By Alex Marshall, Editor, Spotlight on the Region
As loyal Spotlight readers know, I have been reading anew The Power Broker, Robert Caro's epic history of Robert Moses, the master builder of New York in the 20th century. Caro's prose, which is prosecutorial in tone, has stirred many thoughts in me and some of the most recent are about steroids and baseball.
See the connection? I thought not. I'll explain.
I don't follow sports, but even I was aware 10 or so years ago, when Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire and others were slamming 50, 60 and 70 home runs a year, that players were juicing themselves up. Even an idle glance at the sports page revealed that baseball teams, unlike the National Football League and the Olympics, were not requiring mandatory testing for drugs. Surely people knew what that would lead to. Even a blind man could see that something was going on, as these heavily muscled sluggers faced beefy pitchers and knocked balls out of the park.
A few years later came the steroid scandals, and eventually various players were hauled before courts and Congress and grilled for their use of illegal performance enhancing drugs. As these scandals continued, the attitude of both the public and officials reminded me of the inspector in the movie Casablanca, who pronounced himself "shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on."
But wait a second. If I, a non sports follower, realized what was going on surely more astute observers did as well. When it was convenient, the public, the press and the officials collectively averted their eyes from steroid use. They worked hard not to see something. Later, again when convenient, they cast scorn on those same players, the very ones once cheered.
I think something similar happened with Robert Moses.
Moses, who now symbolizes power run amok and bad urban planning, was extremely popular for most of his career from the 1920s to the late 1960s. The public loved the speed with which he built the Triborough Bridge, Jones Beach and hundreds of other parks, highways and bridges. The efficiency with which Moses and his men performed his tasks stood in contrast to the sclerotic nature of New York state and city government in general at that time. In the early part of Moses career, New York City was still under the Tammany hall Machine, while New York State was no modicum of efficiency.
In this light, in this context, Moses stood out as a savior.
But as he was doing things, people surely knew, or should have, that he was cutting corners, pushing people around, and bending and breaking rules. And in the later part of his career, as Moses pushed more and more freeways through the middle of dense urban neighborhoods, displacing hundreds of thousands of people, there was also an awareness, or should have been, that he was taking one line of action -- roads -- too far, doing more damage than good.
Sure, there was some attempts to check Moses, even the height of his fame. RPA deserves some credit here. Its president George McAneny led the fight against Moses' attempt to build a bridge in 1940 into Battery Park from Brooklyn, which would have marred much of Lower Manhattan. And in general, RPA was consistent in calling for a balanced transportion system, even as Moses called for roads, roads, roads. But overall, RPA's notes of opposition were lost in the roar of public approval of Moses.
Finally, in the 1960s, Moses got old, and was pushed from power. And around this same time, along comes Robert Caro, his ruthless and indefatigable biographer. Caro's 1200-page book is unbelievably good, still an exemplar of non-fiction writing. But there is a way in which Caro, in holding Moses accountable for his actions, lets the rest of us off the hook. Caro made it easy for us to heap scorn upon Moses and his memory, for the way he rammed freeways through neighborhoods, for the way he humiliated and ruined opponents. But of course, it was the collective we that was standing aside and letting him do all these things back in the day. Not just letting him, but encouraging him, heaping praise upon him for these various actions.
All this parallels the steroids scandals. We look the other way while the home runs were being slugged, but then cast opprobrium when it's safe or convenient. Moses's and Mark McGuire's reputations died for our sins.
Americans, said Philip Roth in one of his novels, have always been vulnerable to the ecstasy of sanctimony. I intensely dislike most of what Moses did, and see how the city I loved was crippled and damaged by his actions. But before we write another page of history that says how awful Moses was, we should keep a lookout for the next bandwagon we collectively leap on too quickly, at the other things we are choosing not to see....
@RegionalPlan
I think that you are articulating a wider trend on how narratives are popularized and meaning if made palpable in America - it is individualized. The joy of the biography is finding wider social forces at play in the soul of an individual, and humanizing those forces. Moses is surely important, even revolutionary, but he alone did not create corruption in the New York region, or drive the development of highways over public transportation in the nation as a whole.
