Local History-New York City

 HIST 701-Blogging Local History (Option 2)

I lived in New York City from 1997 until 2004 when I moved just across the Hudson River to Teaneck New Jersey. I still feel connected to the five boroughs of New York City. Five days a week, I drive from New Jersey through New York City on my way to work as a teacher. In summer, I get up before dawn & drive out to the ocean to swim. All of these travels are made possible by Robert Moses. One cannot live in any of New York City’s five boroughs without feeling Robert Moses’s “hand”. As the urban planner most responsible for the layout of New York City's parks & roadways, the roads I drive on are the creations of Robert Moses. Moses held many jobs inside both the New York City government & New York State government, simultaneously. How you may ask was that possible? Moses wrote the laws that governed who could control what power in both the City & the State at a time when the rules were murky at best. Moses went to work for New York City Mayor Al Smith in 1929. By 1934, Moses had become Parks Commissioner. Moses saw this role in a way no one had ever envisioned. Author Robert Caro titled his 1,336 page book on Moses with the apt title, The Power Broker. That is what Moses became as Parks Commissioner. Like a modern-day Tammany Hall, Moses was the most powerful Man in New York because he controlled vast sums of public funds. From 1934 until 1964, Moses’s power was unchecked. Partially because his projects made whoever sat in the mayor’s mansion in New York City look good, partially because Moses had written the rules himself.  

So, what did Moses do with all this power? During the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 until 1941, Moses built parks like the massive Jones Beach Park on Long Island. Since there were only local roads, Moses built highways & parkways that linked Manhattan & the other boroughs to these many parks. Then Moses linked the George Washington Bridge that spans New York to New Jersey to the Cross Bronx Expressway.

To build this expressway across the Bronx, Moses expelled countless families because their homes were in the way of his expressway. Moses cut a swath across the heart of the Bronx the likes that had not been seen since Sherman’s army cut a swath across the state of Georgia during the Civil War. Moses did the same thing to families living in Brooklyn when Moses built the Belt Parkway that linked Manhattan to Brookly to Long Island. Moses linked the Bronx to Manhattan for 109 million dollars of New Deal money.

Once again, working class families & businesses were displaced so Moses could have motorways. Moses had a dark side to him. He did not care for people of color. Since most people of color at that time traveled by bus, Moses made sure that his roadways had overpasses too low for buses. This way his beaches could not be used by people of color. What did Moses do after 1941? He incorporated bridges & tunnels into an “Authority”. An authority Moses discovered was its own political entity. Moses now controlled the millions of dollars being deposited into toll booths across New York City. In the end, Moses’s ego was his own undoing. He challenged New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller for control of the funds his Authority controlled & lost in 1964. I have used The George Washington Bridge to the FDR on Manhattan’s West Side to the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn to go swim at Jones & Brighton Beaches. Every time I do so, I think about Moses. How his grand vision permitted New York City to become the financial center it is today due to its roads. I also think about the evil one man was permitted to do to working class families, all in the name of his ego. 

Biography:

Caro, Robert. The Power Broker. New York: Knopf, 1975.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google

https://www.wsj.com/articles/frederick-law-olmsted-and-robert-mosess-priceless-riverside-park-1438369869