January 25, 2007
Big Snub as Robert Moses Gets a Second Look
Robert Moses’ legacy may be getting tweaked if organizers of three upcoming exhibitions have their way.
The NY Times’ Robin Pogrebin is reporting that the Museum of the City of New York, the Queens Museum of Art and Columbia’s Wallach Art Gallery will unveil a three-parter over the next month on the master builder. Columbia University architectural historian Hilary Ballon says that Moses’ achievements have been overlooked.
From the Times:
Living in New York, one is aware there has been no evident successor or successors to Moses,” she said. “There aren’t master builders. Who is looking after the city? How do we build for the future?” All around New York State, she suggests, people tend to take for granted the parks, playgrounds and housing Moses built, now generally binding forces in those areas, even if the old-style New York neighborhood was of no interest to Moses himself. And were it not for Moses’ public infrastructure and his resolve to carve out more space, she argues, New York might not have been able to recover from the blight and flight of the 1970s and ’80s and become the economic magnet it is today.
The definitive account of Moses, of course, is Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, a 700,000-word, 1,286-page tome on the man who redefined 20th century New York. Caro tracks Moses’ tenure as parks commissioner and Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority chairman, concluding that Moses not only destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes in the Bronx, Upper West Side, Sunset Park and Long Island in the name of new highways and “slum clearance,” but also rebuilt parks and playgrounds for “the rich and the comfortable.”
The three exhibitions tackle different aspects of Moses’ reign, according to the Times. “Robert Moses and the Modern City: Remaking the Metropolis” at the Museum of the City of New York is an overview of the roads (Henry Hudson Parkway and Cross Bronx Expressway, among others), buildings and monuments (Lincoln Center and the UN) and parks (the expansion of Riverside Park, East River Park and Central Park) created by Moses. “Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Road to Recreation” at the Queens Museum of Art (housed in a building that Moses conceived for the 1939 World’s Fair) looks at the 416 miles of road and 658 playgrounds he expanded in the 1930s. And “Robert Moses and the Modern City: Slum Clearance and the Superblock Solution” at Columbia’s Wallach Art Gallery examines Moses’ urban renewal-gone-amok phase of the 1950s.
All three seek to supplement – and, yes, modify – Caro’s story, given Caro’s focus on Moses’ destructive and diabolical side. Caro’s view was so unwelcome that he even was left out of the exhibitions until a sponsor of the Columbia show called and asked Caro to speak.
This is what Caro told the Times:
When I am writing a book, I try always to give all sides a chance to express their viewpoint. I guess they didn’t want my viewpoint expressed, and not inviting me is certainly an effective means of accomplishing that.That snub has set off a strange smackdown between Caro and Columbia historian Kenneth T. Jackson, the editor of the amazing Encyclopedia of New York City and Crabgrass Frontiers: The Suburbanization of the United States. Jackson, who, bizarrely, told the NY Observer that he wished his name - instead of Caro's - were on Caro's book, wrote four pages in the exhibition’s 336-page catalog, taking an alternate approach to Caro's. Caro’s book exaggerates Moses’ influence on American life and his role as an “evil genius,” Jackson told the Observer's Matthew Schuerman, adding that the city’s renaissance since 1974, the year the book was written, would not have been possible without Moses. “Had he not lived … Gotham would have lacked the wherewithal to adjust to the demands of the modern world,” said Jackson.
Even Caro’s editor, Robert Gottlieb, who read those four pages, weighed in on the dust-up:
I got this impression that Mr. Jackson, even if he didn’t have a direct animus toward Caro, was suffering from some kind of Moses envy, as if he wanted to own Moses himself.
In addition to Ballon and Caro, the Times has interviews with Jackson, Hertog (the sponsor who called to invite Caro), the executive director of the Queens Art Museum Tom Finkelpearl, Northwestern University African-American history professor Martha Biondi (who addresses Moses’ racism) and deputy mayor Daniel Doctoroff.
The Observer has a detailed account of the Caro-Jackson feud featuring an in-one-corner analysis of the dueling writer-thinkers. Aside from Jackson and Gottlieb, it also features interviews with Ballon and Caro.
Both are good reads.
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If the Lower Manhattan Expressway and Mid Manhattan Expressway had been built, all you losers won't be complaining about all the traffic the city has to deal with.
Robert Moses was a jerk off who destroyed my Cobble Hill neighbor hood by slicing it in half with the #@%&*$! BQE !
brooklynboy
How would you like all of that BQE traffic passing by on your local roads? All of those 18 wheelers? All of those commuters? Folks who need to get from Astoria to Staten Island? Parkchester to Bay Ridge?
