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 Purroy 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 Purroy 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 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 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.
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.