part of an area’s population from parks was not realistic. Quality, Hegel said, changes with quantity. Automobiles had meant weekend excursions to the country, leisurely drives, pleasure, freedom, in the 1920’ s, when there had been relatively few automobiles. Automobiles meant something very different now.
But Robert Moses did not see these changes. He did not see that reality had changed. Not only the sycophancy with which he had surrounded himself but also three hard physical facts of his existence insured this.
Robert Moses had never, aside from a few driving lessons thirty years before, driven a car. He didn’t know what driving was. His chauffeured limousine was an office, to him a peculiarly pleasant office, in fact, since in it he was away from secretaries and the telephone and in its upholstered confines he could bury himself in work without interruption. Traveling by car had been pleasant for him in the 1920’s; it was still pleasant for him in the 1950’s. The nature of driving might have changed immensely for the people of the metropolitan area; it had changed not at all for him.
Living in Babylon and working in New York, he had had to ride the Long Island Rail Road for two hours and more a day; attempting an overview of Moses’ career, it is difficult not to ascribe some of the credit for the stroke of genius that led him to see the potential for parks in the New York City watershed properties to the fact that the railroad not only carried him past those properties but trapped him on it for two hours and more a day so that he had to think about them. The following year, Robert Moses had come to power. In the years since, he had had piled upon him, and had grasped for, more and more power with each succeeding decade; the workload of executive responsibility he was carrying in the 1930’ s was too great to allow time for reflection—a fact he mentioned worriedly to his aides. But in the 1940’ s he had far greater executive responsibilities than in the 1930’s, and in 1954, with his assumption of the chairmanship of the State Power Authority, he undertook in that one job, piled atop all his others, so much work that quiet, reflective thought was a luxury in which he could quite literally indulge almost never. Given a chance to work, Moses’ mind might, despite all the handicaps, have come to grips with the new realities and fashioned a shaping vision to deal with them. But now it had no time to deal with the reality at all.
In a way, of course, Moses’ deafness was symbolic. He had, in a way, been deaf all his life—unwilling to listen to anyone, public, Mayor, Governor, deaf to all opinion save his own. But this new, physical deafness contributed in a nonsymbolic, very real way to his divorce from reality. As always, he would not attend public hearings or in any other way place himself in a situation in which he could hear the public’s views. His insulation inside a circle of men who would offer no views that were not echoes of his own further insured that no outside voices would become a part of his considerations. Now, thanks to the deafness, he was unable to hear the views, get the thinking of those administrators and public officials who were invited to lunch with him or who sat with him in conferences. Surrounded by men who would not give him the new facts and figures he needed, with no time left to rethink solutions to changing problems—most important, with no feeling that there was any reason for him to rethink—the deafness made it impossible for him to learn about the new realities even if he had wanted to.
It was in transportation, the area in which Robert Moses was most active after the war, that his isolation from reality was most complete: because he never participated in the activity for which he was creating his highways—driving—at all. Insulated in the comfortable rear seat of his limousine, unable to experience even once the frustration of a traffic jam, unable, unless he made an effort and put his work aside and leaned forward to look out the window, even to look at a traffic jam, Robert Moses did not know what driving in the modern era was. He did not know that the sheer weight of numbers of new cars had changed the very nature of the activity for which he was creating facilities, had introduced—or, to be more specific, re-emphasized, since even before the war planners had seen the first signs of the change—new realities into the outlook for metropolitan transportation. He was making transportation plans based on beliefs that were not true any more.
In a way, of course, Moses’ deafness was symbolic. He had, in a way, been deaf all his life—unwilling to listen to anyone, public, Mayor, Governor, deaf to all opinion save his own. But this new, physical deafness contributed in a nonsymbolic, very real way to his divorce from reality. As always, he would not attend public hearings or in any other way place himself in a situation in which he could hear the public’s views. His insulation inside a circle of men who would offer no views that were not echoes of his own further insured that no outside voices would become a part of his considerations. Now, thanks to the deafness, he was unable to hear the views, get the thinking of those administrators and public officials who were invited to lunch with him or who sat with him in conferences. Surrounded by men who would not give him the new facts and figures he needed, with no time left to rethink solutions to changing problems—most important, with no feeling that there was any reason for him to rethink—the deafness made it impossible for him to learn about the new realities even if he had wanted to.
