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

by Caro, Robert A

  Isaacs' two votes were the only ones cast against Moses' project. Only one more step was required before Moses could begin sinking the bridge pilings —War Department approval—and this was regarded as no more than a formality; in fact, Moses had been privately assured by the Army Corps of Engineers that the approval would be forthcoming shortly. "The tunnel is dead," Moses said, and the reformers saw no hope that he was wrong. In A Man for All Seasons, Sir Thomas More warns young Roper about the consequences of letting ends justify means. When the young man says he would "cut down every law in England" to "get after the Devil," More replies: "Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?" The reformers could have benefited from More's warning. Robert Moses was of course not a Devil, but to give Moses power in the city, they had cut down the "laws" in which they believed. Now those laws no longer existed to protect the city from him. For the reformers and the city they loved, there was no place to hide. There was nothing the city, opposed to the bridge, could do to keep Moses from building it.

  When the reformers were in deepest trouble, they always seemed to turn to the same man. Now they delegated Paul Windels to go see him. Windels walked over to 27 William Street and into the office of the senior partner of Burlingham, Veeder, Clark and Hupper, and "CC," after thinking for several long minutes, suddenly smiled ("that wonderful smile," Windels would say. "When you saw that smile you felt everything was going to be all right") and said: "Call Eleanor."

  In the April 5, 1939, edition of her newspaper column, "My Day," Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt was enthusiastically discussing her grandchildren when she switched abruptly to one paragraph on a different topic.

  I have a plea from a man who is deeply interested in Manhattan Island, particularly in the beauty of the approach from the ocean at Battery Park. He tells me that a New York official, who is without doubt always efficient, is proposing a bridge one hundred feet high at the river, which will go across to the Whitehall Building over Battery Park. This, he says, will mean a screen of elevated roadways, pillars, etc., at that particular point. I haven't a question that this will be done in the name of progress, and something undoubtedly needs to be done. But isn't there room for some consideration of the preservation of the few beautiful spots that still remain to us on an overcrowded island?

  A single, small paragraph, on a subject she would not raise again. But revealing nonetheless, as the smallest ripple in a pond's still water reveals the hidden trout below. For that paragraph was the ripple, the only ripple, that revealed that far below the surface of the public controversy over Robert Moses' huge bridge, down in the quiet, murky depths, impenetrable to the public gaze, in which real power lurks, private passions were beginning

  10 roil the water—and Robert Moses 5 great enemy was beginning to move against him.

  Ignoring the apparent hopelessness of their cause, the reformers' "Central Committee of Organizations" opposed to Moses' bridge kept filling JcUcrs-to-thc-cditor columns with phrases out of another age. The best, as always, were Burlingham's. "At the risk of being called an extinct firecracker, J venture to say that the planning and art commissions have been faithless servants. What justification can there be for men whom we have trusted to preserve the beauty of New York ... to destroy or risk the dcslruction of any feature of [that] beauty?" There must be more public hearings and Moses must be made to furnish more information for them, lor "a public hearing without specific detailed figures furnished in advance will only darken counsel." Burlingham's were the only letters Moses answered directly: "I see that Mr. Burlingham is back in the papers again. . . . [His] reference to the depressing effect of bridges on surrounding real property ... is wholly inaccurate. ... J am sending Mr. Burlingham some pictures of the Bronx-Whitcstone Bridge, which most of us think is one of the finest things built by man in New York"; it "will enormously improve" surrounding property. (Burlingham, saying, "It is an honor even to be noticed by Mr. Moses," replied, "To compare the effect of the Whitestone Bridge on the vast swampy regions of the Bronx with that of the Brooklyn-Battery Bridge on lower Manhattan seems a little far-fetched. ... I'd still like to see a breakdown of his final estimates"—and Moses hastily broke off the exchange.) But it was not written public communications that were to be decisive, but private—and communications too private to be entrusted to writing. Burlingham had told Windels to call Eleanor—and CC himself had written to Eleanor's husband. In a letter across whose top the great attorney, then eighty-one years old, scrawled in longhand, "In graveyard confidence," he wrole:

  Dcai Franklin;

  Now please stop and read my letter to the Herald Tribune. . . . Nobody fit to have an opinion wants the Battery Bridge except Bob Moses.

