The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York
Page 193
Jones Beach: RM, "From the Bridge" column, Newsday. Bronx-Whitestone: RM, "From the Bridge" column, Newsday. Waterfront: RM, "The Expanding New York Waterfront " (brochure), Aug. 1964. "The City Builder must have": RM, quoted in NYT Magazine, Jan. 19, 1941. "The ancient truth": RM quoted in NYT, Mar. 7, 1948.
Compares himself to Lincoln: HT, Nov. 21, 1943; HT, May 15, 1946. And in the Rodgers biography of RM on which RM worked so closely: "Moses believes, like Lincoln, that government should do those things which the people cannot do for themselves" (p. xxvi); Shapiro.
Bay Shore teacher: Ralph Housrath said this to Aronson.
Refuses to consider hearing aid:
Meyers; author's observations.
Golf: RM to NYT, Apr. 22, 1944.
36. The Meat Ax
SOURCES
Books and articles:
Bureau of Public Roads (BPR), When All Roads Led to Rome; Leavitt, Superhighway-Superhoax; Moses, Dangerous Trade; Rethi and Young, The Great Bridge; Rodgers, Robert Moses; Rose, Public Roads of the Past; Saalman, Haussmann: Paris Transformed; Schrei-ber, Merchants, Pilgrims; Talese, The Bridge.
Ernest J. Clark, "The Cross-Bronx Expressway" (mimeographed); "Roads and Highways," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1958 edition; Theodore H. White, "Where Are Those New Roads?," Collier's, Jan. 6, 1956. "Longest Lighted Submarine Tunnel," American City, July 1950. R. Thruelsen, "New York's Deepest Tunnel," The Saturday Evening Post, Mar.
25, 1950.
Clay Committee hearings, Oct. 7-8, 1954, transcript. (A committee appointed by the President to study U.S. highway needs; General Lucius D. Clay, chairman.) Moses, "Construction Schedule for Arterial Highways and Parkways," Nov.
26, 1945; "Openings—Federal State City Arterial Construction Program" (Report to Hon. Vincent R. Impellitteri), Oct. 14, 1950.
Author's interviews:
Many Bureau of Public Roads officials, among whom the only ones willing to be identified are former Federal Highway Administrator Bertram D. Tallamy and former BPR chief Francis Turner; former State DPW head J. Burch McMorran, former DPW officials Arthur B. Williams, Sr., James Truex, Edward Moloney and many unwilling to be identified; Moses' engineering consultants Ernest J. Clark, Michael J. Madigan, Arnold Vollmer and others unwilling to be identified; Moses staffers William S. Chapin, William Latham, Sidney M, Shapiro and others unwilling to be identified.
The author is indebted to Ernie Clark and members of Andrews & Clark, Inc., consulting engineers, for numerous days spent touring and studying the engineering of the Cross-Bronx Expressway.
Notes for pages 837-849
1227
NOTES
The Royal Road and Herodotus: Schreiber, pp. 10-24. The "silk roads" and the Khan's post roads: Schreiber, pp. 25-63. The highways of Rome: BPR, passim; quotes from Alfred Leger (Les Travaux Publics et les Mines et la Metallurgie aux Temps des Romains, Paris, 1875) in BPR, after pp. 2, 4, 42. Roads on a different scale: BPR, Rose and Schreiber books; Encyclopaedia Brit-annica. Eighty acres: Clark. Haussmann: Saalman book.
No one dared lay superhighways through a city; Their mileage would not add up: BPR Library.
Cross-Bronx Expressway: Ernie Clark of Andrews & Clark, its principal designer, interviews and his "Cross-Bronx Expressway" speech; Chapin, Madigan, Moloney and other engineers involved in its planning and construction who wish to remain anonymous. "I never knew there were trees like that": Bronx resident Edward J. Korn. Hardly mentioned it; a new word necessary: Clark, "Cross-Bronx Expressway." Visualizing it: Clark, Madigan, Chapin, confidential source.
Van Wyck: Rodgers, p. 179. Cost of highways: Average and total from Moses, "Arterial Progress," Nov. 8, 1965. The $40,000,000 mile is the mile discussed in the next chapter.