It was in transportation, the area in which Robert Moses was most active after the war, that his isolation from reality was most complete: because he never participated in the activity for which he was creating his highways—driving—at all. Insulated in the comfortable rear seat of his limousine, unable to experience even once the frustration of a traffic jam, unable, unless he made an effort and put his work aside and leaned forward to look out the window, even to look at a traffic jam, Robert Moses did not know what driving in the modern era was. He did not know that the sheer weight of numbers of new cars had changed the very nature of the activity for which he was creating facilities, had introduced—or, to be more specific, re-emphasized, since even before the war planners had seen the first signs of the change—new realities into the outlook for metropolitan transportation. He was making transportation plans based on beliefs that were not true any more.
chapter 36 — the meat ax
It was no accident that most of the world’s great roads—ancient and modern alike—had been associated with totalitarian regimes, that it took a great Khan to build the great roads of Asia, a Darius to build the Royal Road across Asia Minor, a Hitler and a Mussolini to build the Autobahnen and autostrade of Europe, that during the four hundred years in which Rome was a republic it built relatively few major roads, its broad highways beginning to march across the known earth only after the decrees calling for their construction began to be sent forth from the Capitol by a Caesar rather than a Senate.
And most important, it is far easier for a totalitarian regime to ignore the wishes of its people, for its power does not derive from the people. Under such a regime it is not necessary for masses of people to be persuaded of an improvement’s worth; the persuasion of a single mind is sufficient. This last point has especial significance for the construction of public works in a city. For in a city such construction requires the eviction of people from their homes. Even when the public agrees in theory that a work is needed, no members of the public want to lose their homes for it. People never want their neighborhood disturbed by it. If it is to be built, they inevitably feel, let it be built somewhere else. A totalitarian regime can ignore such feelings, which is why the great city rebuildings of history—not only Haussmann’s of Paris but St. Peterburg’s by Peter the Great, and Rome’s first by Nero and later by Augustus—have almost invariably been carried out by such regimes, the notable exceptions being cases (such as the great London fire of 1666 or the saturation bombings of the German cities in 1944) in which a monumental catastrophe destroyed so much of a city that it had no choice but to rebuild—and in which the catastrophe had removed from the scene the people who might have objected.
And most important, it is far easier for a totalitarian regime to ignore the wishes of its people, for its power does not derive from the people. Under such a regime it is not necessary for masses of people to be persuaded of an improvement’s worth; the persuasion of a single mind is sufficient. This last point has especial significance for the construction of public works in a city. For in a city such construction requires the eviction of people from their homes. Even when the public agrees in theory that a work is needed, no members of the public want to lose their homes for it. People never want their neighborhood disturbed by it. If it is to be built, they inevitably feel, let it be built somewhere else. A totalitarian regime can ignore such feelings, which is why the great city rebuildings of history—not only Haussmann’s of Paris but St. Peterburg’s by Peter the Great, and Rome’s first by Nero and later by Augustus—have almost invariably been carried out by such regimes, the notable exceptions being cases (such as the great London fire of 1666 or the saturation bombings of the German cities in 1944) in which a monumental catastrophe destroyed so much of a city that it had no choice but to rebuild—and in which the catastrophe had removed from the scene the people who might have objected.
chapter 39 — the highwayman
These planners had said—the Regional Plan Association had been saying it since 1929 and, after the opening of Moses’ creations during the 1930’ s, with increasing urgency—that the movement of people and goods in a great metropolitan region required a balanced transportation system, one in which the construction of mass rapid transit facilities kept pace with the construction of roads.
Pour public investment into the improvement of highways while doing nothing to improve mass transit lines, and there could be only one outcome: those lines would lose more and more passengers; those losses would make it more and more difficult for their owners to sustain service and maintenance; service and maintenance would decline; the decline would cost the lines more passengers; the loss in passengers would further accelerate the rate of decline; the rate of passenger loss would correspondingly accelerate—and the passengers lost would do their traveling instead by private car, further increasing highway congestion.
Had jobs followed the people out into the suburbs, the implications of this spread might not have been so serious. Given the advantages of “open space,” they might in fact have been desirable. And normally, because land was relatively so cheap on Long Island, businesses and industries would have followed the people out. But Moses’ policies made it impossible for them to do so. Most roads foster commercial as well as residential development, but his parkways were barred to commercial traffic.
Build the Van Wyck with rapid transit, and you would be insuring that, for generations, persons traveling to Idlewild would be able to get there with speed—an express trip from Pennsylvania Station in mid-Manhattan to the airport would take exactly sixteen minutes—and comfort. And, since the long lines of cars would melt off the expressway, those drivers who still wanted to get to Idlewild by car would also be able to get there with speed. Building the Van Wyck with rapid transit would, moreover, be easy.
…the personality whose vast creative energies were fired by the vision of cleanliness, order, openness, sweep—such as the clean, open sweep of a highway—and were repelled by dirt and noise, such as the dirt and noise he associated with trains; the personality that made him not only want but need monuments and that saw in highways—and their adjunct, suspension bridges (“the most permanent structures built by man”)—the structures that would have a clean, clear ineradicable mark on history; the personality that, driven now by the lust for power, made him anxious to build more revenue-(and power-) producing bridges and parking lots (and highways to encourage their use) and that made him either indifferent or antagonistic to subways and railroads which would compete with his toll facilities not only for users but for city construction funds.
