While Moses' popularity was still overwhelming, it had developed significant gaps on the left; during the same week in which he suffered the Idlewild defeat, and was watching the City Planning Commission slip out of his hands, a committee of liberal organizations was formed with the avowed purpose of forcing O'Dwyer to remove him from office, and 300 delegates representing 28,000 city and state employees supported that demand in a resolution calling him an "anti-Democratic . . . reactionary," and assailing him for cutting the school-building program and for favoring "discrimination in low-cost housing" and in employment. On July 28, PM could report that "the biggest story in the City Government today is the apparent decline of Robert Moses as the power behind the throne." And on August 12, the capstone was put on the pyramid of Moses' defeats when President Truman, after checking with O'Dwyer and being told flatly by the Mayor that Fort Clinton should be preserved and restored as a national monument, signed a bill passed by Congress authorizing the Department of the Interior to do so. There were several pointed private developments. Moses heard no more about his suggestion—which O'Dwyer had seemed on the verge of accepting—that General Farrell be appointed chairman of the Housing Authority. He did hear that O'Dwyer was considering enlarging the membership of the City Planning Commission to reduce Moses' influence over it. Most significantly of all, Moses' access to O'Dwyer was restricted—if not in fact all but eliminated. The days of the two-hour chats in which he could "swing" the Mayor were over. Soon City Hall was abuzz with rumors that he was having difficulty even getting in to see the Mayor. Once, attempting to arrange a personal interview with O'Dwyer, Moses used the ploy of asking a deputy mayor to remind his boss that a city program should be agreed upon before the 1947 legislative session and to ask him to appoint—and to meet with—a committee of key city officials—including the City Construction Coordinator —to do so. There was no reply. Moses was reduced to inviting a lower-
echelon mayoral assistant, legal aide Harold L. Herzstein, to lunch in an attempt to win the Mayor's ear for the proposal. And the reply from Herzstein, when it came, came in writing and reflected the Mayor's coldness, as well as a desire to return power in the city to the traditional repositories of power. "The Mayor is aware of the necessity for the city's formulation of a program ... He has a program in mind which he will submit informally to the members of the Board of Estimate for their approval. When he obtains such approval, he will consider the selection of the personnel to effectuate his program in Albany." During this period, even Moses' ultimate weapon failed him—for the first time in decades. A Triborough messenger showed up at Gracie Mansion one day with a letter of resignation from Moses. The Mayor handed it back to the messenger and told him: "Tell the gentleman who sent this that if he wants me to accept it, just send it back again." The messenger did not return.
But Moses used the power of money to bring the Mayor to heel.
O'Dwyer was desperate for money. The city's crises were worsening. Press and public wanted action. He was, moreover, in the midst of a struggle to take over Tammany Hall, a struggle which revolved around his attempts to oust Manhattan borough president Hugo E. Rogers, whose office was a particularly lucrative source of contracts for the machine. He was not unaware, moreover, of the fact that any major public works projects which were not started almost at once would not be finished when he ran for re-election in 1949. His city, his grasp for party power, his personal career—all these required money. And he didn't have any.
Action in the housing crisis was conceived of by press and public as construction of new housing. New housing projects had been planned with the state money Moses had obtained, but the very crisis that made construction imperative—the lack of vacant livable apartments in the city—made construction difficult, because there were no apartments into which to relocate families living on the sites on which planned housing was to be built. The state had agreed to pay $3,000,000 to rehabilitate vacant, boarded-up tenements for the temporary use of such families if the City Housing Authority would also contribute $3,000,000. But while the clamor of the citizenry for housing "action" mounted daily, the city was unable, month after month, to come up with its $3,000,000.
Whether or not—after O'Dwyer's attempt to discipline him, an attempt which included barring him from housing decisions—Moses quietly used his influence with state officials to discipline O'Dwyer instead and force the Mayor to put him into the housing picture, cannot be documented, but during the month of September 1946 the following sequence of events occurred:
• O'Dwyer agreed not to bring to a secret meeting with state housing officials any members of the City Housing Authority—but to bring Robert Moses instead.