Verrazano statistics: TBTA, "Spanning the Narrows," Nov. 21, 1964, pp. 22-38.
Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel statistics: "Longest Lighted Submarine Tunnel"; Thruelsen, "New York's Deepest Tunnel."
Moses Men and the agencies: Chapin, Clark, Madigan, McMorran. Amending state law, bond issues, etc.: Moses, introduction to "Openings—Federal State City Arterial Construction Program," p. 6. Persuading Congress to finance roads linked to toll facilities: Madigan, Tal-lamy, Turner, confidential sources. Persuading state to pick up city costs: McMorran, Tallamy. Korean steel: NYT, various articles, 1951; editorial, Oct. 8, 1951. Copper strike: NYT, various articles, 1952.
Shuffling properties: With Catholic Church: RM. With Con Ed: Madigan. Major Deegan exchange: NYT and HT, Oct. 31, 1949.
"Toy building blocks": The reporter was Walter Lister, Jr., HT, Jan. 22, 1950. "Absolutely crazy": RM. Marguerite Hotel: Shapiro.
Moley: Foreword to Dangerous TratU, p. xi.
"Can't make an omelet": RM flaunted this slogan for more than tw<> signs posted over the Long Island El pressway at the site of the [964 6j World's Fair. "Meat ax": Dangerom Trade.
37. One Mile
SOURCES
Books, brochures, reports, engineering studies and documents:
Moses, Dangerous Trade.
Edelstein, Impellitteri and O'Dwyer Papers.
Bronx Borough President, "Route Study for Development Plan—Cross-Bronx Thruway," Jan. 1944.
Arthur Katz, "A Neighborhood Organizes to Fight City Hall—A Case Study in Community Organization," circa i960 (a report written, apparently for his own pleasure, by the executive director of the East Tremont Neighborhood Center).
Moses, "Construction Schedule for Arterial Highways and Parkways," Nov. 26, 1945; "Construction Schedule for Arterial Highways and Parkways" (Report to Hon. William O'Dwyer), June 10, 1946; "City of New York Public Works Program Progress Report," Jan. 1, 1949; "Openings—Federal State City Arterial Construction Program" (Report to Hon. Vincent R. Impellitteri), Oct. 14, 1950; "George Washington Bridge Approach— Highbridge Expressway Interchange," May 5, 1952; "Deegan Expressway— Cross-Bronx Expressway—Long Island Expressway," Nov. 4, 1955; "Cross-Bronx Expressway—Alexander Hamilton Bridge-George Washington Bridge Bus Station—Opening," Jan. 17, 1963.
New York City Board of Estimate, Minutes, "Hearing in the Matter of Authorizing a Proceeding for Acquiring Title to Cross-Bronx Expressway, Section 2, from Anthony Avenue to Longfellow Avenue," Nov. 18, 1954, pp. 14176-79; Dec. 2, 1954, PP- i5354-6o.
New York City Community Planning Board No. 6, "The East Tremont Story," 1962.
Author's interviews:
With 127 past and present residents of East Tremont.
Lillian Edelstein provided the most detailed account of the fight against the expressway.
Notes for pages 850-873
1228
Especially helpful in describing the pre-expressway neighborhood were Mrs. Dorothy Beltzer, Mrs. Nora Brown, Samuel and Katherine Coe, Arthur Clark, Mrs. Esther Gassel, Saul Janowitz, Sol Kleinman, Lee Koppelman, Edward J. Korn, Mrs. Helen Lazarcheck, Isidore Malek, Louis Meltzer, Lillian Roberts, Cele Sherman, Fannie Silverstein, Charles Smith, Dominick Tesone and Mrs. Frances Twersky.
Especially helpful in describing the changes wrought in the neighborhood by the expressway were Mrs. Vivian Dee, Bert Gumpert, Arthur Katz, Harry Kei-fetz and Bernard Lambert.
Among politicians, engineers and others involved in expressway decisions: Ernest J. Clark, Joseph T. Ingraham, Warren Moscow, Lawrence M. Orton, Charles Rodriguez, Robert F. Wagner, Jr., Bernard Weiner and many who would talk only on condition that they remain unidentified.
