The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York

by Caro, Robert A

  Yet, when she and her husband, neither of whom had offered the slightest protest when Robert received the lion's share of their mother's estate, moved to Coconut Grove, Florida, in about 1940, she found to her surprise that her brother never telephoned her, not even on her birthday, and was noticeably unenthusiastic about talking to her when she phoned. Years passed in which they hardly talked at all. Once, after she had not seen him for years, she asked if they could not get together. Moses' reply was to say that he would shortly be vacationing in Key West and would be setting down, very briefly, at Miami Airport, to change to a smaller plane. If Edna wanted to see him, he said, she could drive out to the airport and see him for a few minutes there. Edna at last got the message. She did not show up.

  Paul Moses, in his bitterness, felt that he understood the reason for his brother's behavior toward his sister. "He had no use for human beings," Paul said. "He would just use them up, and then when he had no more use for them, he would throw them away." His brother had needed Edna when their mother's will had first been probated as an ally to insure that the trustees would maintain a solid front against Paul. But thereafter he did not need her any more. And he "threw her away."

  Paul may or may not have been correct, but it is difficult to avoid wondering if there is not another reason—one hinted at in a Windels remark: "Robert never discussed Paul with me. He was quite reticent about him. You would almost have thought that Paul didn't exist."

  It is difficult to avoid wondering whether that was not what Robert Moses wanted the world to think. To any mention of his brother, Robert reacted with rage sufficient to insure that the brother was not mentioned

  again. In the circle around Robert Moses, "Paul Moses" was so proscribed a name that in 1956 the Post, in a six-part series on the Park Commissioner, could report that "many of his associates do not know that he has a brother . . ."

  The Post series was almost unique in mentioning Paul at all. It is possible to read through hundreds of magazine and newspaper stories without finding another mention. The reason was Moses' attitude. By never mentioning the brother's existence, he led writers to ignore the possibility that there might be one. If—as happened only rarely—a reporter learned of Paul's existence on his own and mentioned it himself, Moses' reaction was striking. As the Post reported, he refused even to say whether he was an older brother or a younger. "I'd prefer not to say," he said—"firmly." And of course a man who did not want the world to know he had a brother, and was avoiding the topic by not mentioning him, would steer away also from mentioning that he had a sister, for the mention of her might make it more difficult to avoid mentioning him. He would not even tell the Post if she was older than he or younger—and he would not say where she could be located.

  In a book about his life, necessarily more detailed than newspaper articles, mention of a brother's existence—and perhaps of other details of their relationship—would be more difficult to avoid. For a man so eager for publicity—a man, moreover, who geared his entire life toward insuring himself immortality—Robert Moses' attitude toward books that might help insure that immortality was surprising. A dozen publishers offered substantial sums for his autobiography. The offers were refused. Dozens of writers made preliminary inquiries about writing his biography. Moses informed each one that he would not cooperate—and that none of his records and documents would be made available. That attitude discouraged all but a handful; with those, Moses took a firmer stand, using his influence with publishers to have the idea killed. In i960, the Harvard-MIT joint School of Urban Studies asked author and former New Deal Brain Truster Rexford Tugwell to write one and offered him a substantial grant—by one report $50,-000—for the job. Tugwell says that Moses promised cooperation. The former New Deal Brain Truster hired a research assistant and with him had spent more than six months on what Tugwell considered the first step—drawing up a detailed chronology of his subject's life, including his boyhood. At that point, however, Tugwell says, "I went to Moses and asked him to look it over. ... I left it with him, and he called me up in a couple of days and, boy, he blew his top. I went out to [his office] and, boy, did he give me hell. I said, T don't think I can write this thing without cooperation from you, so I withdraw.' " Tugwell was never able to understand what had so dramatically changed Moses' attitude.

