Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, Hilary Ballon
and Kenneth T Jackson (eds), W W Norton & Company Ltd., 2007, 336pp., 165
illus., £30.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-393-73206-1
This book was published in conjunction with a three-part exhibition held in different
locations in New York in early 2007. It is a substantial and well-produced volume
consisting of a series of colour photographs, seven essays by scholars of urban
history and a catalogue of works that the public works commissioner Robert Moses
was closely involved with between 1934 and 1968. The catalogue occupies
approximately two thirds of the book and, at a glance, the impressive scale, range
and quantity of Moses’ output is immediately obvious. The editors aim to provide a
comprehensive and celebratory review of Moses’ works while attempting to provide a
balanced contextual view of his impact in response to the 1974 Pulitzer prizewinning biography by Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of
New York. This important and influential publication had acknowledged Moses as
‘the greatest builder in the history of America’ but had also exposed Moses as racist,
arrogant, ambitious at the expense of the needs of individual (poor) New Yorkers,
obstinate and insensitive.
The book opens with a portfolio of 50 or so large scale photographic images
of projects taken by Andrew Moore in 2005 and 2006. Predominantly of pools, parks
and housing, the images give a somewhat wistful, romantic impression while setting
the often massively scaled projects in the context of current New York City. The
calm scenes set here belie the, sometimes fraught, nature of their genesis, as
described in some detail in this book. This first section of photographs is followed by
the essays then the catalogue of built work and projects in New York City.
Most of the essays work hard to portray Moses as a mover and shaker
operating with tremendous canniness within the prevailing parameters of national,
state and city governance. The introduction draws attention to the link between
Moses’ decline and New York’s fiscal crisis in the 1970s, which coincided with the
publication of Caro’s biography. However, there is no denying the social impact
Moses had and the negative aspects are acknowledged here. Within different
essays there is divergence on, for example, the extent and intent of Moses’ racist
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approach as well as varied assessments of the significance and balance of Jane
Jacob’s part in the story. This lack of consensus is refreshing and keeps the subject
open for further debate while at the same time providing more evidence to chew
over.
Kenneth Jackson’s essay Robert Moses and the Rise of New York aims to
question Caro’s description of Moses as ‘evil genius’ arguing that rather than being
radical, Moses was ‘swimming with the tide of history’ (p.68). His riposte to Caro’s
analysis of Moses as corrupt is that Moses was, instead, a ‘dedicated public servant’
who sought ‘power, influence and importance’ (p.70). Jackson accepts that Moses
was racist but maintains that this was not a defining characteristic and considers that
overall he had a positive influence on New York.
Marta Gutman, in her essay Equipping the Public Realm, focuses on the
‘grand’ public swimming pools that Moses commissioned as part of his programme
of urban renewal from the 1930s forward. These were spectacular in scale
(accommodating up to 6800 bathers!) and in 1936 alone 11 were opened, one every
week in the summer to great fanfare. This essay draws out the celebration of the
‘modern’ in technological detail as well as in the approach to health and
consciousness of the body and youth culture. Gutman asserts that there was a
democratizing effect by bringing modern building into everyday life and positions this
effect against the heavy handed slum clearance that Moses was to carry out later.
Here, and in the catalogue entries on pools, the contributions to design of architect
Aymar Embury ll and landscape architect Gilmore D Clarke are examined. Particular
attention is given to the quality of work and the response of the designers to Moses’
conservative approach to architecture; they were successful in developing what the
critic Lewis Mumford praised as ‘sound examples of vernacular modernism’ (p.79)
Owen Gutfreund’s essay Rebuilding New York in the Auto Age examines
Moses and his programme for highways across New York City and State. Gutfreund
looks at the development from the aesthetic awareness of the parkways, designed
with great awareness of both the landscape and a driver’s experience, to the,
ultimately, inefficient and ugly cross-city expressways. This essay has a particular
focus on Moses’ opportunistic approaches to funding and also the increasing
controversy and resistance to such radical infrastructural projects in densely
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populated areas. The essay concludes that Moses stopped at the right time but that
he had been a superlative administrator and master of public relations who was
extremely productive.
