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84 New York City and the Legend of Robert Moses Peer Reviewed Title: New York City and the Legend of Robert Moses Journal Issue: Places, 19(2) Author: Williamson, June Publication Date: 2007 Publication Info: Places Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0510f6zd Acknowledgements: This article was originally produced in Places Journal. To subscribe, visit www.places-journal.org. For reprint information, contact [email protected]. Keywords: places, placemaking, architecture, environment, landscape, urban design, public realm, planning, design, New York City, legend, Robert Moses, June Williamson, dispatches Copyright Information: All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. Contact the author or original publisher for any necessary permissions. eScholarship is not the copyright owner for deposited works. Learn more at http://www.escholarship.org/help_copyright.html#reuse eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide. New York City and the Legend of Robert Moses June Williamson Three astonishing exhibitions breathed fresh air into a tired subject, • A rich narration of the battle documenting the work of the mid- the New York Times architecture critic over Washington Square Park twentieth-century über-public Nicolai Ouroussoff called the shows from 1952 to 1958, which radi- planner/builder Robert Moses stirred “required viewing.” Michael Sorkin calized a “bunch of mothers” and the imagination of New Yorkers presented a “brief for the dark side” resulted not only in blocking this year. The shows, revisiting the in Architectural Record, emphasizing construction of a road through career of a figure who has been largely the cautionary lessons of Moses’s the park but also the birth of a demonized since his death in 1981, history—a view seconded in the countervailing movement that were curated by the Columbia Uni- Wall Street Journal by Ada Louise largely discredited the powerful versity architectural historian Hilary Huxtable, who asserted that Moses “is forces of centralized, large-scale Ballon. “Remaking the Metropolis,” not the man to emulate.” Meanwhile, urban redevelopment. at the Museum of the City of New Governing thanked the revisionists • A reminder of citizens’ horror York, examined Moses’s big-picture for returning “the concept of public over the extent of planned schemes for restructuring the metro- authority to the center of the urban demolition in the old industrial politan region. “The Road to Recre- policy debate.” In the New York Times, districts of Greenwich Village, ation,” at the Queens Museum of Art, Phillip Lopate stressed Moses’s SoHo, and TriBeCa (comple- focused on the prodigious building “vision of sustaining New York as a mented by irony, in light of the of beaches, pools, playgrounds and middle-class city,” to which he in part insanely high property values in parkways under his direction. And attributes New York’s astonishing these areas today). “Slum Clearance and the Superblock revival in recent decades. And The • Envy for a time when Moses Solution,” at Columbia University’s New Yorker’s Paul Goldberger took a was able to pull strings to Wallach Art Gallery, examined his middle road, concluding (apropos of ensure that New York City impact on federal Title I urban rede- the stark contrast between the legacies got far more than its fair share velopment spending in the city.1 of Moses and Jane Jacobs) that “there of federal money. In 1935 and With a built legacy of immense is a price to pay for thinking small, just 1936 he secured one-seventh of scope and reach as the result of thirty- as there is for thinking big.”4 all Works Progress Administra- four years in city government, from Lost in the hoopla over whether tion funding dispersed nation- 1934, when he was appointed New the shows repudiate some of Caro’s wide. And in the 1950s New York City Parks Commissioner, damning claims of Moses’s racism and York received twice the Title I until 1968, when he was forced out contempt for public process, however, funding allocated to Chicago, its of the chairmanship of the Tribor- are astonishing insights. closest competitor. ough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, an entity he created, Moses was (and • A new appreciation for the Clearly, these exhibitions struck a remains) a riveting, controversial scope and grandeur of the public nerve with the general public. Atten- figure for New Yorkers.2 The shows works projects of the 1930s. dance at all three was phenomenal, captured this legacy through archival Among these were ten massive far exceeding the organizers’ expecta- photographs, documents, and majes- new public pools, built mostly tions. New Yorkers seemed genuinely tic contemporary photographs by on existing park property, moved by the opportunity to evalu- Andrew Moore. But the comprehen- accommodating thousands, ate Moses’s controversial legacy on siveness of the exhibitions also caused which opened to great fanfare— their own terms. In the models