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February 21, 2007
Robert Moses Reconsidered
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This month, Citygardenguide visited three linked exhibits about Robert Moses that opened at the Museum of the City of New York, the Queens Museum of Art, and at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University. Altogether, you get a terrific overview (quite literally, if you also take in the Panorama of the city at the Queens Museum) of the huge impact Moses made on the built environment of the city. And now that the city is engaged in two large-scale planning projects, in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, it is the perfect time to think about the impact he made. It is awfully hard to imagine anyone in this day and age having the kind of power and control that he wielded in New York for 34 years, from 1934 to 1968. His massive paw print can be seen everywhere.
Okay, don't roll your eyes and dismiss Moses as a bully who hated people and destroyed wholesale neighborhoods for the sake of his own vision of New York--which is pretty much the view that we have all grown up with. Instead, try imagining the city today without him. Take away the Triborough, the Bronx-Whitestone, the Throgs Neck and the Verrazano bridges for a start. Then erase the Cross Bronx, Brooklyn-Queens and Van Wyck expressways, and the Grand Central, Belt and Cross Island parkways. Do away with the good, the bad and the ugly of high-rise housing projects. And then, finally, for good measure, forget about Jones Beach and the many parks, scores of swimming pools, and literally hundreds of playgrounds that he scattered throughout the five boroughs. And now say where his legacy rests on the scale.
There is no doubt that Moses grabbed a moment--and lots of Federal dollars--and made hard, fast choices with a heavy hand and thick skin. His career included monumental successes--grand projects that opened on time and on budget. But there is also no doubt that some of his ideas and projects would have been disasters for the city. Think about what midtown Manhattan would be like if he had succeeded in building his Mid-Manhattan Expressway, or what Greenwich Village would have been like with Fifth Avenue running right through the middle of Washington Square. Think about the destruction of neighborhoods, mostly poor black neighborhoods. Think about the over-built park buildings that are impossible to maintain. Think about how much you wish he had cared as much about public transportation as he did about cars. You can argue endlessly about his mistakes, but the man clearly believed that "our big cities must be rebuilt, not abandoned" and he saw how important it was to connect the city to its surrounding region and he literally wrenched it firmly into the 20th century.
All massive building projects aside, for garden lovers the greatest Moses project of all is the Conservatory Garden, which was completed and opened in August 1937. Located on the site of greenhouses that Moses had demolished, the garden was designed by Betty Sprout and implemented by the parks department under the guidance of Gilmore Clarke. Come spring, we will all be thinking, Where would we be without it?
Accompanying the exhibits is an excellent new book about Moses's effect on the city's built environment--Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York. edited by Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at February 21, 2007 09:12 AM