NOTES
The neighborhood: The picture of it is drawn from the 127 interviews and from the Community Planning Board's "East Tremont Story." 60,000: This is an estimate. The population of the entire area covered in the "East Tremont Story" is 129,000 but 49,500 are Italians to the north in the Belmont neighborhood, so Tremont's population would be 79,500. East Tremont is 75 percent of the land area; 75 percent of 79,500 is 60,000. According to the "East Tremont Story," 44,000 of the 60,000 are Jews. "A feeling of crowdedness": "Story," p. 22. "Simchas" in the neighborhood," "myriad of social systems," "each had his following": "Story," pp.
11—13.
RM calls them "slums": Moscow recalls RM persuading the Board of Estimate by calling the neighborhood that.
An urban staging area: "Story," pp. 3-22, which includes "a chronological picture of the in and out movement of the various cultural and ethnic groups." Negroes being integrated into neighborhood: Smith. 7 in Elsmere Gardens: Katz. Population figures on nonwhites: "Story," p. 18.
Survey for new Y: Lambert, its executive director.
Money nowhere in sight, privately figuring on 18 months: Analysis of memos and letters in Impy, Wagner Papers. "To shake 'em up a little": Shapiro. Subsequent notice: RM, "Memorandum to Owners and Tenants on Cross-Bronx Ex-
pressway between Longfellow Avenue and University Avenue," Dec. 15, 1952. Section 3: Mrs. Edelstein; Post, various articles, Feb. 7, 1949-June 6, 1953. "Not fit for rats": Post, Feb. 7, 1949. "A right": Post, Nov. 16, 1952. "None of the families . . . has been turned into the street": RM, quoted in Post, July 17,
1951. Waiting six years: Post, Nov. 16,
1952. "Knew of no one": Edelstein quoted in Post, June 6, 1953 (italics added). "A nightmare": Post, June 6,
1953.
Weiner study: Weiner; see map, p. 864.
Mrs. Edelstein's telephone call: Edelstein.
Lyons in favor of their route: Lyons quoted in Post, Bronx edition, Feb. 23,
1953. "You have from time to time remarked": RM to Lyons, Feb. 21, 1953, Impy Papers. Resignation threat: RM to Impy, Mar. 10, 1953, Impy Papers. "A damnable lie": Lyons quoted in Post, Bronx edition, Mar. 13, 1953. Board of Estimate hearings: Various newspapers, Apr. 24-May 14, 1953. Tallamy letter: Tallamy to RM, May 5, 1953, Impy Papers.
How much more Moses* mile would cost: Robert G. McCullough, Report to Board of Estimate, Apr. 15, 1953 (Board Calendar, pp. E687-1-4). Maps printed in WT, Post, Sept. 7, 1954.
Wagner had appeared receptive: Edelstein, Janowitz, Katz. Moscow's Board of Estimate statement. Transcript, Board of Estimate, Calendar, in No. 48, May 14, 1953; Katz, p. 19. Letter to ETNA; promise in writing: Moscow to William Cohen, May 18, 1953, copy from Mrs. Edelstein; Moscow to ETNA, Katz, p. 20. "I will vote against any resolution": Katz, p. 20. (The press did not cover the rally.) Oct. 14 rally: Katz, p. 20. Why, certainly, Wagner replied: Wagner to Edelstein, Oct. 27, 1953, in reply to Oct. 26. "In December?": Edelstein.
Wagner intended to keep promise: Confidential source. Repeated it: Janowitz.
A direct order: Moses, Dangerous Trade, pp. 210-11.
Gerosa switch: Katz, p. 21.
Kahn's articles: Post, May 9, 1954, reprints Wagner's letter of Aug. 5, 1953; also Post, May 12, 1954, July 21, 1954, Nov. 28, 1954.
Hodgkiss-Wagner exchange: Katz, p. 22. Epstein: Katz, p. 23.
Planning Commission hearing: Post, July 15, 1954.