Pour public investment into the improvement of highways while doing nothing to improve mass transit lines, and there could be only one outcome: those lines would lose more and more passengers; those losses would make it more and more difficult for their owners to sustain service and maintenance; service and maintenance would decline; the decline would cost the lines more passengers; the loss in passengers would further accelerate the rate of decline; the rate of passenger loss would correspondingly accelerate—and the passengers lost would do their traveling instead by private car, further increasing highway congestion.
Had jobs followed the people out into the suburbs, the implications of this spread might not have been so serious. Given the advantages of “open space,” they might in fact have been desirable. And normally, because land was relatively so cheap on Long Island, businesses and industries would have followed the people out. But Moses’ policies made it impossible for them to do so. Most roads foster commercial as well as residential development, but his parkways were barred to commercial traffic.
Build the Van Wyck with rapid transit, and you would be insuring that, for generations, persons traveling to Idlewild would be able to get there with speed—an express trip from Pennsylvania Station in mid-Manhattan to the airport would take exactly sixteen minutes—and comfort. And, since the long lines of cars would melt off the expressway, those drivers who still wanted to get to Idlewild by car would also be able to get there with speed. Building the Van Wyck with rapid transit would, moreover, be easy.
…the personality whose vast creative energies were fired by the vision of cleanliness, order, openness, sweep—such as the clean, open sweep of a highway—and were repelled by dirt and noise, such as the dirt and noise he associated with trains; the personality that made him not only want but need monuments and that saw in highways—and their adjunct, suspension bridges (“the most permanent structures built by man”)—the structures that would have a clean, clear ineradicable mark on history; the personality that, driven now by the lust for power, made him anxious to build more revenue-(and power-) producing bridges and parking lots (and highways to encourage their use) and that made him either indifferent or antagonistic to subways and railroads which would compete with his toll facilities not only for users but for city construction funds.
Psychologists know what happens to rats motivated by mild electric shocks or the promise of a food reward to get out of a maze when the maze is made excessively difficult to get out of; for a while, their efforts to find an escape become more and more frantic, and then they cease, the creatures becoming sullen, then listless, suffering apathetically through shock or hunger rather than making further efforts that they believe will be useless. People caught in intolerable traffic jams twice a day, day after day, week after week, month after month, began after some months to accept traffic jams as part of their lives, to become hardened to them, to suffer through them in dull and listless apathy. The press, responding to its readers’ attitude, ran fewer hysterical congestion stories, gave fewer clockings.
In contrast to the Twenties, however, in the Thirties the anguish was beginning to be coupled with awareness. As new bridges jammed up without easing the jams on the old, as every lane of gleaming white concrete was filled with cars as soon as it was opened to traffic, Lewis Mumford and the Regional Plan Association were no longer lone voices crying that no number of bridges and highways could alone solve the traffic problem.
The war kept people off the roads. It made them forget the pain. And when, after gasoline and rubber rationing ended, New Yorkers took to the highways again, the numbness had worn off. When the pain returned, it seemed sharper than ever. Even in late 1945 and early 1946, when it was no worse than it had been in 1941, people were complaining, and editorial writers calling for “action,” far louder than they had in 1941.
There had been 301,000 commuters coming into the city daily in 1930; in 1950, there were 357,000—an increase of only 19 percent. The difference was not in the number of people coming into and out of New York every day, but in how they were coming. The number of rail commuters had actually declined, from 263,000 in 1930 to 239,000 in 1950; 38,050 persons had commuted by automobile in 1930, 118,400 persons commuted by automobile in 1950. While the number of commuters was up 19 percent, the number of automobile commuters was up 321 percent. And, the RPA statistics showed, the trend was continuing—and accelerating. The gap between use of rail and road was widening month by month. The failure to maintain existing railroad lines in a condition that would persuade even their present riders to keep using them, much less to attract new ones, the failure to construct new lines into newly developed areas, while building new highways into those areas, was driving more and more commuters off the railroad and onto the highway. The effect on the city of the widening gap could only be disastrous.
The war kept people off the roads. It made them forget the pain. And when, after gasoline and rubber rationing ended, New Yorkers took to the highways again, the numbness had worn off. When the pain returned, it seemed sharper than ever. Even in late 1945 and early 1946, when it was no worse than it had been in 1941, people were complaining, and editorial writers calling for “action,” far louder than they had in 1941.
