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 prize- winning 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 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 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.
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 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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