• At the secret meeting, the state officials agreed to do what they previously refused to do—to pay the whole $6,000,000 themselves.
• The official announcement of the agreement put out by the state officials said that the agreement had been accepted on behalf of the city by
Robert Moses and Mayor William O'Dwyer—and some informed insiders believed it was no accident at all whose name came first.
Action in the traffic crisis was conceived of by press and public as construction of highways and giant off-street parking garages. The city had no money for garages; the only possible source of funds was Triborough—Robert Moses' Triborough. (In the first flush of his friendliness, O'Dwyer had appointed him for another six-year term.) At O'Dwyer's request he had agreed to spend $40,000,000 building sixteen of them, getting back the money from fees paid by garage users. State and federal money was available for highways—but Moses' hand was on the valves that regulated the flow of state and federal money into the city. State and federal governments, moreover, were forbidden by law to acquire the right-of-way without which the construction of highways could not start. Available city funds for right-of-way were clearly insufficient. A Triborough contribution was necessary. (Moses had promised O'Dwyer such a contribution—of at least $11,000,000 during the next three years—as well as additional contributions, amounting to perhaps another $20,000,000, for planning and, on some stretches, actual construction, to further speed his highway program.) Whether or not Moses told O'Dwyer after the Mayor's attempt to discipline him that he was no longer prepared to make contributions for highway right-of-way, planning and construction—and whether or not he quietly used his influence with the State DPW to delay the awarding of construction contracts—cannot be documented, but during the last six months of 1946, the months of antagonism between Moses and O'Dwyer, there was a noticeable falling off in such awards —and a noticeable slowing down in the construction of highways in the city, to a point where press and public began to complain bitterly about the lack of "action." More pointed were the developments in relation to the giant expressways which Moses had long been planning to construct across Manhattan Island itself. Even before the war, Moses had planned at least three such expressways—all elevated: an "Upper Manhattan Expressway" at approximately 125th Street; a "Mid-Manhattan Elevated Expressway" across either 30th or 36th Street; and a "Lower Manhattan Expressway" that would run across Broome Street and connect the Holland Tunnel with the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges. Of the three expressways, the Mid-Manhattan would be by far the most spectacular—planned to run at a height of about 100 feet above the busiest streets in the world, through a forest of skyscrapers— and it had captured O'Dwyer's fancy completely; hardly had Moses explained it to him when he was talking enthusiastically (in private, so as not to offend sooner than necessary the powerful real estate interests involved) about "a highway from the Hudson to the East River—through the sixth or seventh floor of the Empire State Building." Such a highway would, of course, be almost incredibly expensive; Moses' public estimate was $43,000,000—at least half of which would be for the condemnation of land occupied by skyscrapers. But Moses had told the Mayor that if it could be a toll road Triborough would build it for him. O'Dwyer had agreed, and, although funds were not immediately available, planning was already under
way on Randall's Island and at the giant engineering firms that operated on Moses'
orders. Certainly the Mayor had expected that, of the three cross-Manhattan expressways, the Mid-Manhattan would be built first. And he had expected that, when it was built, he would be identified with its building. But on October 14, to O'Dwyer's surprise, Moses and Borough President Rogers issued a joint announcement that studies had been under way for months on the Lower Manhattan Expressway, that a route had been finalized, that "it had been incorporated in the federal and state highway systems as eligible for future state and federal highway funds," that preliminary plans— "directed by the Office of the President of the Borough of Manhattan"—"are already under way" by engineering firms, including Madigan-Hyland, that "final plans will follow as soon as all those whose approval is required have given it" and that "it is intended that land shall be acquired and construction started in 1948, and that this crossing shall be completed in 1949"
The announcement was more a pressure tactic aimed at O'Dwyer than a detailed highway plan—the Moses-produced brochure that accompanied the announcement bore uncharacteristic marks of haste—but the pressure involved was heavy indeed. O'Dwyer could hardly miss the hints contained in the fact that Rogers' name and not his was attached to the announcement, and that it was not the Mayor but the borough president who was "directing" the preliminary planning. Completion of the expressway in 1949, he must have realized, would make it the only major highway completed during his term—and it would be a highway identified with one of his opponents, a highway for which the contracts—with all the millions of dollars in patronage and political contributions such contracts entailed—would be distributed not by him but by the organization he was fighting. And given the public demand for traffic "action"—a demand emphasized by the instantaneous press enthusiasm for a proposal that could be "completed in 1949"—opposing the highway was politically unfeasible.