  . . The War Department can stop it. . . . verb. suf. sap., especially when the sapient being is a lover of New York, as well as President of the United States and (Commander in c Jhief of the Army.

  The Commander in Chief apparently took the hint. The War Department hearing was held under the direction of the Army Corps of Engineers in New York, and Moses was assured by Colonel C. L. Hall, the chief district engineer, that a favorable report would be issued shortly. But the da) after the hearing, the colonel's superior. Major General J. L. Schley, Chief oi the Army Corps of Engineers, received a note from presidential aide Edwin M. Watson asking him to "speak to the President before you make any report on the subject/' The report was not issued on schedule, and when Moses asked when it would be, the engineers were suddenly evasive. And Secretary oi War Harry H. Woodring suddenly began to take a personal interest in New York Harbor

  Ickes brought up the bridge in a Cabinet meeting one day, saying that he recommended its construction. Frances Perkins recalled what happened then.

  The President pulled down his lip—a sign by which I always knew that something phony was going on inside of him. He'd pull his mouth down over his teeth and say, "Oh, yes" or "Oh, no" as the case might be. It was a curious facial expression. He said, "Well, I don't know. I want to think about that and look into it, Harold."

  Some weeks later, the Secretary of the Interior, who hadn't known the President as long as had the Secretary of Labor, brought up the bridge again and, in Miss Perkins' words, "was insistent about its being approved." According to Miss Perkins, "The President said, 'Well, we'll have to consult the military. That's a very important channel.' " Ickes said, "That's all right, Mr. President. We figured out everything. It will not interfere with the operation of ships." But all the President would say was: "Well, I'd like to think about it."

  Ickes finally caught on. Miss Perkins relates:

  Ickes said to me, "The President is going to kill this. He's going to kill this wonderful project. I wish you'd speak to him. I wish you'd argue it out with him."

  I said, "Well, how is he going to kill it?"

  "He's getting the military to condemn it."

  I said, "Are you sure?"

  "Yes," he said. "I know. I have evidence. He's telling the military to say that it interferes with the navigable streams and it doesn't—not at all. It's all been thought out. It's just that he so hates that Moses. God knows Moses hates him. But I should think that we could build a bridge without regard to that."

  Miss Perkins did speak to the President, who, she says, replied, " 'Well, it's no good, Frances. It's just a no-good idea.' Listing the reformers' objections to the bridge, he added, 'Besides, I am reliably informed that though the engineers haven't finished with this, they think it's a very great hazard to navigation. In case of war, we can't have any bridges around there. They'll drop bombs and so forth.'

  "I came back and told Harold that I guessed he was right, the President was not going to do it," Miss Perkins recalled. "There was nothing more I could do. There were plenty of other public works projects that were available, and didn't have Moses' name on them." On May 18, 1939, Watson sent the President a memo—which the presidential staff filed in the "Personal and Confidential" file—sta
ting that "the Secretary of War phoned me this morning to please let you know that the War Department had rejected the proposition to build a bridge from the Battery to Brooklyn. ... He wanted you to have this confidential information, as it has not yet been announced to the public."

  The "confidential information" was not announced to the public—or to Moses or even to La Guardia—for two more months. So tight was the lid of secrecy clamped down that Moses, usually so astute, feeling the only reason for the delay was bureaucratic red tape, did not for some weeks realize what

  was happening, kept his engineers drawing plans for the bridge and, until suspicion began to dawn, spent the two months firing off angry telegrams to the Corps of Engineers demanding a decision on the request for a permit, convinced that the decision could only be favorable. It was not until July x 7> I 939» that Secretary of War Woodring announced in Washington that he had decided not to approve the project because "the proposed bridge is seaward of a vital Navy establishment ... the U.S. Navy Yard at Brooklyn," and if knocked down during a war might block access to the yard from the sea.