  Only one biography of Robert Moses was in existence before this one. Entitled Robert Moses: Builder for Democracy, it was written, in 1952, by Cleveland Rodgers, a profound admirer, as his title suggests, of the Park Commissioner, under the closest supervision from Moses and his aides. There is a chapter on Moses' youth, and it does provide a few details, includ-

  ing brief biographical sketches of his father and mother. There are photographs of his father and mother—and of the house in New Haven in which he was raised, with the Park Commissioner posing in front of it. There is no photograph of Robert Moses' brother or sister—and there is no mention of them, not even a reference by name. In this 339-page book on the life of Robert Moses, there is not the faintest hint that he had a brother and sister.

  He had a father and mother, too, and the picture he painted of them in the public mind is also striking.

  He subtly denigrated his father at every opportunity. When one of the Post reporters said in 1956 that he had heard Moses' father had been a successful businessman, Moses replied: "Actually, whatever money there was in the family my mother had."

  This attitude—while unfair to the prosperous merchant who had in reality left Bella Moses the bulk of her wealth—was, of course, in keeping with the patronizing attitude Moses had always displayed toward his quiet, gentle father. But the attitude he displayed—after her death—toward the mother he imitated so thoroughly was not. When he spoke about his mother publicly at all—which was almost never—it was to downgrade her reputation as well. Here, for example, in a letter he wrote to "correct'' a 1946 PM biographical series, is his published description—perhaps his only published description—of his parents:

  Thanks particularly for endowing me with a million dollars. The next thing to real wealth is, I suppose, the reputation of having it. My father did not give me a million. He never had it. My mother left me something, which was not much to begin with, and shrank through neglect while I was plugging at unpaid jobs. My father was, in fact, genuinely distressed because respectable friends deplored my antagonizing our Long Island park opponents, and my mother, probably rightly, thought I could take better care of my family if I got out of dangerous and thankless public service and into a big respectable corporation.

  The woman thus described was quite unrecognizable to a score of friends and relatives, who recall her great pride that her favorite son had followed the career in "public service" into which she had urged him; who recall that whenever another relative inquired whether it wasn't about time he started supporting his family, she had defended what he was doing, saying public service was much more important than any private job—and that she had backed up her belief not only by lending him $20,000 to help him create Jones Beach but by making it possible for him to stay in public service by supporting him and his family as long as she lived.

  Robert Moses' attitude toward his whole family was striking.

  The Moses and Cohen clans were numerous; New York City was well stocked with his aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. During his youth, it had been a rather close family. After he came to power, it was still a rather close family. But he wasn't part of it. With the notable exception of

  the cousin involved in the matter of his mother's will, Wilfred Openhym, he generally saw them only on his own terms, in settings he controlled absolutely—at ground breakings and ribbon cuttings at which he was both host and star. He rejected invitations to their homes. Gradually he cut off relations with most of them; almost invariably they ended in acrimony. One of his cousins, Angie Fink, said that she was practically the only member of his extensive family with whom he was still on speaking terms, and that even she spoke with him seldom
. It was, Mrs. Fink said, "as if he had tried to deny his father, his mother, and his whole youth."

  As for his wife, on those Saturday evenings at the Belmont Mansion, where Robert Moses sat hour after hour at the big table with no apparent intention of leaving, it was, of course, Mary Moses "who was the most welcome person because she was the only one who could drag him out"—a feat she sometimes accomplished by taking him "firmly by the ear" and leading "him away from the table as if he were a little boy."

  For years, in all domestic matters, Robert Moses was led by his wife. If, outside, he gave orders, at home, with Mary and their two daughters, Barbara and Jane, he took them. "He was a different man there," says Joe Ingraham. "So different that if you only knew the public Moses, you'd hardly believe this was the same man."

  The Moses homes—the big, rambling old Thompson Avenue house and a Gracie Square apartment that he rented after coming into Bella's inheritance in 1930—were both sunny and cheerful (the apartment looked out on the busy East River and the towers of the Triborough Bridge) and casual, with deep, gaily slip-covered chairs and sofas; bright oil paintings; warm, russet drapes; books piled all around; and, in the foyer at Thompson Avenue, rolled-up sails for Jane's sailboats. The atmosphere was as relaxed and casual as the atmosphere in his offices was intense. And the contrast extended to the man who lived in them.

