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Posted on 09/16/2019 3:39:27 AM PDT by Olog-hai
… For 44 years, Robert Moses ruled over New York. Unelected, his power drawn from up to 12 concurrent city, state and federal appointments, he used his unparalleled control of public authorities with impunity. Deftly utilizing loopholes and creating new law, Moses had his own shadow government, with his own police force, flag, and an island under the Triborough (now Robert F. Kennedy) Bridge.
There is no debate over the sheer magnitude of what he built. His accomplishments bestride New York: 416 miles of highways, 13 bridges, 658 playgrounds and housing for 150,000 people. He constructed parkways, tunnels, beaches, zoos, parks, Shea Stadium, the New York Coliseum, the United Nations, Lincoln Center and much more.
Yet, too many of his grand achievements are either tinged with racism or scorched by it.
He built Jones Beach, the greatest public beach the world had ever seen. But when it opened, Moses wanted its visitors to only be white. To keep African Americans out, he built the parkway overpasses too low for buses, knowing full well that at the time most African Americans did not own cars.
He worked to ensure black war veterans could not move into Stuyvesant Town. He removed language in the city contract for its development that would have prevented discrimination.
Under the guise of urban renewal, 7,000 African Americans and Hispanics were evicted from a diverse, working-class neighborhood for the construction of Lincoln Center. Promised relocation assistance from Moses’ Slum Clearance Committee never came. Those displaced ended up in the Bronx and Harlem, further segregating New York City. …
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
The Business of Good
By Jason Haber
Social Entrepreneurship and the New Bottom Line
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Well, the author only has to look at the film West Side Story to see who got impacted by Lincoln Center. It wasn’t blacks.
Great figure. Very well known by New Yorkers. Read The Power Broker. Warning: a very big book, lol!
OOOoooo, big book...I don’t know...it’s vewy scawey.
I think I’d rather read Witness.
You don’t have to read it. But Robert Moses created the modern NY. Mostly for the better. What that has to do with the book Witness is beyond me.
They are both big books.
Oh, so slavery was A-OK then.
Just pointing out those old abolitionists are today venerated in ways they don’t deserve.
I think they deserve credit for the good they did, even if they were flawed. Much like the Founding Fathers.
he also ran the dodgers out of brooklyn.
I’ve heard that Barclay’s Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets of the NBA, was built in the very location where Walter O’Malley wanted to build a stadium.
I read that the Dodgers could have become the “Queens Dodgers” as Moses wanted to build a stadium on the land where Shea Stadium was eventually built. But O’Malley was reported to have said, that if the Dodgers were anywhere but Brooklyn, that it didn’t matter if they were a few miles outside Brooklyn or 3,000 miles outside of Brooklyn.
I’ve sometimes wondered how baseball would have evolved, if the Giants and Dodgers had stayed in New York. At the very least, the Mets franchise would never have been created.
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