"If the Lower Manhattan Expressway and Mid Manhattan Expressway had been built, all you losers won't be complaining about all the traffic the city has to deal with."
actually, yes, we would still be complaining. No matter how many roads you build, there will always be more cars to over fill them. thats just the plain fact, and the lesson, DISCOURAGE cars from entering the city. Cars dont belong in cities. Fuck Moses.
"Cars dont belong in cities."
Can you find a better way to get from Elmhurst to Newark? Rutherford to Prospect Park?
Robert Moses was complex. He never learned how to drive, yet built hundreds of miles of roads. He did a lot of bad, most likely causing the problems in the 1970s Bronx, but he also built parks. However, the evil seems to out pace the good.
As for the puzzle posed by "i drive to work":
Elmhurst to Newark - 7 Train to Woodside, LIRR to Penn Station, NJ Transit to Newark Penn Station or Newark Broad Street.
Rutherford to Prospect Park - NJ Transit Bergen County Line to Hoboken, PATH to WTC, 2 train to Grand Army Plaza.
People who advocate banning cars in Manhattan are pretty naive, instead they should spend their energy advocating public and alternative modes of transportations. Moses was no saint but I couldn't imagine NYC would look like now without him.
"Can you find a better way to get from Elmhurst to Newark? Rutherford to Prospect Park?"
Public transportation - and if it's inadequate, make it better. I like cars, but I agree that private cars are a dumb way to travel inside and in and out of big cities.
How about a tunnel instead ..? huh..?
Giving the benefit of the doubt, maybe the technology was lacking then, but this ruined half the neighborhood..
and we still get to listen to all the BQE traffic passing by and, all of those 18 wheelers..
If the Lower Manhattan Expressway and Mid Manhattan Expressway had been built, all you losers won't be complaining about all the traffic the city has to deal with.
I'm just wondering. Are you 2? That was the most mature response to anything I've ever read.
To build on what Toby said, if the money Moses spent on roads had been spent on mass transportation instead we might today have had a much more robust and extensive mass transit system that would have minimized many of the "you can't here from there" problems.
"And were it not for Moses’ public infrastructure and his resolve to carve out more space, she argues, New York might not have been able to recover from the blight and flight of the 1970s and ’80s and become the economic magnet it is today."
Is she insane?!? This is revisionist history at it's worst. If anything Robert Moses enabled the flight from the cities with his creation of the Long Island "suburbs." He never saw he city as a destination but something that cars simply flowed through. Not to mention the fact that he was at least partly responsible for the calamity that is The Bronx when he literally ripped it's heart out to put in an expressway. It maybe have been a poor community before, but at least it was a poor and viable community with vitality and a sense of pride.
While there's no denying he was a great unifying force for the physical city, his ultimate inability to see the city as a living breathing community of people but rather simply a land mass to be bisected and trisected ultimately caused nearly as much harm as good.
Elmhurst to Newark - 7 Train to Woodside, LIRR to "Penn Station, NJ Transit to Newark Penn Station or Newark Broad Street.
Rutherford to Prospect Park - NJ Transit Bergen County Line to Hoboken, PATH to WTC, 2 train to Grand Army Plaza."
How long did it take and how much did that set you back by?
"I'm just wondering. Are you 2? That was the most mature response to anything I've ever read."
That was not a response, it was a comment. This is a reponse: Yes I am 2. I'm a child prodigy that can read and type at 2.
"How long did it take and how much did that set you back by?"
I'm guessing a lot less than purchasing a car, gas, oil, brake fluid and pads, wiper fluid, antifreeze, belts, transmission fluid, power steering fluid, battery, tires, registration and insurance.
Consider this- the cost of getting to work is more than the cost of train fare or tunnel toll. The cost is measured in short and long term noise and air pollutants, environmental damage, loss of space for housing and recreational areas, and employee illness, both here and abroad due to petroleum products and metal and plastic recycling.
Sorry- cars cost a lot more in the long run, convenient thought they might be in the short run. The short-sightedness of people who don't favor fast, cheap and relatively low-pollutant mass transportation is what has led to the poisoning of millions of humans and animals as well as global warming.
It's like thinking that because a steak costs .59 a pound, that's what it really costs your body and the environment, simply because you don't see all of the other long-term effects in front of you. Meanwhile a steak that costs $1.00 a pound and came from a small-scale farm might actually cost less in the long run, in terms of health and environmental benefits.
