Robert Moses plans the Battery Bridge in 1939. (Image by C.M. Stieglitz.)

Robert Moses was never elected, but then kings don’t need to be. Moses was the master builder of New York City who held sway over the creation of bridges, parks, highways, museums and skyscrapers for several decades last century. As head of numerous public authorities (most of which he created), Moses was insulated from public opinion and had the type of control over the city’s fate that no single person will ever have again. Even though he created many new acres of park lands, Moses’ passion for automobiles and towers over public transportation and small neighborhoods eventually made him a reviled figure and Jane Jacobs, his arch-foe, a leading urban theorist.

C.M. Stieglitz’s 1939 World Telegram image of Robert Moses looking down on a scale model of the proposed Battery Bridge as if it were a child’s toy may say as much about Moses as Robert Caro did in his sprawling, devastating 1974 biography, Power Broker. That’s no small praise since Caro’s book may be the single best history about New York City in the 20th century.

From Paul Goldberger’s 1981 New York Times obituary about Moses:

“Robert Moses, who played a larger role in shaping the physical environment of New York State than any other figure in the 20th century, died early yesterday at West Islip, L.I. Mr. Moses, whose long list of public offices only begins to hint at his impact on both the city and state of New York, was 92 years old.

A spokesman for Good Samaritan Hospital said he had been taken there Tuesday afternoon from his summer home in Gilgo Beach. The cause of death was given as heart failure.

‘Those who can, build,’ Mr. Moses once said. ‘Those who can’t, criticize.’ Robert Moses was, in every sense of the word, New York’s master builder. Neither an architect, a planner, a lawyer nor even, in the strictest sense, a politician, he changed the face of the state more than anyone. Before him, there was no Triborough Bridge, Jones Beach State Park, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, West Side Highway or Long Island parkway system or Niagara and St. Lawrence power projects. He built all of these and more.”