60 Facts About Robert Moses

Robert Moses was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York metropolitan area during the early to mid 20th century.

Robert Moses held various positions throughout his more than forty-year long career.

Robert Moses created and led numerous semi-autonomous public authorities, through which he controlled millions of dollars in revenue and directly issued bonds to fund new ventures with little outside input or oversight.

Robert Moses's projects transformed the New York area and revolutionized the way cities in the US were designed and built.

In large part because of The Power Broker, Robert Moses is today considered a controversial figure in the history of New York City.

Robert Moses was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 18,1888, to German Jewish parents, Bella and Emanuel Robert Moses.

Robert Moses spent the first nine years of his life living at 83 Dwight Street in New Haven, two blocks from Yale University.

In 1897, the Robert Moses family moved to New York City, where they lived on East 46th Street off Fifth Avenue.

Robert Moses's father was a successful department store owner and real estate speculator in New Haven.

Robert Moses's mother was active in the settlement movement, with her own love of building.

Robert Moses rose to power with Smith, who was elected as governor in 1922, and set in motion a sweeping consolidation of the New York State government.

Robert Moses received numerous commissions that he carried out efficiently, such as the development of Jones Beach State Park.

At a time when the public was accustomed to Tammany Hall corruption and incompetence, Robert Moses was seen as a savior of government.

Robert Moses was one of the few local officials who had projects shovel ready.

The many offices and professional titles that Robert Moses held gave him unusually broad power to shape urban development in the New York metropolitan region.

Robert Moses succeeded in diverting funds to his Long Island parkway projects, although the Taconic State Parkway was later completed as well.

Robert Moses was a highly influential figure in the initiation of many of the reforms that restructured New York state's government during the 1920s.

Robert Moses devised a list of 23 pools around the city.

Robert Moses allegedly fought to keep African American swimmers out of his pools and beaches.

One subordinate remembers Robert Moses saying the pools should be kept a few degrees colder, allegedly because Robert Moses believed African Americans did not like cold water.

Rather than pay off the bonds, Robert Moses used the revenue to build other toll projects, a cycle that would feed on itself.

Awash in funds from Triborough Bridge tolls, Robert Moses deemed that money could only be spent on a bridge.

Robert Moses clashed with the chief engineer of the project, Ole Singstad, who preferred a tunnel instead of a bridge.

Thwarted, Robert Moses dismantled the New York Aquarium on Castle Clinton and moved it to Coney Island in Brooklyn, where it grew much bigger.

Robert Moses attempted to raze Castle Clinton itself, the historic fort surviving only after being transferred to the federal government.

Robert Moses now had no other option for a trans-river crossing than to build a tunnel.

Robert Moses had tried to upstage the Tunnel Authority when the Queens-Midtown Tunnel was being planned.

Robert Moses had raised the same arguments, which failed due to their lack of political support.

Robert Moses was given powers over public housing that had eluded him under LaGuardia.

When O'Dwyer was forced to resign in disgrace and was succeeded by Vincent R Impellitteri, Moses was able to assume even greater behind-the-scenes control over infrastructure projects.

Robert Moses was empowered as the sole authority to negotiate in Washington for New York City projects.

In clearing the land for high-rises in accordance with the towers in the park concept, which at that time was seen as innovative and beneficial by leaving more grassy areas between high-rises, Robert Moses sometimes destroyed almost as many housing units as he built.

Robert Moses was the mover behind Shea Stadium and Lincoln Center, and contributed to the United Nations headquarters.

Robert Moses had influence outside the New York area as well.

Robert Moses himself did not know how to drive an automobile.

O'Malley urged Robert Moses to help him secure the property through eminent domain, but he refused, having already decided to build a parking garage on the site.

Robert Moses envisioned New York's newest stadium being built in Queens' Flushing Meadows on the former site of the World's Fair, where it would eventually host all three of the city's major league teams of the day.

Robert Moses refused to budge, and after the 1957 season the Dodgers left for Los Angeles and the New York Giants left for San Francisco.

Robert Moses was later able to build the 55,000-seat multi-purpose Shea Stadium on the site; construction ran from October 1961 to its delayed completion in April 1964.

Robert Moses's power was further eroded by his association with the 1964 New York World's Fair.

Robert Moses's repeated and forceful public denials of the fair's considerable financial difficulties in the face of evidence to the contrary eventually provoked press and governmental investigations, which found accounting irregularities.

Robert Moses refused to accept BIE requirements, including a restriction against charging ground rents to exhibitors, and the BIE in turn instructed its member nations not to participate.

Robert Moses could have directed TBTA to go to court against the action, but having been promised a role in the merged authority, Robert Moses declined to challenge the merger.

On March 1,1968, the TBTA was folded into the MTA and Robert Moses gave up his post as chairman of the TBTA.

Robert Moses had thought he had convinced Nelson Rockefeller of the need for one last great bridge project, a span crossing Long Island Sound from Rye to Oyster Bay.

Much of Robert Moses's reputation is attributable to Caro, whose book won both the Pulitzer Prize in Biography in 1975 and the Francis Parkman Prize, and was named one of the 100 greatest non-fiction books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library.

Caro's depiction of Robert Moses's life gives him full credit for his early achievements, showing, for example, how he conceived and created Jones Beach and the New York State Park system, but shows how Robert Moses's desire for power came to be more important to him than his earlier dreams.

Robert Moses is blamed for having destroyed more than a score of neighborhoods by building 13 expressways across New York City and by building large urban renewal projects with little regard for the urban fabric or for human scale.

Paul, whom Caro interviewed shortly before the former's death, claimed Robert Moses had exerted undue influence on their mother to change her will in Robert Moses's favor shortly before her death.

Robert Moses died of heart disease on July 29,1981, at the age of 92 at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip, New York.

Robert Moses was of Jewish origin and raised in a secularist manner inspired by the Ethical Culture movement of the late 19th century.

Robert Moses was a convert to Christianity and was interred in a crypt in an outdoor community mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City following services at St Peter's by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Bay Shore, New York.

The biography further notes that Robert Moses fought against schools and other public needs in favor of his preference for parks.

Robert Moses's building of expressways hindered the proposed expansion of the New York City Subway from the 1930s to well into the 1960s because the parkways and expressways that were built replaced, at least to some extent, the planned subway lines.

Caro's The Power Broker accused Robert Moses of building low bridges across his parkways in order to make them innaccesible to public transit buses, thereby restricting "the use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families" who did not own cars.

Caro wrote that Robert Moses attempted to discourage Black people in particular from visiting Jones Beach, the centerpiece of the Long Island state park system, by such measures as making it difficult for Black groups to get permits to park buses, even if they came anyway, and assigning Black lifeguards to "distant, less developed beaches" instead.

Robert Moses vocally opposed allowing Black war veterans to move into Stuyvesant Town, a Manhattan residential development complex created to house World War II veterans.

Additionally, there were allegations that Robert Moses selectively chose locations for recreational facilities based on the racial compositions of neighborhood, such as when he selected sites for eleven pools that opened in 1936.

Caro wrote that close associates of Robert Moses had claimed they could keep African Americans from using the Thomas Jefferson Pool, in then-predominantly-white East Harlem, by making the water too cold.

The peak of Robert Moses's construction occurred during the economic duress of the Great Depression, and despite the era's woes, Robert Moses's projects were completed in a timely fashion and have been reliable public works since then, which compares favorably to the delays that New York City officials have had in redeveloping the Ground Zero site of the former World Trade Center or to the delays and technical problems surrounding the Second Avenue Subway and Boston's Big Dig project.