Whenever people talk about Moses, they always make the mistake of assuming that the way things are currently is how they had to be, and Moses just made them so. Thank you, anomalous, for pointing out that, had different decisions been made, we could have an incredible public transit system that discourages cars and increases everyone's ability to travel while minimizing cost. Instead, Moses loved cars and hated people. Especially poor people.
Caro mentions in the Power Broker that when Moses built the beaches of Long Island, he specifically made the bridges that crossed over the expressways too short for buses so that poor people couldn't bus themselves out to the beach. Only people who could afford cards were allowed to go.
"I'm guessing a lot less than purchasing a car, gas, oil, brake fluid and pads, wiper fluid, antifreeze, belts, transmission fluid, power steering fluid, battery, tires, registration and insurance."
You must not own a car. $399/month lease + $50/month insurnace + $50/month gas = $499
Title + tag = 1 time $100
Free maintenance for entire lease (BMW + Audi)
Oh and the freedom of going anywhere anytime I want without waiting or transfering? PRICELESS!
#15 --- I wholeheartedly agree.
However, we need to work out some sort of economic system so that the price of transportation matches its costs to society.
The government's pollution certificate program is a *great* example of this working effectively. By capping and taxing the amount of pollution dirty industries can produce, many have found effective ways to reduce pollution outputs while keeping costs low.
(And you can't exactly complain about the NYC public transportation system for not being extensive. Although it definitely could stand to grow quite a bit more, it's already the most extensive system in the world, even before you take NJTransit and the Port Authority (Ferries & PATH) into account.
Compared to, say, LA, we're *very* well off. On the other hand, I would like to see Park & Ride subway stations located just outside of the city like you see on the MBTA in Boston.
"Oh and the freedom of going anywhere anytime I want without waiting or transfering? PRICELESS!"
You've never gotten stuck in traffic?
Plus, where in the city do you live that you can get insurance on a new BMW or Audi for $50/month? And you don't pay for parking?
Ok. We get your point. You drive to work. Would you like a medal? I'm going to guess you don't carpool either. Or care about people other than yourself. Vote Republican?
When they were building the LIE, they begged Moses to allow them to put rails down the middle for a high speed train route into NYC, but he felt it wouldn't be used.
That Caro book is one of the best biographies ever written.
Andrew, I concur. We do need Park and Rides in New Jersey and near other points. New Jersey also needs a more extensive mass transit system, so that commuting between New York and New Jersey will be easier and faster.
Cars cost more than a rental, or even tags. I have a driver's license, and I've rented cars when I need one. I even used to own a car. But I also know that while individual may feel freer in being able to get up and go when and where they please, they are selfishly impinging on the freedoms of people all over the planet. Cars in the US pollute the air, usually only carry one person at a time (which is a waste of energy and space), are environmentally expensive to dispose of (the process leaches toxins in to the earth and groundwater, and make the workers who break them up permanently ill while in many cases causing birth defects in children)... I could go on but I'll stop there. On the other hand, people in many parts of New Jersey, Long Island and Westchester as well as in other places have to have cars, because otherwise there's no practical and cheap way to get around. While I commute to NJ twice a week on a bus that takes me directly to my job, the bus schedule is Byzantine at best. Very often it's not even posted. For a commuter it can get very expensive, and most of the routes are roundabout and are pretty much non-functional on weekends. this isn't fair to working class people, the elderly, and students, all of whom rely on public transportation more than other groups. It's also not fair to strip land that could be used for mass housing to create more parking lots for people who either cannot, will or will not read a travel schedule, or in many cases find those schedules useless because they don't go where people want to go at the times they need to get there.
"Oh and the freedom of going anywhere anytime I want without waiting..."
you must not drive much in NYC then.
I am someone who has read all 800+ pages of Caro's book. Robert Moses, for all he he did for New York, was corrupt and a virulent racist. What about his destruction of the last old-growth forest in Manhattan? What about his routings of the Long Island highways AROUND large rich estate holders? What about the deliberate lack of parks and pools in African American neighborhoods? Or the fact that he designed for cars, not for people - which is why Riverside park ISN'T ON THE RIVERSIDE - the west side highway is.
I could go on. It's a great read.
it's all in there.
["Oh and the freedom of going anywhere anytime I want without waiting or transfering? PRICELESS!"
You've never gotten stuck in traffic?