Barry Bonds made some questionable personal choices. So did some Wall Street power brokers dealing in real estate financing, guards in Abu Ghraib and oil executives and regulators drilling in the gulf. This is what the American Public, and thus both its representatives and its media, tend to focus on to make meaning from disaster and disappointment. The lessons seem consistently to be moralized - this or that person is bad. I agree wholeheartedly with your point - but who wants to read a 1200 page muck-raking epic about our systemic collective stumbles? Perhaps planning has a role...
Well said.
New York has as much to thank Moses for as to curse him. While I drive miles out of my way to avoid the CBE out of principle (avoiding the traffic and the burned husks of cars with the misfortune to break down in the vehicular equivalent of Death Valley just adds to my smug satisfaction) I think that the city might be a much less habitable place, perhaps economically crippled, without his collective impact on the city and region. If only he had redirected that ruthless energy and efficiency towards mass transit, or at least incorporated it into his plans.
To bring your baseball analogy full circle, I should point out that Robert Moses was instrumental in blocking O'Malley's plans for a new stadium at the Atlantic Yards that ironically would have used eminent domain to displace yet another neighborhood. This of course lead to the genesis of my beloved perennial losers, "DA METS!", also ironically located where Moses wanted the Dodgers to be in the first place.
My metaphor for Robert Moses is Darth Vader of Star Wars. The two are very similar, starting as exceptional Jedi Knights/Good Government heroes, but both a little warped and kinky, even in their youth. In an overwhelming desire to do good, both were sure they knew what everyone else needed, and ultimately both were sucked in by the Dark Side of the Force.
Star Wars came out in 1977, just 3 years after the Power Broker. Vader fits Moses to a tee. In the 1930s Moses, as a leading GoGo, created his vast park and parkway system, but always designed to his personal measure. The public was catered to, but also "protected." Moses shaped his projects to maximize his bond ratings and thus his power, ultimately warping the goals of the projects for more power.
During WW II, Moses came under the Dark Side, emerging in 1946 able to see only the motor car as his and our future. His first postwar act was to remove the walkway and bicycle lanes from the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, to convince his bankers the bridge was stable. Throughout the 50s, Moses projects paved over his earlier parks and paths to move more cars.
I first came in contact with Moses' works in 1956, bicycling on the Belt Parkway Bike Paths, built in 1941 at the tail end of his Jedi Knight era. I was impressed by those paths, and I still am.
My next direct contact was most unpleasant. In 1963, the American Youth Hostels Bike Committee received a letter from Moses, informing us that he would not be installing the bicycle or pedestrian paths on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that it was designed for. A year of protests failed to move Moses and the bridge opened Nov 1964 without the paths. The Brooklyn-Staten Island Ferry closed 4 days later. Nearly 50 years later, the VNB is still not completed.
When you write "But as he was doing things, people surely knew, or should have, that he was cutting corners, pushing people around, and bending and breaking rules." and
"But of course, it was the collective we that was standing aside and letting him do all these things back in the day.",
I'm wondering just which "people", which "we" you are addressing.
When I first rode the Belt Parkway Bike Paths, I was 9 years old. When the Verrazano opened, I was 17, still at Brooklyn Tech, and I knew the man was evil then. I am 62 now.
There are still people who revere the Moses legacy, but for many of us, it did not take Robert Caro to to tell us we were dealing with an Evil Empire, though it did take George Lucas to give us the character Darth Vader.
A really sad part of Moses' excesses are that he hyper-sensitized the public and even planners against large projects. Since no one could say no to Moses - until Rockefeller - the laws were re-written to make stopping projects easier than finishing them. Comprehensive regional planning has taken quite a hit, but I would still never want to see another Moses as Commissioner of Damned Near Everything again.
You are right in your conclusion, beware of joining the Easy Fix bandwagon.
But it's been nearly 50 years, so can't we correct Moses' last great mistake by completing the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, finally installing those bicycle and walking paths?