There had been 301,000 commuters coming into the city daily in 1930; in 1950, there were 357,000—an increase of only 19 percent. The difference was not in the number of people coming into and out of New York every day, but in how they were coming. The number of rail commuters had actually declined, from 263,000 in 1930 to 239,000 in 1950; 38,050 persons had commuted by automobile in 1930, 118,400 persons commuted by automobile in 1950. While the number of commuters was up 19 percent, the number of automobile commuters was up 321 percent. And, the RPA statistics showed, the trend was continuing—and accelerating. The gap between use of rail and road was widening month by month. The failure to maintain existing railroad lines in a condition that would persuade even their present riders to keep using them, much less to attract new ones, the failure to construct new lines into newly developed areas, while building new highways into those areas, was driving more and more commuters off the railroad and onto the highway. The effect on the city of the widening gap could only be disastrous.
chapter 40 — point of no return
If, instead of spending part of it in the suburbs, the two authorities devoted their total revenue-raising capacity—$1,200,000,000—to the subways instead of commuter facilities, it would have been sufficient to give the city a completely modern subway system—the total cost of a complete modernization was estimated by the Transit Authority in that year as $ 1,187,000,000.
During the decade following presentation of the Joint Program, therefore, public investment in new highways in and around New York was about $ 2,700,000,000. The public investment in new mass transportation facilities was a small fraction of this amount. During this decade, 439 miles of new highways were built—and not one mile of new railroad or subway. In 1974, people using subways and railroads in and around New York were still riding on tracks laid between 1904 and 1933, the last year before Robert Moses came to power in the city. Not a single mile had been built since.
Not only were new cars not purchased; the old ones were not repaired. It was about 1956 that there was instituted on the New York City subway system, because of lack of funds, a policy of “deferred maintenance”—a phrase which, translated into practice, meant that brakes and signals and switches were inspected less frequently, that wheels were ground round to keep rides smooth less frequently, that electrical relays which should have been replaced every five years were replaced every thirty years, that the vast system was sometimes completely “out” of light bulbs to replace burnt-out signals, alcohol to keep switches from freezing, and other basic supplies.
So superbly engineered and maintained had the system been previously (New York had once been enormously proud of its subways) that it took years for this systematic neglect to take its toll, but, every year after 1956, every criterion of subway performance—on-time runs, individual car breakdowns—disclosed that the toll was steadily mounting. By the late 1960’ s, the day of full reckoning had arrived: 17,070 runs had to be halted during a single eight-month period; forty-five cars were breaking down on an average day; forty trains were derailed in a single year.
The LIRR’s conductors were not responsible for conditions on the railroad. The commuters knew that—rationally. But the conductors were a visible symbol of the railroad’s management on which the commuters could vent their frustration. Men normally rational found themselves snarling and cursing conductors, refusing to show them their tickets; as a result, men who would not have been able to conceive of themselves being arrested suddenly found themselves in that state.
The true extent of this toll can perhaps be described in psychiatric terms. The chairman of the Nassau County Mental Health Board, in one of the first detailed studies of the subject, discovered a “commuter syndrome,” “a mild state of chronic stress resulting from internalized rage and frustration due to the uncertainty of disrupted schedules.” It was most serious in commuters who were “business executives, overly worrying, driving, ambitious and aggressive types…. Such a person, who preserves his valuable time by living to a tight schedule, is tremendously vulnerable, psychologically speaking, to transportation failures.”
A young man might say, as twenty-six-year-old Michael Liberman of Dix Hills did one evening, “People’s lives revolve around the railroad. You can spend five hours a day on it, and then you’re just too tired to work.” He might say, as thirty-six-year-old Allen Siegal of Roslyn did one evening, “I think we’re out of our minds to do this. The trip home is worse than eight or nine hours at the office.” Men who have been commuting for years, however, generally do not go into detail. Nor do they complain much. Their standard reply—one so standard that the questioner can hear it a dozen times in a dozen conversations—apparently sincere, is: “Oh, you get used to it after a while.”
During the decade following presentation of the Joint Program, therefore, public investment in new highways in and around New York was about $ 2,700,000,000. The public investment in new mass transportation facilities was a small fraction of this amount. During this decade, 439 miles of new highways were built—and not one mile of new railroad or subway. In 1974, people using subways and railroads in and around New York were still riding on tracks laid between 1904 and 1933, the last year before Robert Moses came to power in the city. Not a single mile had been built since.
Not only were new cars not purchased; the old ones were not repaired. It was about 1956 that there was instituted on the New York City subway system, because of lack of funds, a policy of “deferred maintenance”—a phrase which, translated into practice, meant that brakes and signals and switches were inspected less frequently, that wheels were ground round to keep rides smooth less frequently, that electrical relays which should have been replaced every five years were replaced every thirty years, that the vast system was sometimes completely “out” of light bulbs to replace burnt-out signals, alcohol to keep switches from freezing, and other basic supplies.
So superbly engineered and maintained had the system been previously (New York had once been enormously proud of its subways) that it took years for this systematic neglect to take its toll, but, every year after 1956, every criterion of subway performance—on-time runs, individual car breakdowns—disclosed that the toll was steadily mounting. By the late 1960’ s, the day of full reckoning had arrived: 17,070 runs had to be halted during a single eight-month period; forty-five cars were breaking down on an average day; forty trains were derailed in a single year.