and the red flag of revisionism to be raised, one per week—in the sweltering photographs depicting his visions for especially with regard to the accepted summer of 1936. a modern city, we could discern the view of Moses as insensitive, tyran- • Diagrammatic maps and a com- origins of much of our individual, nical, and corrupted by power, best pelling description of Moses’s contemporary experience of New expressed in Robert Caro’s exhaustive commitment to mixed-income York: our patterns of daily existence, 1974 biography The Power Broker.3 housing (if not mixed-race) the routes we use to move from place A plethora of prominent critics in the implementation of Title to place, the recreational facilities our have already weighed in on this ques- I-funded slum clearance in children enjoy. We could reflect on tion. Arguing that the exhibitions the 1950s. the old neighborhoods and places that 84 Williamson / New York City and the Legend of Robert Moses Dispatch have been preserved, as well as those its genteel bocce court, split in two by yet become pejorative.”5 Second is that were destroyed, and the sweep- the four-lane arterial Moses tried to the opportunity to revisit the “towers ing Moses-directed projects that took ram through it. in the park” debate, by examining the their place—expanded university and relative success of urban redevelop- cultural institutions, new housing, What Can We Learn? ment projects in New York. highways, and parks. Two issues raised by the exhibi- With regard to the first question, I found myself trying to imagine tions seem particularly relevant to Marta Gutman’s scholarship in the New York without the pleas- readers of Places. First is the question exhibition’s companion volume on ant outdoor areas of Morningside of what constitutes proper use and the pools program in the 1930s is Gardens, the Title I-funded coopera- control of public space. According to particularly fascinating. She writes tive housing near Columbia Univer- Kenneth Jackson, Moses had “a con- sity, where my son frolics while at sistent and powerful commitment to preschool. But I cringed at the render- the public realm.…While Moses was Above: Morningside Gardens, view north, 2005. ings of Washington Square Park, and in power, the word ‘public’ had not Photo by Andrew Moore. Places 19.2 85 that the placement of WPA-funded on public-private partnerships, com- City parks with the best facilities and public facilities in existing parks mercialization of activities within programs today—i.e., those funded “enforced the reform landscape put public parks, and expansion of through private, not-for-profit orga- in place in New York starting in the eminent domain to assist essentially nizations, such as the Central Park late nineteenth century and empha- private commercial and entertainment Conservancy and the Battery Park sized the value of a specific kind of development projects. It is generally Conservancy—are located in the recreation: civic, not commercial; recognized today that some privatiza- wealthiest districts. uplifting, not honky-tonk; public, tion is necessary for the maintenance Regarding the “towers in the park” not private.”6 This civic-minded and improvement of public assets like controversy, the exhibitions provided approach resulted in an expansive city parks. But this system has not good examples of New York projects network of free public spaces, unsul- been able to deliver the same level of that contradict accepted wisdom lied by commercial amusements. equity in the distribution of public about this now-disgraced modern- One can hardly help contrasting investment as that enjoyed under ist formula. As Hilary Ballon points this program with current emphasis Moses. Simply stated, the New York out in her essay, Moses’s genius in 86 Williamson / New York City and the Legend of Robert Moses Dispatch working with Title I was to counter its built projects inspires big thinking It contains contributions from Marta Gutman, Owen failings elsewhere. about the future. The real question is Gutfreund, Martha Biondi, Robert Fishman, and Joel In some cases he did this by making whether it is possible to renew empha- Schwartz, portions of which are quoted here. agreements with private developers sis on the region without losing sight 2. Along the way Moses served mayors from Fiorello before proceeding with land clearance. of the local. LaGuardia to John Lindsey on the City Planning He thus avoided situations in which The idea of the abstract “public” Commission, as the City’s Construction Coordinator, land, once cleared by a public agency, has already been reintroduced to as chairman of the Mayor’s Committee on Slum remained empty for years for lack of planning discourse through sustain- Clearance, as Coordinator of Arterial Projects, and private redevelopment initiative. ability agendas that promote aware- as president of the 1964 New York World’s Fair In other cases he paired Title I ness of local decisions as not just Corporation.
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