More pressure was applied on December 2. Prodded by O'Dwyer and Lazarus Joseph—and by the protests of school-conscious parents' organizations—the Board of Estimate on that date was meeting in executive session on the second floor of City Hall; Moses was present, but the Board nonetheless shifted more than $21,000,000 in the Moses-dominated Planning Commission's proposed 1947 capital budget from highways to schools. "No details of the five-hour session were available," the Herald Tribune reported, "but there were clews to give color to reports that Mr. Moses . . . found the going pretty rough. These hints came from the Mayor. . . ." The Citizens Union rejoiced that "the capital of the city, so far, is still in City Hall."
Reformers who had expected a characteristic Moses explosion were surprised, however. "Taking his defeat gracefully, Moses had no comment to make on the day's proceedings when he left City Hall just before seven o'clock," the Times reported. They would have understood the reason for his equanimity—and they would have been less certain of the capital's location —if they had understood the significance of a scene that had taken place on the first floor of City Hall while the Board of Estimate was meeting on the second. At the foot of the graceful hanging staircase a Moses aide had stood handing out copies of a Moses letter stating that a new study of parking
garages indicated that such garages would, as the Herald Tribune put it, be "losing propositions, too dubious for bondholders' money" and that the Triborough Authority had therefore reconsidered and decided not to finance them. No reporter—or, so far as can be determined, reformer—grasped the relationship between the Board's action and the Authority's, either at the time or later. But O'Dwyer must have—and he must therefore have realized that during his re-election campaign thirty-three months off, he would have no garages to point to with pride.
Moses' most effective use of the power of money came during O'Dwyer's campaign to persuade the United Nations to locate in New York.
The money involved was not so much Moses' own as that of other people. But, of all the city's officials, only Moses had quick access to it—and he used that access so effectively that he not only played the leading role in the Mayor's campaign but made the Mayor like it. And him.
Bringing the newly formed world federation to his city captured O'Dwyer's imagination as did no other project. Reminiscing, he would say, "I felt that this was the one great thing that would make New York the center of the world."
Unfortunately, other cities were also anxious to be the world's center —and they had the money that New York lacked. Before his inauguration, O'Dwyer had appointed Moses chairman of a blue-ribbon committee to grab the prize. Moses had selected the members with an eye to their proven willingness to bow to his leadership (Triborough board member Meyer, Bronx Borough President Lyons, Big "Bag" Man Farley, Al Smith disciple John S. Burke of B. Altman's, old friend Grover Whalen, Arthur Hays Sulzberger) and with an eye also to the wealth they could command (Meyer, Burke, Thomas J. Watson of IBM, Frederick H. Ecker of Metropolitan Life, and not one but two members of the Rockefeller clan, Winthrop W. Aldrich and one of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s, sons who had caught Moses' keen eye —the handsome young man had a lively interest in construction—and toward whom he felt almost fatherly, Nelson). As a result, not only the necessary land but the money to produce the items that "sold" projects—architectural and engineering plans, scale models, lavish brochures—were available to "sell" the UNO's Headquarters Committee, and they were available fast, fast enough for New York to steal a march on the other cities: when the UNO's temporary headquarters had opened in October 1946, it had opened in New York—on the site Moses had selected, Flushing Meadows Park, in which the City Building left over (and, since it was located in a park, under Moses' jurisdiction) from the 1939 World's Fair had been transformed at a city-borne cost of $2,200,000 from a skating rink into a General Assembly Building. And Moses and O'Dwyer were prepared to turn over 350 acres of the park to the UNO for its permanent headquarters. But UNO delegates didn't like the site, preferring one in Manhattan. There was no vacant site of sufficient size available there, and acquiring one would therefore require not only an immense expenditure for land acquisition and construction, and not only additional expenditures for the related access and parking improvements for the big "DPL" limousines, but also, the delegates made clear, absolute and