The LIRR’s conductors were not responsible for conditions on the railroad. The commuters knew that—rationally. But the conductors were a visible symbol of the railroad’s management on which the commuters could vent their frustration. Men normally rational found themselves snarling and cursing conductors, refusing to show them their tickets; as a result, men who would not have been able to conceive of themselves being arrested suddenly found themselves in that state.
The true extent of this toll can perhaps be described in psychiatric terms. The chairman of the Nassau County Mental Health Board, in one of the first detailed studies of the subject, discovered a “commuter syndrome,” “a mild state of chronic stress resulting from internalized rage and frustration due to the uncertainty of disrupted schedules.” It was most serious in commuters who were “business executives, overly worrying, driving, ambitious and aggressive types…. Such a person, who preserves his valuable time by living to a tight schedule, is tremendously vulnerable, psychologically speaking, to transportation failures.”
A young man might say, as twenty-six-year-old Michael Liberman of Dix Hills did one evening, “People’s lives revolve around the railroad. You can spend five hours a day on it, and then you’re just too tired to work.” He might say, as thirty-six-year-old Allen Siegal of Roslyn did one evening, “I think we’re out of our minds to do this. The trip home is worse than eight or nine hours at the office.” Men who have been commuting for years, however, generally do not go into detail. Nor do they complain much. Their standard reply—one so standard that the questioner can hear it a dozen times in a dozen conversations—apparently sincere, is: “Oh, you get used to it after a while.”
The implications of that reply should be considered. “Get used to it!” Accept as part of your daily existence two or three—or more—hours sitting amid dirt, crammed against strangers, breathing foul air, sweating in summer, shivering in winter. Accept that you will be doing this for a substantial portion of every working day of your life, until you are old. “Get used to it!” One has to think about what those words, so casually uttered, really mean. One has to realize that the man uttering those words has accepted discomfort and exhaustion as a part—a substantial part—of the fabric of his life. Accepted them so completely that he no longer really thinks about them—or about the amount of his life of which they are, day by day, robbing him. We learn to tolerate intolerable conditions. The numbness that is the defense against intolerable pain has set in—so firmly that many of the victims no longer even realize that the pain is pain.
The New Haven Railroad had in 1955 been a model of punctuality, cleanliness and profitability. In 1968, as one headline put it, ON THE NEW HAVEN, L.I.R.R. LOOKS GOOD. By 1968, moreover, with the annual surplus of Moses’ Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority running more than $30,000,000 per year, every suburban railroad in the New York metropolitan area was either bankrupt or teetering on the brink.
Buses do not have the capacity of trains. But they have enough to make a difference. “Every bus,” as Koppelman puts it, “can be the equivalent of fifty automobiles.” And if an expressway is designed for buses as well as automobiles—if one lane, slightly wider than the normal lanes, is reserved exclusively for buses by separating it from the others by a divider and if the width and turning radii of entrance and exit ramps are made big enough to facilitate their use by the big vehicles—hundreds of buses can use that lane in an hour, theoretically as many as 800, conservatively 400. The capacity of that lane becomes 20,000 people per hour, about thirteen times greater than it was before. Designing and reserving for buses two of the Long Island Expressway’s six lanes—one in each direction—would be the equivalent of building a new eight-lane expressway right next to it. But such capacity can be attained from buses only if a lane is designed and reserved exclusively for them. If it is not, if buses are forced to creep along in the general traffic flow, they no longer offer the faster trip that, along with the comfort of letting someone else drive, would overcome for substantial numbers of commuters the disadvantages represented by the higher immediate, out-of-pocket expense of a bus trip and the fact that the nearest bus stop might be inconveniently far from their offices. Too few commuters would be lured out of their cars onto the buses to significantly alleviate expressway congestion. If Moses wouldn’t build rapid transit on the Long Island Expressway, planners pleaded, at least let him build it with lanes for buses. Moses refused even to consider the suggestion.
To save Long Island, it was not absolutely necessary for rapid transit to be built into the Long Island Expressway in 1955. But it was absolutely necessary for provision for rapid transit to be built in. The right-of-way for the tracks had to be acquired and the necessary heavier foundations had to be sunk beneath the center mall. As long as those two steps were taken, tracks could be installed on the expressway with a minimum of expense and inconvenience in the future.
“I was coming up to one bridge across the parkway,” he would recall, “and just as I was about to go under it, I noticed how low it seemed to be. I took a good look at the next bridge, and goddammit, it was low! I pulled over and measured it with my arm at the curb, and I could see that it wasn’t any fourteen feet high. At the next exit, I got off and found a store and bought a yardstick and got back on the parkway and measured the next bridge. At the curb it was eleven feet high. And I didn’t have to go and measure all the other bridges. I knew right then what I was going to find. I knew right then what the old son of a gun had done. He had built the bridges so low that buses couldn’t use the parkways!”
