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

by Caro, Robert A

  No reply was necessary, of course. He was mayor of a city which couldn't afford to build a crossing. Moses could. Moses would have to be allowed to build whatever type of crossing he wanted.

  The Mayor's stand certainly seemed pro-Moses—much too pro-Moses— to Moses' opponents. But it wasn't pro-Moses enough for Moses. Angered that O'Dwyer had dared to give "permission"—even meaningless permission —for an independent study, he decided to teach the Mayor a lesson. The Triborough board approved a resolution stating that the Authority was no

  longer willing to build a mid-Manhattan crossing of any type and formally withdrawing the Authority's request for federal planning funds.

  O'Dwyer pleaded with Moses to reconsider. Moses refused. He had made the lesson all the harsher by communicating Triborough's change ot plans to O'Dwyer privately. It was the humiliated Mayor who had to make the announcement that the expressway he had announced with such pride just three weeks before was now dead. It was all very well for Jerry Finkel-stein to call Moses a spoiled "cry-baby" who, if other boys wouldn't let him play by his own rules, would take his money and go home. It was the Mayor who was still faced with the mid-Manhattan traffic crisis—and with the realization that he had absolutely no way to solve it. All he could do was try —angrily but lamely—to pin the blame on others, saying: "I do hope that the actions of the opponents of the elevated highway study will be a lesson to them that they can't push Bob Moses around. Thirtieth Street and the surrounding area will have the same traffic congestion for a long time to come. The next time a tried-and-true outfit proposes a $40,000,000 traffic improvement, without expense to the city or cost to the taxpayers, I hope the Hate Moses Club will keep away from City Hall. I shall have very little welcome for them." Summoning Finkelstein to his office, he gave him an hour-long tongue-lashing so violent that when reporters crowded around Finkelstein as he left the Mayor's office, the normally ebullient young man pushed past them without a word.

  Finkelstein still had O'Dwyer's support on the Master Plan, however, and the rezoning study that was to be its basis pushed ahead, with each step approved by the Planning Commission—by a 6-1 vote. By August, the zoning was completed—two years of work and $325,000 embodied in a 290-page study and ready for public hearings scheduled to begin in September.

  They would be real hearings, Finkelstein promised. Some would be held in outlying sections of the city—bringing City Hall to the people instead of making the people come to City Hall. And, Finkelstein promised, the hearings would continue "until everyone has been heard who has something to say."

  Finkelstein had already provided convincing proof that public participation could be constructive. The main source of opposition to rezoning had been expected to be the real estate industry, which had been Moses' main ally in killing the Tugwell-Orton-spearheaded 1939 Planning Commission try for a Master Plan. Finkelstein had invited some of the industry's more public-spirited leaders to meet quietly with the commission, their objections had been taken into account, some compromises—which Orton and other Planning Commission members felt on balance had actually improved the zoning plan —had been made and the realtors' support for the Plan obtained. Finkelstein had demonstrated that public participation could be constructive on small as well as large issues. Residents of Washington Square had been alarmed by builder Sam Rudin's plan to tear down the old Rhinelander houses on its north border and construct a twelve-story apartment house that would destroy the scale of the square, with its park and arch bordered by low, gracious brown-stones. Broad Finkelstein hints about commission zoning powers persuaded Rudin to meet with the residents, and a solution—almost unique in New

  York history—was worked out under which both sides got what they wanted: Rudin was allowed to build higher in the rear of the plot—away from the S q Uare —than he would otherwise have been allowed to do, and in exchange kept the front of the building lower than the cornices of the private homes.

  Other work on the Master Plan was also progressing. By August, the commission was well on its way to a division of the city into smaller areas which would each have a voice in planning its own local improvements—an extension of Isaacs' "arrondissement" proposal of 1939 to keep the city livable by preserving its neighborhood fabric. O'Dwyer, increasingly unhappy with the growing seriousness of the housing and traffic crises that Moses was supposed to be alleviating, convinced that part of the reason for the crises was past lack of planning, was impressed with the commission's progress, so impressed, in fact, that City Hall began to speculate about another split between the Mayor and his Coordinator.