  The Herald Tribune reported that Moses reacted to the decision with "rage and ridicule," and both reactions were understandable. There were already two other bridges, the Brooklyn and Manhattan spans, seaward of the Brooklyn Navy Yard—and other bridges seaward of other naval installations all over the United States. The only way a suspension bridge could be "knocked down," moreover, would be by hitting one of a handful of key cables—if a bomb hit the bridge span itself it would go right through—and Air Force experts queried by Moses prior to the decision had estimated the chances of this happening at 100,000 to 1.

  Attempting to repeat his 1935 strategy of bringing Roosevelt's behind-the-scenes maneuvering into the open, Moses issued a statement hinting that the President was behind the decision. When reporters failed to catch the hint, Moses made it broader at another press conference, reminding reporters that Ickes had taken the "blame" for the 1935 ouster attempt and saying, "Why don't you fellows find out if the Secretary of War is willing to take the blame for this?"

  But Roosevelt had learned from the 1935 controversy. Then, during a press conference, he had incautiously allowed himself to be identified with "Ickes'" decision. Now, when, at another press conference, reporters questioned him about the "Woodring" decision, the President said firmly that the decision had been that of Woodring and the War Department alone. Pressed to say whether or not he agreed with the decision, he said he had no opinion on it at all. Try as Moses would to link him with it, he could not do so. The fox had left no tracks. And he had planned more cleverly than he had in 1935—as Moses admitted in a formal statement brimming with frustration.

  No doubt this squares up accounts so far as the Triborough Bridge Authority is concerned. The effort to . . . force the resignation of its chief executive officer failed because the public opinion would not stand for it. In the present case the procedure has been a great deal shrewder, because it is assumed that the average person is in no position to argue with military boards of strategy, and must accept their conclusion no matter how silly.

  Moses attempted to enlist La Guardia in an attack on Woodring's decision, but the Mayor seemed rather uninterested—and the reason suddenly became clear to Moses when the RFC abruptly decided that it was willing to lend the Tunnel Authority not the $39,000,000 that had previously been its limit, but $59,000,000, and to make the loan at an interest rate so reduced

  that the cost of the tunnel (which, it now turned out, would in fact have been not Moses' $84,000,000 but Singstad's $65,000,000) could be reduced to $59,000,000. La Guardia's gratification was intense. "This administration is never daunted by anything," he gloated. "We just go on to the next thing."

  Moses' rage over what he regarded as his greatest defeat never cooled, not even after the tunnel, years later, was incorporated into his Triborough empire. Any mention of the tunnel—even the most casual reference by a luncheon guest trying to make conversation—would cause the big jaw to jut angrily and the voice of Robert Moses to recite verbatim, as automatically as if the mention had triggered a tape recorder inside his head, the old slogans: "A bridge would have cost half as much as a tunnel, you know, carry twice the amount of traffic, could be built in half the time . . ."

  What made his defeat all the more bitter was his belief that Eleanor Roosevelt had engineered it. She denied this, writing (in the only other mention ever made in "My Day" of the Battery Crossing): "Needless to say I have never spoken to anyone in the War Department on this subject. . . . I would like to add that I did not know that Mr. Moses had an interest in this bridge. Which shows how dumb I am!" But Moses, discussing the Crossing controversy years later, would snarl, "Oh, she was in the middle of it, all right—it was her more than anyone else. So now they've got a tunnel, costs twice as much, handles one half of the capacity, took twice as long to build . . ." For years, Mrs. Roosevelt's popularity restrained him from attacking her publicly, although in private his descriptions of her were, in Lazarus' words, "increasingly unprintable." But in the memoirs he wrote long after Eleanor Roosevelt was dead, he said, as if determined to get his feelings on the record for posterity:

  A review of "My Day" discloses an endless succession of noble impulses unsupported by thought or evidence, of naivete and sophistication, modesty and assurance, the product of confused early education, a cloistered girlhood, and sudden precipitation into world affairs. "My Day" spread the dubious gospel that all problems yield to good intentions. Converting a bridge into a tunnel was a trivial incident in such a record.