Building parkway bridges low was indeed an example of Moses’ foresight in trying to keep intact his original concept, the bright and shining dream he had dreamed in 1924—of roads that would be not just roads but works of art, that would be “ribbon parks” for “pleasure driving.” Building the parkway bridges low was indeed an example of Moses’ foresight in trying to keep intact his original concept of the area through which those roads ran—lovely Long Island—as a serene and sparsely populated suburban setting, a home for the relatively small number of people wealthy enough to live there, a playground for the larger but still restricted number of people wealthy enough to drive there and play in the parks he had built there. The vision was no longer relevant. It no longer bore any relation to reality. Reality was no longer a Long Island that was a sparsely populated playground, but the residence of millions of people. Moses’ parkways now had to perform a function, getting tens of thousands of commuters to and from work.
“You see,” Jack Sheridan says, “if we had had subway lines, or rapid transit lines, we would have had high density along those lines. But since there was no mass transit, the development took place according to the way the automobile dictated it. And that meant low density, very low density. To have feasible mass transit routes, you have to have sufficient density. And we don’t.
Buses do not have the capacity of trains. But they have enough to make a difference. “Every bus,” as Koppelman puts it, “can be the equivalent of fifty automobiles.” And if an expressway is designed for buses as well as automobiles—if one lane, slightly wider than the normal lanes, is reserved exclusively for buses by separating it from the others by a divider and if the width and turning radii of entrance and exit ramps are made big enough to facilitate their use by the big vehicles—hundreds of buses can use that lane in an hour, theoretically as many as 800, conservatively 400. The capacity of that lane becomes 20,000 people per hour, about thirteen times greater than it was before. Designing and reserving for buses two of the Long Island Expressway’s six lanes—one in each direction—would be the equivalent of building a new eight-lane expressway right next to it. But such capacity can be attained from buses only if a lane is designed and reserved exclusively for them. If it is not, if buses are forced to creep along in the general traffic flow, they no longer offer the faster trip that, along with the comfort of letting someone else drive, would overcome for substantial numbers of commuters the disadvantages represented by the higher immediate, out-of-pocket expense of a bus trip and the fact that the nearest bus stop might be inconveniently far from their offices. Too few commuters would be lured out of their cars onto the buses to significantly alleviate expressway congestion. If Moses wouldn’t build rapid transit on the Long Island Expressway, planners pleaded, at least let him build it with lanes for buses. Moses refused even to consider the suggestion.
To save Long Island, it was not absolutely necessary for rapid transit to be built into the Long Island Expressway in 1955. But it was absolutely necessary for provision for rapid transit to be built in. The right-of-way for the tracks had to be acquired and the necessary heavier foundations had to be sunk beneath the center mall. As long as those two steps were taken, tracks could be installed on the expressway with a minimum of expense and inconvenience in the future.
“I was coming up to one bridge across the parkway,” he would recall, “and just as I was about to go under it, I noticed how low it seemed to be. I took a good look at the next bridge, and goddammit, it was low! I pulled over and measured it with my arm at the curb, and I could see that it wasn’t any fourteen feet high. At the next exit, I got off and found a store and bought a yardstick and got back on the parkway and measured the next bridge. At the curb it was eleven feet high. And I didn’t have to go and measure all the other bridges. I knew right then what I was going to find. I knew right then what the old son of a gun had done. He had built the bridges so low that buses couldn’t use the parkways!”
Building parkway bridges low was indeed an example of Moses’ foresight in trying to keep intact his original concept, the bright and shining dream he had dreamed in 1924—of roads that would be not just roads but works of art, that would be “ribbon parks” for “pleasure driving.” Building the parkway bridges low was indeed an example of Moses’ foresight in trying to keep intact his original concept of the area through which those roads ran—lovely Long Island—as a serene and sparsely populated suburban setting, a home for the relatively small number of people wealthy enough to live there, a playground for the larger but still restricted number of people wealthy enough to drive there and play in the parks he had built there. The vision was no longer relevant. It no longer bore any relation to reality. Reality was no longer a Long Island that was a sparsely populated playground, but the residence of millions of people. Moses’ parkways now had to perform a function, getting tens of thousands of commuters to and from work.
“You see,” Jack Sheridan says, “if we had had subway lines, or rapid transit lines, we would have had high density along those lines. But since there was no mass transit, the development took place according to the way the automobile dictated it. And that meant low density, very low density. To have feasible mass transit routes, you have to have sufficient density. And we don’t.
chapter 42 — tavern in the town
There was nothing unique or even unusual in the “Battle of Central Park.” But because the site of this battle was Central Park, the press had begun looking at it—and had seen elements so sensational that it couldn’t, even if it wanted to, tear its fascinated eyes away. The tactics Moses was using were the tactics he had been using for thirty years—but now the press was reporting them, and a whole city was watching them. The things Stanley Isaacs was saying now were the same things he had been saying for thirty years. The only difference was that now people were listening to them.