  But O'Dwyer had not been able to escape his past. Press and public focus on his administration may have centered on appointees like Robert Moses, but the Mayor had also appointed to public office other men, less visible perhaps, but just as much a part of that administration: friends of Frank Costello and Thomas (Three Fingers Brown) Luchese and other racketeers. And he had appointed to public office Big Jim Moran, who had been using his new job in the Fire Department to extort $500,000 a year from businessmen needing departmental permits, and who had also acted as the conduit for huge contributions to O'Dwyer's 1949 re-election campaign; the president of the United Firemen's Association was later to testify (this testimony was, admittedly, never substantiated) that to assure the Mayor's support of legislation benefiting firemen he had handed Big Jim an envelope containing $55,000 in cash. (The president also testified that in 1949 he had given the Mayor himself a $10,000 "campaign contribution.")

  And now the spotlight of which Bill O'Dwyer had so long been afraid was swinging inexorably in his direction. Hardly had he been sworn in for his second term when a pudgy, flashily dressed bookmaker named Harry Gross, arrested in Brooklyn, said that he was ready to testify that he had also been a big O'Dwyer "contributor," that since the Mayor's first inauguration he had been paying a cool million dollars a year in "ice," part to high-level police officials who were close personal friends of the Mayor—and that Moran had once invited him, along with seven other top bookmakers, to attend a meeting with the Mayor himself, a meeting Gross said he had not attended because of illness but which Moran subsequently assured him had indeed taken place.

  O'Dwyer's efforts to escape the spotlight had been becoming more and more desperate. During the summer of 1949, he had insisted almost frantically that he would not run for a second term, an insistence from which he could not be budged until, at a last-minute conference at midnight in Gracie Mansion, Ed Flynn brought what one observer was later to describe as "real pressure." Not a month after his election victory, before he had even been sworn in for the new term he had won, he had tried quietly to file his retirement papers, an attempt which failed when Moran found out

  about it, retrieved the supposedly irrevocable documents from the retirement board, took them to the hospital room in which O'Dwyer was recuperating from "exhaustion"—and burned them before the Mayor's eyes.

  In the first years of his administration, New York had loved Bill-O and believed his blarney. With the city's Good Government organizations giving him dinners honoring him for, among other things, keeping corruption out of city government, those years had been years for speeches.

  The last year of Bill-O's administration was a year for whispers, whispers that the Mayor was trying to find a graceful way to retire, whispers about why he was trying to retire. To still them, eight separate times he denied that he was thinking of leaving office—once, on vacation in Florida, personally telephoning a New York Times editor to do so. But by August, every swing of the spotlight brought it closer and closer to those shadowy places in his past. There was a grand jury in Brooklyn investigating racketeering in that borough, and there were all sorts of rumors flooding City Hall about what that grand jury was learning—and preparing to reveal —about the man who had once been the borough's crusading District Attorney. United States Senator Estes Kefauver's Senate committee investigating organized crime was preparing to hold hearings in New York, hearings that would
concentrate on the links between the city's underworld and the city's politicians—and television cameras were preparing to focus on the nervously twitching fingers of key witness Frank Costello. The time for denials was past; now was time for flight. On the eve of a mass Police Department trial for bribery, more than one hundred policemen resigned, so did the Police Commissioner and his two top aides—and so, as the spotlight swung at last full force on his handsome, charming face, did William O'Dwyer. Ed Flynn dropped in on Harry Truman to pass the time of day, Bill-O was appointed Ambassador to Mexico and on August 31, 1950, almost eighteen years to the day after Tammany's most popular mayor had fled the country, Tammany's second most popular mayor crossed the border into Mexico.

  IMPY

  All during August, Moses had been in South America, drawing up a Rockefeller-financed plan of improvements for Sao Paulo, utterly unaware of the events crushing in on O'Dwyer. But O'Dwyer's resignation was to place the city in his power more completely than ever before.

  By law, the successor to a retiring mayor is the President of the City Council. By fate, the Council presidency was held in 1950 by an individual who, during the entire forty-five utterly undistinguished years of his life prior to his nomination to that $25,ooo-per-year post, had never been deemed worthy of holding any job more responsible than that of secretary, at $6,500 per year, to a judge named Schmuck.