Wagner visibly moved: Edelstein; Katz, p. 23. "Every member": Wagner
Notes for pages 873-902
quoted in Post, Sept. 22, 1954. McCul-lough's trick: Katz, p. 22; Katz, Edelstein, confidential source. Wagner orders Epstein to oversee: Post, WT, Nov. 19, 1954; Edelstein.
Final hearing before McCullough: Katz, pp. 22-23; Edelstein; Post, Nov. 28, 1954. McCullough's report, dated Nov. 12, 1954, attached to Board of Estimate, Calendar No. 4, "Hearing in the Matter of Authorizing a Proceeding .. . ," Nov. 18, 1954. "Not the slightest": RM. Epstein: See below. "Very uncomfortable": Katz. Epstein's switch: Edelstein, Katz.
Showdown Board meeting: Katz, p. 23; Lyons: Quoted in Post, Nov. 21, 1954. "So fast": Edelstein.
Why did Epstein switch?: RM. "Very little real hardship": RM. NYT one paragraph: Nov. 2, 1954.
What Spargo told Ingraham: Ingra-ham.
Nassau Management: Fred J. Cook and Gene Gleason, "The Shame of New York," The Nation, Oct. 31, 1959, pp. 300-01. Its East Tremont office: Interviews with residents cited in "Sources." Cymrot: Post, Jan. 12, 1955. Dispossess notices: Post, May 6, 1955. The residents' description of the deterioration of East Tremont during relocation is supported by many articles by Joe Kahn and Abel Silver in the Post, by articles in the WT and the Bronx Press-Review. Tesone: Quoted in Post, May 17, 1956, and interview with author. 11 children: Post, Sept. 22, I955-
38. One Mile (Afterward)
SOURCES
See "Sources" for Chapter 37.
NOTES
Underestimated cost: Comparison of figures in various RM brochures cited in "Sources" for Chapter 37. Traffic too heavy for Washington Bridge: Madigan, Clark. $250,000,000: RM, various brochures.
It was shaking: Clark, the engineer in charge.
Landlords: Lambert, Katz. In i960 still 25,000: "East Tremont Story," p. 5-
Bronx Park South: Lambert, Dee, Korn. "I got to get my kids out of here"; "Are you the man from the welfare?": Present residents of East Tremont to author.
39. The Highwayman
SOURCES
Books, articles, brochures, reports and documents:
Bureau of Public Roads (BPR), When All Roads Led to Rome; Dei. / politan Transportation Politics, lacobt, The Death and Life of {', rent American Cities', Mumford, The Highway and the City; Wood, 1400 Governments
F. Dodd McHugh, "Draft of 'Master Plan for New York City Airports, " and the City Planning Commission's final report, issued Dec. 19, 1945.
Regional Plan Association: "New York's Commuters—Trends of Commuter Transportation in the New York Metropolitan Region 1930-1950," July 195i; "Spread City," 1962; "The Future of Westchester County," Mar. 1971.
RM brochures listed in "Sources" for Chapter 37, identified by date, and "Arterial Progress," Nov. 8, 1965.
Author's interviews:
Planners Lee Koppelman, Joseph McC. Lieper, F. Dodd McHugh, Lawrence M. Orton, John Sheridan, Stanley G. Tankel, Robert C. Weinberg, Paul Windels.
NOTES
Gray two-door sedan: NYT, July 4,
1945. RM's response: HT, Sept. 6, 1945. "The postwar highway era is here":
RM, "Construction Schedule," Nov. 26,
1945.
Planners' feelings: Koppelman, Lieper, McHugh, Orton, Tankel, Weinberg, Win-dels; numerous Mumford articles in PM, The New Yorker; for example, PM, May 12, 1946; The New Yorker, Mar. 19-June 16, 1955- RPA, "Spread City," "The Future of Westchester County." Susquehanna: Wood, p. 12. Nathan: Sept. 3, 1945. 2 out of 3 residents: Leigh Den-niston, HT, Sept. 12, 1945- i>5°° P er hour; 40,000 per hour: Out of many varying figures on the capacity of expressway and rapid transit, the author has selected those derived from a careful study made by the Nassau-Suffolk Regional Planning Board in 1968; various documents made available to him by Koppelman.