  There was one more pill for Moses to swallow—a $12,000,000 pill. The RFC's $59,000,000 was enough to build the tunnel and part of the Manhattan approaches, but none of Brooklyn's. La Guardia said the city would pay for the rest of the Manhattan approaches—since it would take four years to build the tunnel, the money would not have to be appropriated until 1943—but he made no announcement about any Brooklyn approaches. When Moses went to the Mayor, with considerably more humility than was his wont, to inquire about the five-mile, $12,000,000 Elevated Highway to Owl's Head Park that had been planned to link the Battery Crossing with his Circumferential Parkway, the Mayor said blandly that the city didn't

  have the money and that he didn't feel he could ask Washington for it. Perhaps sometime in the future . . .

  Without that highway, the "Belt System," the great circle bypass around the city of which Moses had been dreaming since 1927, would still have a five-mile gap. Reluctantly he told the Mayor that Triborough would build the highway if he could charge a ten-cent toll to finance its cost. Blandly the Mayor replied that he didn't think tolls on highways were a good idea. Besides, he went on, hadn't Moses already said—while arguing for Tri-borough's right to build the bridge—that Triborough had more than $12,-000,000 available? Whether or not Roosevelt, working with La Guardia, both men aware how driven Moses was to realize his dreams, had set the RFC loan at a figure exactly enough for a tunnel and nothing else in order to force Moses to cough up the money for the highway is not known, but that is the way it worked out. The Tunnel Authority rather than Moses' Triborough Authority was given the right to build the Battery Crossing and the revenues from it. But Triborough was forced to build the road to get to the Crossing. Obtaining even a soup^on of revenge on Robert Moses—promising to sign a minor bill he wanted and then reneging on the promise—had, Reuben Lazarus said, made Roosevelt, as Governor, look as fresh and happy "as though he had just come out of the bath after a clean shave in the morning." After the Battery Crossing fight, Roosevelt must have looked as if he had just spent a week at a health resort.

  On July 20, 1939, the Central Committee of Organizations Opposing the Battery Toll Bridge held a "Victory Luncheon" at the Architectural League.

  The taste of victory must have been sweet, for the luncheon did not end until after three. "Rising votes of thanks" were tendered to the heroes of the Goo Goo uprising from McAneny on down. The reformers laughed wh
en Albert Bard recounted details of an Architectural League luncheon that had been held in the same building on the previous day. Aymar Embury had given a speech, and after it, "persistent questioning" by a member of the audience "finally," as the minutes of the Victory Luncheon put it, "elicited the fact that Mr. Embury regarded as approximately accurate the . . . drawing that Commissioner Moses called 'completely phony.' " And when Ole Singstad rose to announce tnat he had just modified the tunnel plans to remove even the tunnel ventilation shaft from Battery Park—he had found a way to place it north of Battery Place—they cheered in a scene of triumph and jubilation.

  If the reformers had looked at the Battle of the Battery Crossing in a broader perspective, however, they would have been holding not a "Victory Luncheon" but a wake. For in such a perspective—the significance of the battle in the history of New York City—the key point about the fight and its significance for the city's future was not that the President had stepped in and stopped Robert Moses from building a project that might have irreparably damaged the city. The key point was that it had taken the President to stop him.

  The city's own mayor, the elected representative of the city's people, the personification of the city's will, hadn't been able to stop him. Neither had the city's other elected officials—or its most wealthy, prestigious and influential private citizens, the "in group" or "establishment" that could, when united, usually count on carrying the day on any issue about which it was particularly concerned.