Now, in a single day, over a single dispute—a dispute over a hollow in the ground and a few trees—that image had cracked. Not wide-open, of course. Large parts of it remained untouched; it was still an image untarnished by scandal, untainted by compromise; Robert Moses was still the public official uninterested in money, unwilling to truck with bureaucrats or truckle to politicians. But for the first time he had been portrayed to the public at large not as a defender but as a destroyer of parks and as an official interested not in serving the people but in imposing his wishes upon them.
The aura of infallibility was gone also. If Moses was the Man Who Got Things Done, implicit was the assumption that the things that he got done were things that should be gotten done. He had always been portrayed as a man who was right. Now, in a single, dramatic tableau, he had been shown to be utterly, unmistakably wrong.
Now, in a single day, over a single dispute—a dispute over a hollow in the ground and a few trees—that image had cracked. Not wide-open, of course. Large parts of it remained untouched; it was still an image untarnished by scandal, untainted by compromise; Robert Moses was still the public official uninterested in money, unwilling to truck with bureaucrats or truckle to politicians. But for the first time he had been portrayed to the public at large not as a defender but as a destroyer of parks and as an official interested not in serving the people but in imposing his wishes upon them.
The aura of infallibility was gone also. If Moses was the Man Who Got Things Done, implicit was the assumption that the things that he got done were things that should be gotten done. He had always been portrayed as a man who was right. Now, in a single, dramatic tableau, he had been shown to be utterly, unmistakably wrong.
chapter 43 — late arrival
The Robert Moses they [younger journalists] knew was the Robert Moses of the Tavern-on-the-Green and Manhattantown and those damned expressways he insisted on building even though everybody knew the city should be building subways instead, and for which he evicted thousands of helpless families; their impression of him was of an arrogant, dictatorial old man who, if not corrupt himself, had certainly managed to surround himself with a lot of corrupt people; like the Newmans, they were too young to have seen him as great; they saw him only as crotchety, old—and wrong; their perception of the Coordinator was unclouded by the preconceptions that had clouded reporters’ eyes in the Twenties and Thirties, that he was the selfless, incorruptible, apolitical public servant sans peur et sans reproche. They saw him as he was.
chapter 45 — off to the fair
The Incorruptible, Uncorrupting, Apolitical, Utterly Selfless Public Servant Moses had been a synthetic character, largely puffed up by the press. That character had endured for thirty-five years. But in 1959 the process of deflation by the press—a process that had been going on intermittently for several years—had begun in earnest. In that process there had been a large amount of unfairness. But that process had in the end arrived at the truth. At the beginning of 1959, the Moses image had stood in most of its glory, intact except for a few small chips. At the end of 1959, it lay in unsalvageable ruins. Popularity, Al Smith had warned him, was a slender reed. Now the reed was broken.
But popularity was no longer a significant factor in Moses’ power equation. His power rested not on a reed but on a rock. Unaware of the full extent of the power of the public authority, the press did not understand this. It assumed that he could be fired or forced to resign like any other mayoral appointee. But Wagner couldn’t do that.
The only power Moses lost by his multiple “resignations” was in housing—a power he was glad to give up anyway. In parks and roads he was still in charge. And to replace the power he had lost in housing, he had been given command of a new project loaded with power. He left in triumph—because he wasn’t really leaving at all. Furthermore, no one could ever make him leave. Thanks to his control of one city and three state public authorities, he had anchored himself in a position so secure that no one could take his power away from him. Only he could lose it for himself; his career, booming to new heights in the eighth decade of his life, could be checked only by his own personality. Only Robert Moses could lose Robert Moses his power. And he did.
But popularity was no longer a significant factor in Moses’ power equation. His power rested not on a reed but on a rock. Unaware of the full extent of the power of the public authority, the press did not understand this. It assumed that he could be fired or forced to resign like any other mayoral appointee. But Wagner couldn’t do that.
The only power Moses lost by his multiple “resignations” was in housing—a power he was glad to give up anyway. In parks and roads he was still in charge. And to replace the power he had lost in housing, he had been given command of a new project loaded with power. He left in triumph—because he wasn’t really leaving at all. Furthermore, no one could ever make him leave. Thanks to his control of one city and three state public authorities, he had anchored himself in a position so secure that no one could take his power away from him. Only he could lose it for himself; his career, booming to new heights in the eighth decade of his life, could be checked only by his own personality. Only Robert Moses could lose Robert Moses his power. And he did.
chapter 47 — the great fair
The Fair destroyed Moses’ reputation also because he had to have his own way about everything, even in a field to which he was the newest of newcomers. He could have his own way in New York, but in putting on a World’s Fair, he had to deal with other states and countries—and his arrogance antagonized them. Dealing with scores of foreign nations would have been difficult enough in any circumstances. Governments were constantly falling, Cabinets changing—no sooner had one agreed to join the Fair than a new one was in power. Sukarno would participate only if Indonesia’s pavilion was placed precisely midway between the United States’ and Russia’s to symbolize its neutrality. West Berlin wanted its exhibit symbolically situated on a traffic island beside that of the United States. (Poletti finally persuaded it to accept a less isolated site—one that was still right across from its protectors’.) Moses made such dealings impossible.
