Robert Moses

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“This Is A Motor Age, And The Motorcar Spells Mobility”

June 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Robert Moses wrote an Atlantic essay in 1962 in which he returned fire at his many critics just as his iron fist was losing its grip on New York City. The power broker argued, naturally, in favor of a metropolis based on automobiles and high-occupancy apartment buildings. An excerpt:

“To sum up, let me ask the Gamaliels of the city a few pointed questions.

By what practical and acceptable means would they limit the growth of population?

How would they reduce the output of cars, and if they could, what would take the place of the car as an employer of workers or as a means of transport in a motorized civilization?

If more cars are inevitable, must there not be roads for them to run on? If so, they must be built somewhere, and built in accordance with modern design. Where? This is a motor age, and the motorcar spells mobility.

Is the present distinction between parkways, landscaped limited-access expressways, boulevards, ordinary highways, and city streets unscientific? If so, what do the critics propose as a substitute?

Is mass commuter railroad transportation the sole and entire answer to urban street congestion? Is conflict between rubber and rails in fact irrepressible? Are there not practical combinations of public, quasi-public, and private financing which can solve the riddle? And what of the people who prefer cars and car pools and find them more comfortable, faster, and even cheaper than rails?

If a family likes present city life, should it be forced to live according to avant-garde architectural formulas? Do most professional planners in fact know what people think and want? The incredible affection of slum dwellers for the old neighborhood and their stubborn unwillingness to move are the despair of experts. The forensic medicine men who perform the autopsies on cities condemn these uncooperative families to hell and imply that they could be transplanted painlessly to New Delhi, Canberra, Brasilia, and Utopia. We do not smoke such opium. We have to livewith our problems.

Is it a mark of genius to exhibit lofty indifference to population growth, contempt for invested capital, budgets, and taxes; to be oblivious to the need of the average citizen to make a living and to his preferences, immediate concerns, and troubles?

What do the critics of cities offer as a substitute for the highly taxed central city core which supports the surrounding, quieter, less densely settled, and less exploited segments of the municipal pie? Have they an alternative to real-estate taxes?

Pending responsible answers to these questions, those of us who have work to do and obstacles to overcome, who cannot hide in ivory towers writing encyclopedic theses, whose usefulness is measured by results, must carry on.”

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A rarely shown 1953 interview with Moses on the Longines Chronoscope:

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“It Must Be Virtually Maintenance-Free Yet Be Enduringly Beautiful”

June 10, 2012 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Amusing 1964 short about the building of the Unisphere for the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing, Queens. Robert Moses is front and center, of course, with an appearance by Gustave Eiffel’s grandson.

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“W. Parker Chase Proposed In 1932 That The 50 Million People Living In New York City 50 Years On Would Ride Vacuum-Tube Escalators”

February 1, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The cover of a 1911 Moses King guidebook predicted New York City's future pretty accurately.

David W. Dunlap has an incredibly fun slideshow on the New York Times site, which recalls urban planning from NYC’s past that was wildly bold and wholly unrealistic. An excerpt:

“Sobersided planners and wide-eyed visionaries thought this astonishing pace of transformation would never abate. A dreamer named W. Parker Chase proposed in 1932 that the 50 million people living in New York City 50 years on would ride vacuum-tube escalators and take air taxis to their 250-story office towers. The Regional Plan Association envisioned a 1,200-foot-long bathhouse complex at Great Kills Park on Staten Island. Robert Moses, who usually had the power to get things done, tried to persuade the United Nations to build a Brasília-like center at Flushing Meadow Park in Queens. (Midtown Manhattan, he warned in 1946, would by then ‘not be a proper, dignified and practical location’ for the United Nations.)

Dr. John A. Harriss, a distinguished expert on traffic control, went as far as to propose damming and draining the East River, before replacing it with a five-mile-long network of vehicular and train tunnels topped by boulevards and promenades. Pure folly? Not to the advocates of Westway, a highway that would have tunneled through landfill in the Hudson River until the plan was scuttled in 1985.”

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Massive Crowd Gathers In Times Square For World Series Updates (1920)

January 17, 2011 in Photography, Sports, Urban Studies | Permalink

Crowd gathers in Times Square on October 12, 1920 to hear play-by-play of the World Series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cleveland Indians.

I would have thought that the Black Sox scandal, in which several members of the Chicago White Sox accepted bribes to throw the 1919 World Series, would have dampened enthusiasm for the 1920 World Series. After all, it was in September of 1920 that some of the Sox admitted to a grand jury that they had participated in the fix. But based on this photo taken in Times Square during the ’20 World Series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cleveland Indians, fans were still very into the National Pastime. People came together in the pre-radio age to hear play-by-play coverage of the Fall Classic outside of the New York Times building.

The Dodgers, who were often referred to as the Robins in those days and had previously been known as the Bridegrooms, were defeated by the Indians five games to two in the best-of-nine series. The team’s rabid fan base remained loyal until after the 1957 season, when the Dodgers, rather than moving to Queens as Robert Moses wished, instead decamped to Los Angeles.

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Robert Moses Builds His New York City (1939)

December 1, 2010 in Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

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.”

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