  The nomination of this totally unknown minor Tammany ward heeler to the city's second-highest elective office, the position of succession to the

  THE LUST FOR POWER

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  mayoralty, had "staggered," in Warren Moscow's words, "even the most imaginative among political reporters." And so had the explanation of how he had obtained the nomination. At a last-minute reshuffling of the 1945 Democratic ticket, the leaders finally agreed on Lazarus Joseph for Comptroller, and then realized that since O'Dwyer was Irish and from Brooklyn, while Joseph was Jewish and from the Bronx, the slate could have ethnic and geographic balance only if its third member was an Italian from Manhattan—and were unable to think of a single Manhattan Italian official they could trust. After hours of impasse, one leader reasoned that since legal secretaryships to State Supreme Court justices carried a respectable salary for which little or no work was required, they would have been given only to the "safest" of Democratic workers. Pulling out a little "Green Book," the official directory of city employees, he turned to the list of legal secretaries, ran his finger down it looking for a name that even the dumbest voter would be able to tell was Italian—and came to Vincent R. Impellitteri. "No one knew who the hell he was," Reuben Lazarus was to recall, but, looking up Impellitteri's address, the leaders determined that he lived in Manhattan, telephoned his district leader and were assured: "You don't have to worry about him. He's a good boy."

  Although attested to privately by members of Tammany's hierarchy (and by Moses, whose presence at the crucial ticket-making session—he was the only "outsider" there—reveals his standing with that hierarchy), this explanation seemed almost unbelievable—until one met Impellitteri. If he had a single qualification for the job other than the length of his name and the fact that it ended in a vowel, he kept it carefully hidden during his five-year tenure (he was re-elected with O'Dwyer in 1949) as Council President. "The perfect Throttlebottom," Moscow called him. "He voted as the mayor told him to, on matters he did not necessarily understand, and spent most of his waking hours shaking hands at public dinners, political clambakes, and cornerstone layings too unimportant to merit the mayor's presence." Amiable but slow-witted, he was a joke among political insiders. But now he was mayor—and the joke was on the city.

  Impellitteri's wits may have been slow, but he had two fast wits—ex-O'Dwyer aide Bill Donoghue and a young sharpie named Sydney S. Baron —as PR men. Impellitteri had to run in a special election in November if he wanted to hold the office he had fallen into, which meant that he had less than ten weeks in which to create an image and a record, and his PR men quickly hit on two ways to do it: first, take advantage of the fact that no one knew him, that he was therefore not identified with any political bosses, that his opponent, Ferdinand Pecora, was backed by Tammany boss De Sapio and that, unable to get Impellitteri the Democratic nomination, the clique in Tammany that pulled his strings had him running as an independent, and portray him as the "anti-boss," "anti-politician," "anti-corrupt-tion" candidate (one of Baron's better lines: "If Pecora is elected, Frank Costello will be your mayor. But the voice will be that of Pecora"); second, identify him with Robert Moses.

  The price of that identification came high, both in specifics—Moses

  made Impellitteri pledge publicly that if he was elected, he would not reappoint Finkelstein—and in generalities: Impellitteri privately promised Moses even more of a free hand than he had enjoyed under O'Dwyer in setting all city construction policies. But Impellitteri paid it. He got full value in return. Refusing an offer of the Republican nomination (time had dimmed at least some GOP leaders' memories of 1934), Moses gave him his endorsement. "Even I, who thought that by this time I knew Bob and the lengths to which he would go, never thought he would go that far," says Lazarus. Remonstrating, he said, "But, Bob, he hasn't any capacity for the job at all!" Moses' response? "He laughed at that." Publicly, the Coordinator declared that Impellitteri "has shown extraordinary courage and independence." And, as always, a Moses endorsement made almost every front page in town. (The Herald Tribune article stated: "It was not a political endorsement, Mr. Moses basing his support on his opinion that the [Impellitteri] administration was carrying out the city construction program as planned.") Moses led Impellitteri around to officiate at openings of—and share in the credit and front-page pictures for—highways and housing projects with which he had had nothing to do except to affix his signature as Council President to documents his aides say he often had not even bothered to read. Most observers, noting that the campaign consisted mainly of charges and countercharges of bossism and corruption, felt that the endorsement from an official characterized as "independent" and believed above corruption was an important factor—almost as important as the decision by newspaper headline writers to call him "Impy" and thus give him a lovable public image—in Im-pellitteri's victory, the first in the city's history by a candidate running on an independent line without the support of either major party. And after his election, Impellitteri continued to pay the price—eagerly.

