­While his main title was Parks Commissioner, a more fitting description might be real estate mogul, given his vast control over city development.  He literally shaped New York City of the 20th Century.  

His philosophy represents the essence of modernist, industrial building and stands as the antithesis to most livable streets principles.   For example, he initiated ambitious road-building projects while cutting mass transit funds.   Many of his projects destroyed vibrant urban neighborhoods.   Moses’s once-stellar reputation was badly damaged by two major publications:  Jane Jacobs’s 1964 critique The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1974 biography The Power Broker.  

 

From Parkways to Expressways

After displaying an early interest in parks and their associated recreational roads known as parkways, Robert Moses became Chairman of the Long Island State Park Commission and then President of the New York State Parks office.   He was appointed to serve as New York City Parks Commissioner by Mayor LaGuardia in 1934.  He remained in the position for nearly three decades (1934 – 60) [1], establishing numerous popular parks and playgrounds throughout the city.

But one of his primary interests was road building.  Unfortunately, his concept of the parkway did not follow the intended purpose of these traditional, quaint greenways.  Instead, it involved plowing new roads through park and pedestrian space.  The most famous of these endeavors was the Robert Moses Parkway, a massive road project in the heart of Niagara Falls, New York.  Constructed alongside the Niagara River, it replaced plans for an expansive Olmsted park.  Even though Moses built two small parks in the area, “the fenced-in parkway…cut off people’s access to the rest of the river”. The new highway blighted the area and eventually diverted tourism to the far more picturesque Canadian side of the falls [2].

Moses’s road projects may explain how the term “parkway” ventured so far from its original meaning and became synonymous with “expressway”.

As NYC parks commissioner, Moses insisted that his control over parkway development be expanded to oversee local bridge and road construction.  A champion for expressway-building, he has been widely quoted as believing that “cities are for traffic” [3].  In New York City, he built the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the Gowanus Parkway and the Sheridan Expressway, among others.

Two proposed Moses projects were never realized, thanks to activists like Jane Jacobs who fought their construction:  an expressway across lower Manhattan and a 12-lane mega-freeway through the heart of Midtown Manhattan (see photo of the original model at above right).  

Urban Renewal

Robert Moses was a proponent of “slum clearance”, which involved demolishing  low-income neighborhoods and replacing them with superblocks — enormous, homogeneous housing projects.  This legacy can be seen today in the dilapidated ghetto high-rises that define the South Bronx  [4]. 
 

Moses vs Jacobs

Jane Jacobs was writing at the peak of Moses’s stranglehold on New York City development.  Her thinking can be seen as a direct reaction to the urban environment that Moses had shaped.  In her seminal work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs revealed the truth about one of Moses’s planned expressways through the heart of New York:  “Mr. Moses’s proposed plan for a downtown expressway in Manhattan, for instance — the one with repercussions on Washington Square — is always presented appealingly as a fast route between the East River bridges and the Hudson River tunnels to keep through traffic out of the city.   And yet the actual plan for it includes a spaghetti-dish of ramps into the city.  It will be a dumper, and by thus accommodating traffic aimed for the heart of the city, it will actually tend to choke up, instead of aid, city bypass traffic.” [5]

 Jacobs did more than write, however.  She actively led the movement against Moses’s planned expressways, successfully defeating plans for the Midtown (see photo) and Lower Manhattan projects .   The Project for Public Spaces notes that Jacobs helped to end Robert Moses’s reign of power in New York City [6]. 

 

A Fresh Look

In 2007, Columbia University architectural historians sought to give Moses’s legacy a fresh look with three museum exhibitions dedicated to his achievements [1].  They were titled “Remaking the Metropolis”,  “The Road to Recreation” and “Slum Clearance and the Superblock Solution”. 

The event emphasized the beauty and civic contributions of many of Moses’s famous projects. 

The New York Times noted that organizers did not invite biographer Robert Caro to the events, effectively silencing one of Moses’s most important critics.  But written critiques of the exhibits were found throughout the media.  One critic noted that ground views of Moses’s urban expressways were entirely absent from the project, as were his low-income housing developments [7].  

Robert Moses Projects in New York City

Henry Hudson Parkway
Cross-Bronx Expressway
Sheridan Expressway
Gowanus Parkway
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
Triborough Bridge (now the Robert F Kennedy Bridge)
Shea Stadium
Lincoln Center
United Nations Building
Jones Beach

ALSO ON THE LIVABLE STREETS NETWORK

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REFERENCES

Each source is referred to by the same number every time it is cited. Please keep citation style consistent.

[1] Rehabilitating Robert Moses.  The New York Times, January 23, 2007. 

[2] Robert Moses Parkway.  Removing Freeways – Restoring Cities.  The Preservation Institute.

[3] Robert Moses.  Wikipedia.

[4] Quindlen, Anna.  Robert Moses is Remembered in the South Bronx.  The New York Times, August 1, 1981. 

[5]  Jacobs, Jane.  The Death and Life of Great American Cities.  New York: Vintage Books, 1961.  P 167. 

[6]  Jane Jacobs Biography.  Project for Public Spaces.

[7] Apologia’s Halfway House:  On the Robert Moses Exhibits.  N+1 Magazine.  April 2, 2007.

PICTURE REFERENCES

Pictures are cited in the order they appear above. Please keep citation style consistent.

[1] Stieglitz, C.M. Robert Moses. Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection. Wikipedia. Library of Congress. 9 June 2008.

[2] Lindsay Watt.  Original model for midtown expressway.

FURTHER READING

• Jacobs, Karrie.  Robert Moses Lives.  Metropolis Magazine, March 14, 2007.
  
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