In Robert Moses and Urban Renewal Hilary Ballon concentrates on the ‘Title
1’ programme that was set up by federal government as a means of clearing slums
and providing much needed post-war housing. She offers a very detailed and long
account of how Moses worked with the federal programme in identifying sites and
persuading developers to take on schemes. Ballon suggests that Moses had many
constraints to work within dealing with conflicts of private ownership and the public
good (as he saw it). However, Moses did resort to racial segregation as a
‘sweetener’ for developers and he consistently prioritised expediency of speed over
individual needs. According to this account, slum clearance and re-housing was not
handled well; there was much corruption and many former tenement dwellers were
effectively made homeless. In a discussion between architects employed to design
the new housing, a partner at SOM warns I M Pei against getting involved: ‘That’s
not for architects. That’s for lawyers’ (p.111). Ballon claims that the scale and extent
of the new towers on ‘superblocks’ was relatively small. However, a housing
scheme such as Stuyvescant Town, commenced in 1943 on the Lower East side of
Manhattan, for 25,000 residents seems huge by European standards.
In an interesting and more digestible essay Robert Moses, Race and the
Limits of an Activist State, Martha Biondi looks at various aspects of racism in
Moses’ regime including his aptitude for by-passing issues of civil rights by clever
manipulation of laws. Biondi focuses on swimming pools as sites of conflict but also
talks about Stuyvescant Town, referring to segregation in re-housing as a cause of
the Harlem riot of 1964, thereby implicating Moses.
Robert Fishman’s essay Revolt of the Urbs traces some of the events that led
to Moses’ eventual downfall, accentuating Moses’ combative drive to personify
‘progress, efficiency and rationality’ (p.122). In setting out arguments of the
intellectuals and critics that led to the downfall of Moses, this essay does not
rehabilitate him but, ultimately, acknowledges the success of some infrastructure
projects.
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Joel Schwartz, in his short essay Robert Moses and City Planning considers
that global forces were more significant than Moses and his projects; to some extent
countering Caro’s critique of Moses. This does little more than previous essays. As
an unfinished draft, published posthumously, it may have developed further and had
more bite when finished.
The extensive catalogue, with contributions from15 authors, amplifies the
exhibition. Each catalogue entry comprises a short essay varying in length from
about 600 – 4,000 words, organised according to project type: pools, beaches,
neighbourhood playgrounds and parks, city parks, roads and crossings, housing and
urban renewal and miscellaneous projects. Each entry gives a background history of
how the project came about, the various negotiations, issues, data and statistics.
The book is very well illustrated with many images; most catalogue entries
include at least one. There is good use of aerial photos and images of projects
under construction or just completed. The first time publication of pictures of models
and montages are also interesting. However, it would have been very useful to have
the locations of the projects shown. This happens occasionally, using maps
published at the time, but is not consistent and, unless one is very familiar with New
York, it is impossible to know where many of the projects are.
There is, inevitably, considerable overlap between the earlier essays and
those as catalogue entries. There is evidence of extensive research throughout from
a number of archives. Essays are particularly rich when including quotes from New
Yorkers who experienced projects when new. All is well referenced with very useful
and informative endnotes, index and Bibliography.
Generally there is not much focus on architectural design with the exception
of the pools. There is surprisingly little on Moses’ chairmanship of New York’s 1964
World Fair. The lack of location maps is symptomatic of an assumption of
knowledge of local and national context that is problematic for less familiar readers.
However, the essays provide a very detailed snap shot of social history, local
government organisation, sequence of events and funding detail, providing insights
into transactions and the prevailing power balance. This book is not directed at
designers or design historians per se but would be an excellent reference source for
social historians and those interested in the politics and economics of urban planning
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history. A sense of Moses’ impact on New York is not significantly altered by this
book. The transition from Caro’s characterisation of Moses as evil genius to this
attempt at a rehabilitation of Moses follows, in a vastly expanded way, Marshall
Berman’s chapter on the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway in his All That
Is Solid Melts Into Air (Simon & Schuster, 1982), in which Berman’s outrage at the
social and material destruction becomes tempered and more balanced when
considered in a broader context.
Susan Robertson, Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture and Design, University of
Brighton
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