Plus, where in the city do you live that you can get insurance on a new BMW or Audi for $50/month? And you don't pay for parking?]
he apparently also doesn't pay tolls. not to mention, where is he driving that he doesn't need to fill his tank more than twice a month? if you live in the city and thus don't often need gas because you're only driving ten blocks at a time: 1) how environmentally rude and 2) then yes, that 500 sure is a lot cheaper than a monthly metrocard. [sarcasm]
"You've never gotten stuck in traffic?"
Sometimes... and sometimes your L train doesn't come for 45 minutes or 4/5 is so packed you can't get on.
"Plus, where in the city do you live that you can get insurance on a new BMW or Audi for $50/month? And you don't pay for parking?"
I've lived in Queens, UES and Central Village. Now I live in the burbs. No need to pay for parking. All reimbursed ;-)
"You drive to work. Would you like a medal? I'm going to guess you don't carpool either. Or care about people other than yourself. Vote Republican?"
Yes a Gold please! No carpool here! Moderate Democrat. You won't find me supporting social welfare.
My commute is 30 minutes longer with public transportation. I make too much in 60 minutes to be wasting away on the train.
"he apparently also doesn't pay tolls. not to mention, where is he driving that he doesn't need to fill his tank more than twice a month? if you live in the city and thus don't often need gas because you're only driving ten blocks at a time: 1) how environmentally rude and 2) then yes, that 500 sure is a lot cheaper than a monthly metrocard. [sarcasm]"
No! How rude of you to assume I'm male and I live in Manhattan!
I avoid the tolls. There are many way of getting in and out of Manhattan without paying tolls.
Second, I drive a diesel so I get about 500-650 miles per tank of gas.
Lastly, my commute would cost about $300/month if I take public transportation. I need to get to places other than to work on a regular basis so that $500 actually accounts for much more than the 20 round trips per month to the office!
"I make too much in 60 minutes to be wasting away on the train."
Does your job pay you by the hour?
please tell us more #26, your pride and privilege are sooo fascinating.
"Does your job pay you by the hour?"
That's how I bill my clients. Plus I can communicate while I'm driving. Yes I talk on my phone. Bluetooth is great isn't it? And I can use my crackberry when I'm stuck in traffic.
i question how valuable the time is of someone who spent the last 3 hours boasting about his car on the gothamist comment thread.
Out of curiosity, what was your point in commenting here? You started off by calling everyone, except you, a loser. And you want us to be jealous that you drive to work and are a tool? Ok. Whatever you say.
The point of the original post was to note that Caro, long considered one of the top experts in all things Robert Moses, was snubbed for the exhibit talk. You're very good at trolling though.
"You won't find me supporting social welfare." yet the roads you drive on are subsidized more than mass transit.
Your numbers don't have the ring of truth to them.
Regarding the Bronx, besides the Expressway there have been 50 years of economic upheaval in this city. You can't try to pin the problems of the Bronx on one thing.
You're all retarded. (Well, except for MT, who wisely states that Moses did both harm and good)
The truth of the matter is that American society relies heavily on automobiles, and our national auto-centric trends would have been imposed on NYC whether we resisted or welcomed it. Short of closing the roads, there is no way to prevent out-of-town traffic from coming into the boroughs, and there are plenty of automobile owners and users here in NYC as it is.
It would have been a severe folly to NOT build much of what Robert Moses built. People question the way that he did it, and the effects that it had, but in my humble opinion, the city both suffers from inadequate highway access AND inadequate mass transit access. Moses added highway capacity, which helped the situation out a bit. It's not fair to blame him for the fact that the people who proceeded him built up the boroughs using all the available space for miles. His big mistake, of course, was to think purely big (and never small) and to underestimate the ghettoizing effect that a highway can have on a newly cut-off section of the city.
That whole "Rutherford to Prospect Park" answer is simply idiotic, in both directions. Very few people would need to make that trip, and it certainly required a boat around the harbor prior to the early 20th century. But the suggestion for a transfer among three transit systems was clearly made by someone who's never made the actual trip during non-rush hours. It's not terribly expensive (although certainly more expensive than gas for a family of four) but it is mindbogglingly long. On a weekend, I'd schedule 3 hours for a one-way trip. Also requires a fair bit of walking, not counting the endpoints. No one in their right mind would leave the car at home.