Press screaming for action and liked RM's plans: For example, HT editorial, Jan. 1, 1951; HT editorial, Aug. 27, 1947;
Notes for pages 902-919
1230
NYT, Feb. 20, 1946; HT, Nov. 26, 1945; NYT, Nov. 4, 11, 1945.
Mumford: PM, May 12, 1946. "Why not bar?": Letter from Lester E. Water-bury to NYT, Oct. 22, 1945. Williams: Quoted in NYT, Jan. 24, 1947.
Take one simple step: Among the many planners arguing—at the time— for the city to do this were McHugh, Orton and Windels.
"Smart aleck": RM to Salmon, Aug. 12, 1942.
Van Wyck Expressway: This section drawn from McHugh and Orton interviews; from McHugh's draft version of "Master Plan for New York City Airports," written Oct. 10, 1945 (pp. 10-14 deal with mass transit to Van Wyck); and from the "Master Plan" actually adopted by the City Planning Commission on Dec. 19, 1945 (the watered-down Van Wyck discussion is on p. 7). McHugh arrived at the 3,220 figure by taking the average load per vehicle arriving at other airports at peak periods—3.1—and dividing 10,000 by that figure. Widen Belt and Conduit: "Master Plan." $30,000,000: Figures in various Moses brochures vary from $28,600,000 (RM brochure, Oct. 14, 1950) to $36,785,000 (Nov. 8, 1965). $30,000,000 was the figure McHugh was given at the time. McHugh's resignation: McHugh, confirmed by Orton.
Vision of LI: "The Future of Nassau County," address by RM before members of the Nassau Bar Associat
ion, Mineola, L.I., June 30, 1945. "Traffic will run pretty smoothly": RM to HT, Sept. 6, 1945, among others. Typical RM prediction: In 1950, for example, he said: "When this [his current arterial] program is fully realized—say, five years from now—we shall have reduced congestion and produced a free flow of traffic except at peak periods everywhere in the city . . ." (RM brochure, Oct. 14, 1950, p. 6.) "We shall deserve": RM, NYT Magazine, Apr. 29, 1951. Statius, Claudius: Leger, quoted in BPR, Fig. V. 1949 article: RM, NYT Magazine, Feb. 6, 1949. "No network": RM, Oct. 14,
1950, brochure, p. 6.
Van Wyck jams: NYT, HT, Newsday, various articles, 1950-72.
"One of man's greatest": Cardinal Spellman, quoted in Dangerous Trade, p. 219; NYT and HT, May 26, 1950. BBT traffic prediction and actuality: TBTA Annual Reports. "Another pleasant surprise": TBTA Annual Report,
1951. No drain-off on other bridges: NYT, May 29, 1950. Queens-Midtown
worse: TBTA Annual Report, 1951. Tri-borough, Whitestone Bridge figures:
TBTA Annual Reports. New Jersey figures: RPA, "New York's Commuters," pp. 3, 5, 6/7, 11. Lincoln Tunnel, cross-town clockings: NYT, Aug. 11, 1951.
Protests in logo's: NYT and Tribune, various issues, 1924, 1925, 1926. Howl during 1930*5: NYT and HT, various issues, 1938, 1938, 1939.
Geometrical: RPA, various bulletins. NYT clocking on West Side Highway: July 26, 1948. U-turns: NYT, Sept. 17,
1 95 1. "Boomerang": The New Yorker, Mar. 10, 1951. Awareness escalating: NYT, HT, Post, various issues, 1952, 1953. The Post was ahead of the other two; it was the only New York newspaper, during this period, which was giving its readers a glimpse of the "costs" to the public involved in the eviction for highways of thousands of families. Other papers were ignoring this aspect of highways all but completely. "Transportation ... a means and not an end": Mumford, "The Roaring Traffic's Boom," The New Yorker, Mar. 19, Apr. 2, 16 and June 16, 1955.
RM brochure: Oct. 14, 1950, p. 3. RPA bulletin: "New York's Commuters." People were learning for themselves: Author's analysis of scores of letters-to-the-editor in NYT, HT, Brooklyn Eagle, Post, WT, J-A and DN, various issues,