His loss of reputation was his own fault primarily because the image he created for the Fair was one of controversy. A World’s Fair was not a bridge that the public had no choice but to pay to use, it was a show to which the public had to be persuaded to purchase tickets. The key to the Fair’s success was, therefore, public relations. It had to be portrayed to the public in attractive colors, as something gay, glowing, exciting. Moses understood this—intellectually. … But Moses’ PR men, aware of his desire for national publicity, did everything they could to influence the press to play the Fair in terms of its boss. … And because Fair publicity was built around Moses, it was wasted; the Fair’s over-all image was not of a scene of gaiety but of a scene of strife and uneasiness and rage.
He scheduled press conferences because he realized, intellectually, that the Fair needed the publicity, and because, rationally, he felt sure he could charm the reporters into friendliness. But when he found himself in the same room with these men and women who had attacked him, reason fled before rage. He went out of his way to show his contempt for them; the face he turned on them was one of disdain; his answers were sarcasm and scorn. He lectured them—and he antagonized them. It would have been easy to make them allies; he made them enemies instead.
His loss of reputation was his own fault primarily because the image he created for the Fair was one of controversy. A World’s Fair was not a bridge that the public had no choice but to pay to use, it was a show to which the public had to be persuaded to purchase tickets. The key to the Fair’s success was, therefore, public relations. It had to be portrayed to the public in attractive colors, as something gay, glowing, exciting. Moses understood this—intellectually. … But Moses’ PR men, aware of his desire for national publicity, did everything they could to influence the press to play the Fair in terms of its boss. … And because Fair publicity was built around Moses, it was wasted; the Fair’s over-all image was not of a scene of gaiety but of a scene of strife and uneasiness and rage.
He scheduled press conferences because he realized, intellectually, that the Fair needed the publicity, and because, rationally, he felt sure he could charm the reporters into friendliness. But when he found himself in the same room with these men and women who had attacked him, reason fled before rage. He went out of his way to show his contempt for them; the face he turned on them was one of disdain; his answers were sarcasm and scorn. He lectured them—and he antagonized them. It would have been easy to make them allies; he made them enemies instead.
chapter 50 — old
His intelligence was still a creative, shaping intelligence. Still roaming vigorously the length and breadth of the metropolitan region, it still saw in everything, as it had seen on the walks with Frances Perkins almost sixty years before, “ways to make it better.” Moreover, freed at last of the crushing day-to-day political and administrative responsibilities, that intelligence was free to contemplate, to reflect. Moses’ imagination—in shackles so long to responsibility and ambition—was loosed again to dream and plan in leisure as it had dreamed and planned half a century before, when, with all other planners baffled by the urban recreation problem, it had, looking at Long Island, conceived a revolutionary solution. Within one year after his ouster from power, Robert Moses possessed what he had not possessed during the years in which he had been building housing: a unified, comprehensive housing program.
And while that map was crisscrossed with the solid lines that represented achievements built—highways, bridges, tunnels—on it also were lines, many lines, that were not solid but broken: lines representing achievements not yet built, dreams yet to be turned into reality. As he sat at his desk, that map, its width wider than his armspread, its height taller than a man, stared back at him, reminding this man to whom accomplishment was so important that there was so much yet to accomplish. There was visible behind his urge to keep building an element almost of desperation; the public was doubting the wisdom of his creations—the way to convince them was to complete the system, to build more highways, more bridges, more housing—to build, build, build in a frantic attempt to rescue his reputation. But there was behind the urge also genuine creative drive, a drive undimmed by eighty years of life, the shaping impulse of the shaping man—and a drive supported by the arrogance which since his youth had told him in a voice that would not be denied that he had the answer to the problem, that he knew what to do. If only he were to be allowed to do it.
And while that map was crisscrossed with the solid lines that represented achievements built—highways, bridges, tunnels—on it also were lines, many lines, that were not solid but broken: lines representing achievements not yet built, dreams yet to be turned into reality. As he sat at his desk, that map, its width wider than his armspread, its height taller than a man, stared back at him, reminding this man to whom accomplishment was so important that there was so much yet to accomplish. There was visible behind his urge to keep building an element almost of desperation; the public was doubting the wisdom of his creations—the way to convince them was to complete the system, to build more highways, more bridges, more housing—to build, build, build in a frantic attempt to rescue his reputation. But there was behind the urge also genuine creative drive, a drive undimmed by eighty years of life, the shaping impulse of the shaping man—and a drive supported by the arrogance which since his youth had told him in a voice that would not be denied that he had the answer to the problem, that he knew what to do. If only he were to be allowed to do it.