Robert
MosesRobert Moses (1888-1981) received the Pugsley Gold Medal "for his services in extending and developing the parks and parkways in Greater New York." He was the single most powerful individual in the city and state of New York in the twentieth century. Moses was born in New Haven, Connecticut. His father owned a department store in that city, but moved the family to New York in 1897 to operate a prosperous business that his mother inherited. Moses’ family could afford to provide the best education available. He graduated cum laude from Yale in 1909 where he was a runner and a varsity swimmer. At Yale he championed the use of athletic money for tennis, hockey, swimming and basketball as opposed to its almost exclusive use for football. He locked horns with coach Walter Camp and won. Both BA and MA degrees were earned in four years at Oxford University in 1911 and 1913, respectively. At oxford he was elected president of the Oxford Union, the only American to achieve this recognition. In 1914 he received a Ph.D. from Columbia University, writing his dissertation on British colonial administration.
His academic training was in political science and Moses wanted to reform the way government worked. He wanted people to be hired on the basis of merit, rather than for personal or political reasons and he was strongly committed to the progressive’s agenda of order, economy and efficiency in government. In 1919, he was hired by Governor Alfred Smith to help reform state government, but when Smith was defeated the following year his ideas were discarded.
When Smith was re-elected in 1922, he took Moses to Albany with him as a speechwriter and lobbyist for reform in government. Parks was on the agenda of reformists and after familiarizing himself with the issue, Moses saw the need for them and the opportunity to fulfill that need. In 1922, there wasn’t a single state park in New York anywhere east of the Hudson River. Moses saw opportunities for such parks on Long Island; convinced Governor Smith of their potential importance; got Smith to support state legislation to create the Long Island State Parks Commission; drafted the legislation so that absolute and far-reaching power was invested in the Commission president; then Moses was appointed president.
In 1923, Moses mapped out a system of state parks on Long Island that would be linked together, and to New York City, by broad parkways. The plan included appropriation of land from the estates of wealthy, influential families who opposed his plans vigorously. Nevertheless, he prevailed and by 1930 he had built 9,700 acres of parks on Long Island, including the extraordinarily popular Jones Beach. For access to the beach, he built two highly landscaped parkways that became models for transportation planners. Jones Beach Park established Moses’ national reputation when it opened in 1929. It was the most lavishly praised public works project of the decade, heralded for its vast expanse of beaches, its enormous parking lots, its tastefully designed bath houses and restaurants, its workers neat sailor’s uniforms, and its scrupulously clean boardwalk. It displaced Coney Island as New York’s most famous seaside resort.
Moses vision extended beyond Long Island. In 1923 he drafted A State Park Plan for New York laying out his ideas for a state parks system throughout New York and recommending the legislature authorize a referendum for a $15 million parks bond to implement his plans. The plan was unprecedented in both its scale and its emphasis on development rather than land acquisition. Later in 1923, Governor Smith was persuaded by Moses to request the legislature to pass legislation establishing a State Council of Parks and to authorize the $15 million bond referendum. The proposal was enthusiastically hailed and endorsed by both the public and the press. When the legislation was passed by a unanimous vote in both houses, he was appointed chair of the commission. Again, Moses had drafted the legislation to ensure that all the State Park Commission’s extensive powers were vested in its chairman.
The extensive park systems that Moses developed made him the most popular political figure of his time with the general public and the press, and a legendary figure to public officials across the country that came to New York to learn from him. Moses frequently observed to his associates that, “As long as you’re fighting for parks, you can be sure of having public opinion on your side. And as long as you have public opinion on your side, you’re safe. As long as you’re on the side of parks you’re on the side of the angels. You can’t lose.” The adulation he received from the general public and from the press made Moses politically untouchable. No mayor or governor dared oppose him. Franklin Roosevelt, the most bitter enemy Moses made in public life, attempted to remove him when Roosevelt was President and at the zenith of his own popularity and prestige. He failed and was forced to retreat by the storm of acclaim and support for Moses that came not only from New York, but from all across the country.
In 1933, Moses used his enormous public popularity in support of La Guardia for mayor of New York City in exchange for which Moses was appointed the city’s park commissioner upon La Guardia’s election. Again, he wrote the job description and scope of authority. Moses later recalled, “that I was not interested in taking the city job unless I had unified power over all the city parks, and even then, only as part of unified control of the whole metropolitan system of parks and parkway development.” Not only was Moses appointed parks commissioner of the entire city, not only was that office to be expanded to include power over parkways, not only was Moses to receive control of two “authorities” with power to build local bridges and roads (the Triborough Bridge Authority and the Marine Park Authority), but also he would be permitted to retain his four different state jobs concerned with parks and roads. The first bill La Guardia submitted to the state legislature, drafted by Moses, consolidated the borough-based park system, gave the commissioner immense new powers, and arranged for him to hold the multiple city and state posts. This vast arrogation of power gave Moses the ability to get things done without having to work for issues to be resolved in public debate. As a result, he moved with incredible speed and scope to transform the city and state park systems.
