As a child, I would make my way from Staten Island to Manhattan only when absolutely necessary. I did not know much about the city, but I always pictured the glitz and glam of Broadway, the expensive shops down 5th Avenue, the yellow taxicabs and the occasional celebrity. As I grew up, my father would tell me stories of New York City in the 1970s – a place very different from what I always imagined.
Now that I commute to Baruch everyday, I have gotten to know various neighborhoods a little better. I know to be careful (as is the case wherever I go) and always heed my father’s advice: keep your eyes open. However, I enjoy reading works about New York City’s history because it allows me to form a better understanding of the past, present and possibly even the future.
For starters, Kenneth T. Jackson’s stark description of post World War II cities as “dispiriting collections of broken bottles, broken windows, and broken lives” is quite intense. As a 21st century New Yorker, it is difficult to imagine the city ever being so inhospitable. It makes sense that a loss of manufacturing jobs after WWII would harm the economy of a city, but I would have never imagined just how badly. Large masses of people chose to leave the cheerless city and neighborhoods such as the South Bronx housed the perfect storm of poverty, race and crime. It almost seemed as if New York had spiraled too far into bleakness, until Robert Moses came along.
Robert Moses undoubtedly had an immense impact on the city as we know it. He has gone down in history as one of the most well-known urban planners, but not without criticism. It was interesting reading Ballon’s and Jackson’s interpretations of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. As Ballon points out, Caro published The Power Broker when the city was rapidly declining, thus making it easy to associate the deterioration with Moses’ work. The fact of the matter is that Moses led the nation’s largest slum clearance program in the 1950s, allowing the city to adjust to changing demands. Fifty years later, as Ballon states, “the Moses projects have been absorbed into the fabric of the city.” From massive public works programs to the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, Moses was a forward-looking planner who was able to effectively allocate resources. Racist or not, he delivered.
It is interesting to note how things have come full circle. Prior to the 1950s, New York was the “unchallenged center of American life” (Jackson). For over a decade, Gotham had sharply declined and was unable to recover until 1975 when a “renaissance” returned it to its former glory. Aside from criticisms about being money hungry, prejudice or callous, Robert Moses truly had a lasting impact on New York City. Having built 13 bridges, 416 miles of parkways, 658 playgrounds, and 150,000 housing units, he spent $150 billion in today’s dollars. Moses can justifiably go down in history as a catalyst of change, having profoundly transformed New York’s infrastructural landscape.
