Phillip Lopate: Robert Moses ... Time to revise our feelings about him?
ERICH VON STROHEIM was billed in his acting days as “The man you love to hate.” For the last 30 years, Robert Moses has been cast in that same role, as the villain responsible for everything that went wrong with New York. Even those newly arrived to the city knew enough to boo when his name came up at dinner parties. Moses (1888-1981) lived a long time, and his impact on the physical character of New York City was greater than that of any other individual in its history.
This imperious master builder has seemed to many the embodiment of all of modernism’s mistakes, gutting cherished working-class neighborhoods with highways, and more interested in big projects and superblocks than in preserving the past with fine-grained restorations. When, in my 2004 book, “Waterfront,” I argued that Moses had done far more good for the city than bad — taking into consideration his many parks, beaches, bridges and other necessary transportation projects — and ought to be honored as one of its greatest citizens, a friend castigated me with a note: “Who next, Stalin?”
Moses’ satanic reputation with the public can be traced, in the main, to Robert A. Caro’s magnificent biography, “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.” This irresistible, exhaustively researched masterwork of high journalism imposed a legible through-line on its subject’s complicated career and turned Moses into a dramatically divided, classically hubristic figure who went from do-gooder idealism to insatiable lust for power. Though Mr. Caro’s portrait was nuanced, giving the devil his due (especially during the first half, when the “good” Moses reigned), he was still the devil, in the final analysis. And indeed, he proved a most serviceable devil for conventional master narratives of New York over the last quarter of the 20th century.
But the stories we tell ourselves about how we got where we are need to be altered as circumstances change. Mr. Caro’s book, with its ominous subtitle, appeared in 1974, when the city did appear to be going under, hit by a fiscal crisis that would verge on default, crime and drug problems, a huge loss of manufacturing jobs, a degraded infrastructure and a shrinking population.
Since then, the city has rebounded, reinventing itself as the capital of the world, a glamorous, exciting tourist destination, much safer, more prosperous, cosmopolitan, hospitable and populous than it has ever been. By almost every standard — garbage pickup, Broadway box-office sales, increased public transit ridership — it has improved from that low point 30 years ago.
Maybe it is fair to ask, then, at this moment: If the city is surviving so well, to what extent should we attribute its resiliency to the changes wrought by Robert Moses? If we truly love New York, how can we hate Moses, since he did so much to reshape the city into the one we enjoy now?...
Read entire article at NYT
This imperious master builder has seemed to many the embodiment of all of modernism’s mistakes, gutting cherished working-class neighborhoods with highways, and more interested in big projects and superblocks than in preserving the past with fine-grained restorations. When, in my 2004 book, “Waterfront,” I argued that Moses had done far more good for the city than bad — taking into consideration his many parks, beaches, bridges and other necessary transportation projects — and ought to be honored as one of its greatest citizens, a friend castigated me with a note: “Who next, Stalin?”
Moses’ satanic reputation with the public can be traced, in the main, to Robert A. Caro’s magnificent biography, “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.” This irresistible, exhaustively researched masterwork of high journalism imposed a legible through-line on its subject’s complicated career and turned Moses into a dramatically divided, classically hubristic figure who went from do-gooder idealism to insatiable lust for power. Though Mr. Caro’s portrait was nuanced, giving the devil his due (especially during the first half, when the “good” Moses reigned), he was still the devil, in the final analysis. And indeed, he proved a most serviceable devil for conventional master narratives of New York over the last quarter of the 20th century.
But the stories we tell ourselves about how we got where we are need to be altered as circumstances change. Mr. Caro’s book, with its ominous subtitle, appeared in 1974, when the city did appear to be going under, hit by a fiscal crisis that would verge on default, crime and drug problems, a huge loss of manufacturing jobs, a degraded infrastructure and a shrinking population.
Since then, the city has rebounded, reinventing itself as the capital of the world, a glamorous, exciting tourist destination, much safer, more prosperous, cosmopolitan, hospitable and populous than it has ever been. By almost every standard — garbage pickup, Broadway box-office sales, increased public transit ridership — it has improved from that low point 30 years ago.
Maybe it is fair to ask, then, at this moment: If the city is surviving so well, to what extent should we attribute its resiliency to the changes wrought by Robert Moses? If we truly love New York, how can we hate Moses, since he did so much to reshape the city into the one we enjoy now?...