In closing, if everyone wants to make a bogeyman out of Robert Moses, they can certainly do so and see where it gets them. The man has long been dead. Some of his biggest projected projects were squashed, and nothing reasonable has solved the problems they were intended to fix. Mass transit still needs a lot of work in the metropolitan area, although it's the best that America has right now. And although every massive tunnel or bulky concrete expressway are drains on the taxpayer's dollars, the cost is even greater for the time wasted in miles of traffic waiting to get in/out of the city daily, as well as the injured/dead pedestrians resulting from preventable accidents where someone was using one of the avenues as a highway, considering it's hard to get onto an actual highway in this town sometimes. Sometimes the only way to fix a traffic problem (or build a city upward) is to add traffic capacity, plain and simple. And you can criticize the man who solved problems when you find a better way to solve them. (Other than "build more subways!" because your fellow taxpayers are clearly repelled by that concept in practice.)
"i question how valuable the time is of someone who spent the last 3 hours boasting about his car on the gothamist comment thread."
Multitasking while on conference call.
""You won't find me supporting social welfare." yet the roads you drive on are subsidized more than mass transit."
You should take that up with Spitzer and State Senate. I've got nothing to do with it except the single vote I casted for Spitzer. Did you vote?
"And you want us to be jealous that you drive to work and are a tool?"
I'm a tool. Thank you for you constructive criticism ;-)
At least there are some sane folks around like oversimplification.
You made one mistake. "In my humble opinion" should have read "in my uninformed opinion."
"You made one mistake. "In my humble opinion" should have read "in my uninformed opinion.""
Please enlighten us with your informed opinion. I generally don't agree with BrianVan but in this case he cannot be more correct.
I suppose one should not be surprised by this revisionist view of history in light of the horrendous amount of thoughtless development and rezoning occuring in the city in recent years, but it is still very disturbing.
Moses' early parkways were indeed splendid, but his later work, such as clearing thriving neighborhoods in exchange for expressways and faceless superblocks of crime-fostering public housing towers. Moses doesn't deserve thanks for the city's revival, he deserve BLAME for the city's fall in the 1960s. He handed over the city to the automobile and superdevelopment, and it is only thanks to those who fought him and his policies, such as Jane Jacobs, that certain neighborhoods were able to truly survive and renew, setting the focus back on the pedestrian and human-scale. Just look at what neighborhoods have thrived and become centers of renewal; they're not centered around highways and superblocks, rather they tend to be those that made it through the Moses years unscathed.
One should also take note of the kind of projects Moses' influence spawned in cities accross the country, many of which have since realized the error of their ways and set to work on correcting them. Take, for example, cities like Boston, Portland, and San Francisco, who have all been working in interesting ways to bring down the freeways that disected their cities and re-introduce the pedestrian to the street. Surely they do differ in scale, but that does not mean New York cannot learn from them.
two lines from brianvan's post:
"You're all retarded."
"...but in my humble opinion,..."
I won't belabor any of the points already made, except to concur with most of BrianVan's post. Moses was a product of his era, and it is folly to judge him too harshly based upon the unforeseen consequences of his choices decades later.
Putting aside the matter of personal transportation, I wonder how many of you would care to contemplate NYC without some of the expressways Moses designed. You may not realize this, but four of the five boroughs of NYC, along with Nassau and Suffolk counties, do not have a freight rail connection with the continental United States (remedying this has been a longstanding pet project of Rep. Nadler). As such, all commercial goods must be brought in to those areas by...wait for it...motor vehicles, mainly trucks.
What would the lovely neighborhoods of Queens, Brooklyn, Nassau, and Suffolk be like without the LIE or the BQE? Think about that as you curse Moses' name.
Here's my two cents on the subject . . .
Sure Moses accomplished a lot of "big" things.
But if I understand this revisionist history angle, I think his greatest accomplishment is that he "accomplished"- that is, he got things built, for good or for bad. That may be true, but keep in
mind every major city in that era had a "master planner" guy. In Philadelphia it was Edmund Bacon. His work has stood the test of time. And no one ever wrote a 2 ton, 800-page, "you're an a-hole" book about him! Why? because he did good.
I think these revisionist folks are just nostalgic for the "good old days", when one "jerk" controlled everything.
I'm no Moses fan, but I have to ask this question, as food for thought, so to speak:
What would have happened if he were still alive today and in charge (with unlimited, unchecked power) of rebuilding the WTC site?
You would NOT have had that 3 ring circus "competition", "Freedom Tower", Pataki & Co. bulls**t.
Think about it.
And what would the final product have been?
Better?
Worse than what is currently slated to be constructed?
At least it probably would have been, say, 75% completed by now.
perhaps we would have been well served if Moses had worked to bring us a freight rail line in addition to the roads. While trucks would still be needed to move goods once they arrived in the city, traffic in and out could be greatly reduced.
"You're all retarded" was not really an opinion. More like a humbly-observed fact. *evil grin*
Hey, it was a great opener!