  Thanks to his PR men and his physical appearance—his addiction to the blue suit and the boutonniere, combined with his iron-gray hair, deeply earnest mien and stolidity that during the campaign was mistaken for dignity, made him the very model of a modern mayor; at the approach of a camera his brow would furrow, his lips would purse, his jaw would jut and his eyes would focus on whatever piece of paper happened to be handy just as intently as if he understood the words written on it—Impy had run a great race, but once in possession of the prize he had won, he proved to have not the slightest idea of what to do with it.

  He disclaimed any influence over the Board of Estimate, telling reporters, "All I have is three votes on it, you know." Mayors were always telling reporters that—but City Hall insiders soon realized, to their astonishment, that this mayor believed it. Says one of his aides, Victor F. Condello: "Impy never understood that he had any power at all." Once Condello suggested that the Mayor call the five borough presidents to an executive session to discuss a thorny issue. "Yeah," the Mayor said, "that's a good idea." Pause. "You think they'll come?"

  He was too timid to confront even his own subordinates. Once, a newspaper leveled detailed charges against one. The next time they met, the Mayor asked him if the charges were true. Of course not, the appointee said

  king to him at the moment-

  that Impellittexi ""personally* was "a veT y n j : -. him, childless himself, chatting warmly

  wid oups of children who visited City Hall, and doubt that; the

  . :ng for ail delegations, in fact, was beyond affectation
, if occasional])' a cause for snickers: once, hearing the sound of singing from behind Impy's office door, an aide walked in to find a choir in action—and the Mayor standing with them, wearing a contented if somewhat vacant expression, humming merri But he was a man simply unequal to

  I the duties that had been thrust upon him. The responsibilities he was charged with carrying out utterly bewildered him. At times, he presented an almost pathetic figure as he groped h rirough the intricacies of govern-

  ment. Says Warren Moscow: "My God. at Board of Estima :ive ses-

  sions, he'd sit there and some problem would come up. and the poor bastard would say, 'I got no answer on this, boys. You got any idea^ And if no one had any, the ioist Mayor of the City of ^rk would sit there with

  his gavel before him, literally wringing his hands in agitation while long minutes passed in painful silence. He was desperate for someone to turn to, almost frantically anxious to drop his enormous powers—and responsibilities —into someone else's hands.

  And the biggest hands around were those of Robert Mooes.

  Within weeks of Impellitteri's inauguration. Lazarus was noting in his diary that "Robert Moses is actually running this town todav. There's no important act Impellitteri takes or does that he doesn't consult Mr. Moses." Soon the town's other top political insiders were saying the same thing. The consultations were held at Grade Mansion—almost every morning, with Moses dropping by at about nine or nine-thirty, or even earlier. And these were private consultations: when Moses was closeted with Impellitteri in the Gracie Mansion drawing room, no one else was allowed to be present. (Asked why years later, Impy would say, "I considered those very important sessions for me and the city, and I didn't want them interrupted.") Sometimes the Mayor saw no one else until eleven. "He would always come with a big envelope," Impellitteri would recall, and the envelope would be filled with papers Moses wanted him to sign—and invariably by the time Moses drove away in his big limousine, they would be signed. One top official says that Impellitteri never left the Mansion in the morning until Moses had given him "his marching orders for the day." Papers that" were prepared for signature later in the day were delivered by messenger to the Mayor's office at City Hall—with peremptory Moses covering notes ('There is no use boring you with figures"). And the papers were invariably signed—and the marching orders were invariably obeyed. "Moses' word was law with him," Condello says. "All Impy wanted was to keep him happy. I had written a letter to several" department heads. "Moses got pissed off'about it—I never did figure out why—and he wrote to the Mayor: 'Dear Vincent: What is this all about?' And the Mayor called me up and said, Tor God's sake straighten