permanent exemption from city real estate taxes. The delegates were also insistent on the provision of housing in the housing-short city, not only for themselves but for their staffs and the staff of the UNO Secretariat, which numbered in the hundreds. O'Dwyer felt that asking the Board of Estimate, which was being forced every two weeks to explain that the city had no money to build desperately needed schools, hospitals, libraries and sewers, would be futile—unless he had a "gesture," "something he could show the Board": some sort of private contribution to defray the cost and get the project started. But with the UNO pressuring him almost daily for an answer, he had to confess he had neither the center-city site for a permanent headquarters —nor the money to build one. Meanwhile, San Francisco's mayor was in New York incognito, offering a huge site; Boston had dispatched a team, including its mayor, the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, and Christian Science Monitor editor Erwin D. Canham, to offer not only a site but a guarantee of city funds to build headquarters and housing on it; Philadelphia, many delegates' choice, was offering the world organization its choice of sites. UNO Secretary-General Trygve Lie, himself once a municipal official in Norway, had been personally awed by Moses in their many conferences and was holding out for New York, but on November 9, the General Assembly directed its Headquarters Committee to concentrate on sites in other cities and on December 6, a Friday, with Philadelphia so confident that it was already condemning land for the headquarters, Lie emerged from a committee meeting to telephone O'Dwyer and Moses and tell them "that unless they came up with a new and better proposal the whole thing would be over as far as New York was concerned. I had done all I could." A final decision in favor of Philadelphia was expected the following Wednesday.
O'Dwyer had received another telephone call that Friday—from William Zeckendorf. Zeckendorf, real estate wheeler-dealer on the grand scale, informed the Mayor that for some months his confidential agents had been secretly buying up property in Turtle Bay, an area on midtown Manhattan's eastern shore—occupied since Civil War days by slaughterhouses, packing plants and cattle pens—in which land was cheap. He had succeeded in acquiring an option to purchase the heart of the area, a seventeen-acre tract bounded by Forty-second and Forty-ninth streets and the East River Drive and First Avenue, for only $6,500,000, or seventeen dollars per square foot—a mere fraction of the price of most midtown real estate. He had planned to create a series of huge superblocks there, but plans and financing weren't finalized, the option was running out—and he was willing to sell the tract, the largest land parcel to become available in central New York in twenty-five years, to the UNO.
When O'Dwyer reported the offer to Lie, the Secretary-General said, "Turtle Bay . . . even now, could turn the tide." His remarks, however, did nothing to solve O'Dwyer's cash problem. Zeckendorf recalls that the Mayor "fervently said" that, to keep the UNO in New York, "he'd give an arm, a leg and various other parts of his body ... but that none of them was particularly salable." The name Rockefeller was suggested as a source of the cash, perhaps because the family had given the UNO's predecessor, the League
of Nations, a huge donation. But O'Dwyer had no entree to the Rockefeller from whom, at that time, a gift of the necessary dimensions would have to come—John D. Rockefeller, Jr., John D. Rockefeller who had spent long days riding over the route of the Palisades Interstate Parkway with Robert Moses, John D. Rockefeller who had worked closely with Robert Moses in the construction of the Cloisters and children's playgrounds in Fort Tryon Park, John D. Rockefeller who had, with Moses' cooperation, worked out a land exchange with the city to help along the building of additions to Rockefeller Institute, John D. Rockefeller whose admiration for Robert Moses was well known. In the midst of his feud with Moses, O'Dwyer turned to the Coordinator as a last resort. "This is where Moses came in with Nelson Rockefeller, working on Mr. Rockefeller, his father," the Mayor recalls. There were endless details to be worked out: acquisition of the land that Zeckendorf didn't control, widening of Forty-seventh Street to provide access to the site, city property that had to be included or excluded, a federal gift for construction. And there was only a little over four days—ninety-six hours —to work them out in. When the gavel slammed down to call the UNO Headquarters Committee into session on Wednesday morning, it would be too late.
The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York Page 118