  Moses was not home much—he was generally out of the house by nine, usually returned after eight and worked every Saturday—and when he was, a friend recalls, "he always had that yellow pad on his lap." But the friend says, "he never acted busy or rushed at all; he was easy and utterly gracious." When Jane and Barbara were young, he would make up stories to tell them, sit on the floor with them for hours, making animals out of clay, carry them around on his shoulders, teach them to swim and sail, take them on wonderful Sunday clambakes on Fire Island. When they got older, he and Barbara— Jane early developed an anti-intellectual bias—followed the family tradition established by Grannie Cohen by doing crossword puzzles together, including the difficult Double Crostic in the Saturday Review. He was always delighted to have their friends in—the house was always filled with children—and Jane says, "I cannot remember him losing his temper at us." It was he who

  walked the dog, generally took out the garbage—and, often after working until long past midnight, arose at six or six-thirty to make breakfast. "He loved to cook," Mary's sister, Emily Sims Marconnier, says. "No matter how early I got up, Robert would be in the kitchen and he'd like to know what I'd have—bacon or eggs or whatever." He dressed in the shabbiest of old khakis, a plaid shirt hanging out of his pants, sneakers and one of the incredible hats he loved (the battered old fedora was often replaced now by a transparent rain hat which he cherished); there was, as a friend puts it, "absolutely no side to the man at all. He might have been a powerful man, but if you only saw him around his house, you would never have guessed it."

  His wife ran his home, and his life, to such an extent that, describing their relationship, many friends use the phrase: "she mothered him."

  Mary bought his clothes—even his underwear and socks—bringing home suits until he found some he liked and then calling a tailor over to fit them, gave him pocket money (says one of her friends: "Before he had the limousine she had to see he had carfare every time he went out. She had to make sure he had change for a telephone call and a few dollars for restaurants and whatever. In a restaurant, she would slip him the money for the check under the table"), paid all the bills, even, until he began to use Triborough accountants, handled the income-tax returns, tried to keep his weight down (she would dish out her husband's portion with a crisp: "No gravy"), ordered him home from the office when he was working too hard and protected him from intrusive telephone calls with an acerbity that reminded visitors that she had once been called "the power behind the Governor" in Wisconsin. And she never complained about the financial privations that for years left her constantly worrying about grocery bills or the lack of ordinary social life. (Moses went to no movies, saw no plays, had no hobbies except those connected with the water—swimming, sailing, clamming—although she, as her sister puts it, "did not particularly like the water." Her only concern—deep enough so that some of her friends refer to it as "a real guilt feeling"—was that Robert had badly wanted a son and she had not given him one.) "Mary was the boss in that household," her sister says. "She ran their lives."

  She shared more than Moses' home life. In the years before he installed private dining rooms at his offices, she was hostess for his luncheons, a brilliant and witty one. She knew how to handle politicians and reporters. At receptions, she would whisper the names of oncoming politicians in his ear because she was as good at recalling individuals as he was bad. She brought a touch of humanity to his hard-driven men, asking them about their wives and children, arranging for doctors and hospitals when they were ill, and, when her husband's empire burgeoned in resources, seeing that those resources were put at their service. When, for example, the seven-year-old daughter of the captain of the Park Commission's yacht Sea-Ef died, Mary saw to it that the grieving parents "didn't," as the captain's sister puts it, "even have to buy a piece of bread. A chauffeured car came over