As head of the Triborough Bridge Commission which charged bridge tolls, and of state and city park agencies that raised money from user fees, Moses had revenue streams to support the sale of bonds to fund his building programs without answering to the legislative bodies which normally controlled patronage. By eliminating the need for political patronage, he could hire elite professional staff. The Triborough Bridge Authority became known as the fourth branch of government. Its records were closed to the public, its policies and plans were decided not by voters or elected officials but solely by Moses, and it was an immense economic force directing pressure on labor unions, on banks, on all the city’s political and economic institutions, on the press, and on the church.
Moses was adept at acquiring major federal funding for his park projects from the New Deal program initiated to counter the massive unemployment created by the Depression. Whenever Congress appropriated money for a New Deal program, he was ready with carefully prepared blueprints, specifications, and topographical surveys that the emerging federal bureaucracies required. He took advantage of the New Deal’s ideological commitment to expanding recreational facilities. For example, Harold Ickes (Pugsley Medal 1942) as Secretary of Interior and head of the Public Works Administration wanted to implement the progressive’s program of revitalizing democracy by building community institutions such as recreation centers and playgrounds. In the first two years of the federal Works Progress Administration (a New Deal program) it allocated $113 million for parks and recreation in New York City.
Moses was a product of the progressive playground movement and viewed all parks as places for active, wholesome play, for ball fields, tennis courts, swimming pools, and playgrounds; he believed in recreation, not conservation. Thus, under Moses’ direction, an army of men funded primarily by the Works Progress Administration, that at times in the Depression reached 84,000, reshaped every park in the city and then filled the parks with zoos and skating rinks, boathouses and tennis houses, bridle parks and golf courses, 288 tennis courts and 673 baseball diamonds. When Moses became City Park commissioner in 1933, there were 199 playgrounds in the city. When he left that position in 1960, there were 777 playgrounds. Under his direction the city parks department developed 15 outdoor swimming pools, 17 miles of beaches and 84 miles of parkways. Among the city buildings he constructed were Shea Stadium, Lincoln Center, The New York Coliseum, and the Coney Island Aquarium. The city’s park acreage was increased from 14,000 acres to 34,673 acres. Moses provided full entry for the city’s working-class communities into a recreational world previously reserved for the middle and upper classes.
The controversy that surrounded Moses was captured in an article about him written in 1938 stating that he was, “Called Facist by those who see his fearless cutting of red tape to achieve his ends; Socialist by those whose interests have been subordinated to the common good; and called Republican by those who know his political ancestry.” He was described as a “human firecracker” and a “persistent hell-raiser who combines intelligence with the temper of a wounded lion.” Moses relished confrontation stating that, “It remains a fact that no major park acquisition is accomplished except over the dead bodies of obstructionists.”
In 1952, Moses became chairman of the Power Authority of the State of New York. In his nine years in that post, he supervised a $1.5 billion project that recast large stretches of the Niagara and St. Lawrence Rivers. He built reservoirs, dams and generating stations, and at the same time used them as opportunities for creating new parks and recreation facilities.
By 1960, Moses controlled budgets tallying $213 million emanating from electricity fees from electrical generation at Niagara and Massena, city parks and Long Island State Parks’ budgets, and tolls from bridges. By 1960, the Triborough Bridge Authority controlled 161 square miles. It was outside the city’s control and had its own flag, license plates, fleets of yachts, trucks and automobiles. At its head, Moses lived like an emperor, with round-the-clock limousine service and four offices backed by fully-staffed dining rooms. None of Moses’ many jobs paid a salary, but his generous expense accounts made compensation superfluous.
At one point in his career, Moses held 12 different New York City and State jobs. He had earned the reputation of “The man who gets things done.” However, by the late 1950’s, there was growing public resentment of Moses’ aggressive urban reconstruction programs and his power waned. In 1960, Mayor Wagner moved him out of his city positions to run the New York World Fair of 1964. Under the administration of Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Moses lost his New York State jobs, thus departing from state government in 1968. Finally, in 1972, Mayor John Lindsay refused to reappoint him to the Triborough Authority, effectively ending his career.
At the end of Moses’ leadership of the New York State parks system, the total acreage of the state parks in all 50 states was 5.8 million acres. New York State had 2.6 million acres of that total, which was 45% of all the state park acreage in the country!
Moses became the most influential non-federal public official in the nation of his time without ever being elected to public office. He was an outspoken, fiery controversial visionary whose strong character, energy, zeal and singleness of purpose transformed the landscapes of New York State, New York City and Long Island. In the city he held power for 34 years through the mayoralties of La Guardia, O’Dwyer, Impellitteri, Wagner and Lindsay. At the state level, Moses remained in power for 44 years through the governorships of Smith, Roosevelt, Lehman, Dewey, Harrman and Rockefeller. He is memorialized by the Robert Moses State Park in Long Island; another Robert Moses State Park at Massena; the Robert Moses Causeway on Long Island; the Robert Moses Parkway at Niagara; and the dams at Niagara and at Massena which also are named after him.
- Source:
- Caro Robert A. (1970) The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
- Rosenweig, Roy, and Elizabeth Blackmar (1992) The Park and the People: A History of Central Park, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.