Robert Moses: Friend or Foe?

As learned in this week’s reading, Robert Moses has had an incredible impact on New York City’s physical character.  Illustrated by Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson, Moses’s public works projects are so vital to the New York community that they have lasted for over fifty years.  However, unlike his projects, the reputation of Moses proved to be built on shaky territory.  Ballon and Jackson describe the rollercoaster that was Moses’s reputation.  In the 1930s, both the press and the public admired Moses for renewing the city on both the recreational and transportation level.  However, in the 1950s, Moses’s standing sank as the city experienced the social displacement that came into play after his building of interstate highways, urban renewal, and public housing.

When first hearing about Robert Moses this semester, the first thing that came to mind was the Southern State parkway.  Connecting New York City with parts of Long Island, it provided access to the wonderful beaches and parks that Long Island has to offer.  Thomas J. Campanella talks about this parkway, but not in the way one might think.  Yes, the benefits were outstanding, but only to those who had the capability to access it.

Campanella discusses the contents of Robert Moses’s biography The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro, where it was said that Moses ordered his engineers to build the bridges low over the parkway to keep buses that were assumed to carry minority groups away from Jones Beach.  With the philosophy that it’s “very hard to tear a bridge down once it’s up,” Moses successfully used cement and stone to create an exclusion of these poor Puerto Ricans and African Americans.

Caro even describes in this biography that Moses was “the most racist human being I had ever really encountered.”  The article touches upon this, saying how minority neighborhoods were bulldozed for urban renewal projects, how he put monkey themed details in a Harlem playground, and provided elaborate attempts to discourage non-whites from certain parks and pools.

These “Jim Crow-esque” works make for a complicated opinion on Robert Moses.  Yes, he built a wonderful pool for Harlem and the Jackie Robinson Park.  However, can we really afford to ignore the corrupt agendas behind his “services” to the city.  Granted, his works do have tremendous use to us today.  The Southern State Parkway is known to be a wonderful and scenic route to get to Jones Beach on a warm summer day.  As a society, we can still enjoy the benefits it has to offer the community, but it is doing an injustice to ignore the cruel intentions that it once entailed.

Additional Works Used:

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/07/how-low-did-he-go/533019/

One comment

  1. Joan Nieh says:

    The reputation of Robert Moses is widely controversial in that though he shaped the physical aspects of New York City, his ignorance toward the neighborhoods and people of the city cannot be left unmentioned. Sarah mentioned how the press and public admired Moses for the number of public works he completed. However, I would like to argue that the public opinion was something he manipulated. The reputation he had of unbridled power was due to how he “skillfully publicized his projects…pulled levers of public opinion to create the impression of indefatigable energy, a perception reinforced by his pugnacious and arrogant personality” (Ballon and Jackson 66). The link below demonstrates the continual impact Robert Moses has even today. Moses’ reputation is considered more well-known than multiple governors and mayors. The power he wielded concerning federal funds was not something to be underestimated.
    Furthermore, he strongly influenced who had access to the parks such as Jones Beach he created. Sarah brought up in her post that the physical structure of certain bridges prevents lower-class minority groups from entering the parks. In the introduction written by Ballon and Jackson, Moses’s racial policies against minorities are clear not only in the way he built his public works, but also where he built them. For example, his public works also reflects his slum clearance efforts. Additionally, in the NY Times article below, it mentions how people in the Bronx were asking that the Sheridan Expressway, constructed by Moses, be routed differently to allow for more modest housing development (Dunlap). However, the voices of the people weren’t heard. As Moses pursued his vision for “the public good” and sustainability of New York City through his public works, he dismissed what the people themselves actually desired. Again, the question comes up as to “what is the public good?” and “who are the winners and losers of the decision that Moses made?”

    Ballon H and Jackson K T (2007) Introduction. Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York (pp. 65-66). W. W. Norton & Company.
    Dunlap David W (2017) Why Robert Moses Keeps Rising from an Unquiet Grave. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/nyregion/robert-moses-andrew-cuomo-and-the-saga-of-a-bronx-expressway.html?mtrref=www.google.com

Leave a Reply