  and stood at the door all the time in case they wanted anything. She sent over food—enough to feed an army. And the car stayed there the whole four days the body stayed in the funeral parlor. And later, every now and then a big bouquet of roses would come, with a card, From Mary and Robert Moses, for the cemetery." One thing she did that was especially appreciated by Moses' men was to call his office and say, "Bob's on one of his rampages, everybody watch out." Says one of his men: "That would give us just enough time to get out of there before he arrived." For some of the young architects and engineers, she was a matchmaker, and a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. Arnold Vollmer, a young architect introduced to his wife, Becky, a Moses research assistant, through Mary, says: "She was the sharpest, the most wonderful, brightest woman you ever met." She could be devastatingly caustic. Once egoistic Lester Markel, Sunday editor of the Times, perturbed because he had been invited as Moses' guest to the Jones Beach Marine Stadium but had not been seated in Moses' box, made some remark that she overheard. Addressing some people around her —in a voice just loud enough for Markel to hear—she said: "The trouble with Lester is that he thinks he's as smart as Robert. But he's not." She knew just what to say to help her husband; when La Guardia asked her, quite seriously, why Moses respected Smith more than him, she replied: "Because he stood behind his commissioners." When her husband publicly insulted Iphigene Sulzberger, it was Mary who healed the breach. And she was awed by no one. Proskauer recalls that the first time she met Smith after he had refused to endorse Moses for Governor, Mary "absolutely withered him" with a cold stare when Smith tried to embrace her as usual, "turned on her heel, and walked out of the room." She was a confidante and adviser, a respected one. "RM never went anywhere without Mary, and he consulted her on everything," Sid Shapiro says. "And boy was she sharp!" Attorney Morris Ernst, who with his wife saw a lot of the Moseses when the two couples were young, says: "Mary gave Bob an awful lot when he was first starting out. Don't forget, she had been the confidential secretary to a Governor. Her political know-how was really quite significant in helping him accomplish his early objectives." Moses himself told Mrs. Marconnier that "every time he pulled a boner it was on something he hadn't consulted Mary about." Says radio commentator H. V. Kaltenborn, who knew the Moseses for years: "Those of us who are privileged to know something about the home life of Robert and Mary Moses realize how much a wife's unfailing patience and unselfish devotion have meant during years of strife and struggle."

  But as strife and struggle yielded success, the relationship between Robert and Mary Moses changed. The change was evident at parties. As Mrs. Morse, the friend who admired both of them, put it, "Well, as a young man he didn't dominate the conversation at parties so much. But it grew worse later . . ."

  As he grew l
ouder, she grew quieter. Talk to old acquaintances and the adjectives used to describe Mary Moses are "gay," "charming," "warm," "witty," "vivacious." Talk to acquaintances who first met her during the 1930's and the adjective most heard is "quiet." Attorney Monroe Goldwater,

  who didn't meet her until about 1936, says she was "a nice person but not very brilliant." One woman, who first met her about that year, calls her "a mouse." By the late i93o's, New York hostesses anxious for the presence of Robert Moses at their dinner parties were wondering what on earth to do about Robert Moses' wife. According to elegant Florence Shientag, the bright, brittle wife of key Smith adviser Bernard Shientag and herself an attorney and judge: "When they visited us, we always had to worry about who would sit next to her. She needed bringing out. . . . She never spoke very much. She had nothing to say, I assume. She was a moon whose light was growing less and less. He was going on, a sun, getting brighter and brighter."

  Not that Mary seemed to mind. "Mary was a darling and she never got over her wonder that anyone like Bob should want to marry her," Iphigene Sulzberger says. "She never thought that anyone so handsome, so brilliant, would marry anyone but the Queen of England or someone like that. He was absolute perfection in her eyes." If the submersion of her identity in his was causing her conflict, signs of that conflict emerged only obliquely, as in one interview she gave during the only period in which she consented to talk for publication, his campaign for Governor in 1934. (During this campaign, despite her wit and political insight and experience, she delivered exactly one speech, a talk at a small tea.) The reporter who interviewed her wrote that Mary Moses "suddenly inquired": "But why bother talking to the wife of a candidate? I don't think I'm a very interesting person to interview. I'm not spectacular. And, on the other hand, you can't just do me as the home and mother woman, shelling the peas, mending. I can do all those things. I can cook, and I like to. But I don't. What can you say about a person like me? I know government, because Mr. Moses has been a part of it always, but that makes me like a shadow of him—and that's not correct either."