The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York

by Caro, Robert A

  Reformers had at least hoped that the difficulty of obtaining park land in areas of the city that had already been built up had taught city officials the necessity of reserving land for parks in other areas before they were built up. But all during the 1920's, as they watched with horror, the city allowed developers to devour its open spaces without making more than a few gestures

  in this direction. Before the reformers' eyes, the red bricks that had walled out the sun in the Lower East Side and Harlem were cemented into place on the hills and meadows of the Bronx and Queens. "It looks as though all sunshine will soon be crowded out and dark shadows take its place," one reformer wrote in despair.

  While campaigning for mayor in 1925, Jimmy Walker had promised to spend money lavishly to renovate Central Park. And no one could accuse him of a complete breach of faith. For not four hundred yards beyond the Sixty-fifth Street Transverse Road which formed the northern border of the Menagerie, visible from the Barbary-sheep pen when winter stripped the leaves from the park's trees, was dramatic evidence that, in at least one location in Central Park, Walker had more than kept his word. Not four hundred yards beyond the Transverse Road stood the Central Park Casino, a legend in its time.

  The Casino was the brain child of restaurateur Sidney Solomon, front man for a cabal of socialites and Tammany officials who felt the need, as Walker euphemistically put it, of a sanctuary in which they might "entertain visitors without being molested." He asked the Mayor to let him establish one in the Casino, a low, rambling brick-and-stone building that had been built in the park in 1864 as a "Ladies Refreshment Salon" and had since been turned into a quiet little night club.

  Walker owed Solomon a great debt. The restaurateur had introduced him to his favorite tailor. Throwing out the night club's previous owner, the Mayor turned it over to Solomon—for a rental of $8,500 a year, a sum which turned out to be equal to one night's receipts.

  "The Casino will be our place, Monk," Walker reportedly said to his mistress, Betty (Monk) Compton. (Mrs. Walker's place was apparently Florida, the state to which she had been packed off for an extended vacation.) Although Solomon retained the celebrated Viennese interior decorator Josef Urban, who announced that he would strive for "a feeling of wind among young leaves," none of Urban's sketches was executed until Jimmy and Monk approved. The Mayor, whose disregard of city affairs was legendary, dedicated himself to making the Casino perfect in every detail. When it had been renovated—at a cost to Solomon and his backers of $365,000—and the restaurateur was about to announce its opening, Walker noticed that one of the bandstands blocked the headwaiter's view of the main entrance and thus deprived him of time to screen his guests and decide how important they were and where to seat them. He insisted that a new entrance be constructed— and it was, at a cost of $22,000.

  When it opened, the Casino was hailed by one well-qualified observer as "the swankiest restaurant New York has yet seen." The dining pavilion was silver and maroon; the ballroom, except for Urban's flowing golden murals, all black glass; the dayroom fumed knotty pine. Emil Coleman's popular society orchestra played in the pavilion, Leo Reisman's in the Black and Gold Room. Spelling the orchestras were two pianists, the famous Nat

  Brandwynne and a handsome youngster, unknown, on whom Solomon had decided to take a chance: Eddie Duchin.

  But the Casino was more than a restaurant or a night club. The Casino was Jimmy Walker's Versailles. Friends joked that the Mayor spent more time there than he did at City Hall. When his limousine pulled into view, the doorman would scurry inside and signal the orchestra, so that when Beau James and Betty entered, it would be to strains of "Will You Love Me in December?" Holding hands with Betty, sipping champagne while she sipped beer, the Mayor would receive the parade of visitors to his table with careless ease, and sometimes, when Betty asked him to dance, he would even arise, pinch-waisted and slim in the tuxedo with the shiny lapels that people were beginning to copy, and glide with her around the floor, and the Mayor's friends would know that he was feeling very good indeed, for although he was so graceful a dancer that he had once wanted to be a professional, for years before he met Betty he had refused to dance a step, for reasons he never told anyone.

  The regulars at Walker's court played their parts well. They brought their own champagne, their chauffeurs cooling it outside in the Rolls-Royces lined up along the dark paths until the doorman signaled that another bottle was wanted at table. Their wives and girl friends crowded around the bandstands so Reisman and Coleman and Brandwynne could autograph their slippers. Their spending was in character; one insurance man always announced his arrival by handing a thousand-dollar bill to the bandleader. At closing time, the bills fluttering down onto the hat-check girls' little silver trays seemed to one observer to be mostly hundreds. Reisman and Coleman were offered fabulous fees to play on after closing at private homes, and when the society crowd discovered Duchin, there was no limit to their generosity; a member of the Grace steamship family once paid him $20,000 to play at a party. The Depression? What Depression? "Until La Guardia came in, we never had a losing day, panic or no panic," Solomon was to say. And in a duplex upstairs retreat, closed to the public, its very existence concealed by the building's lowering mansard roof, Tammany politicians were entertained by Broadway chorus lines—rushed to the Casino en masse by motorcycle escort. And all the while, in a small adjoining office, its walls covered with green moire and its ceiling with gold leaf, its heavy door carefully soundproofed, Walker held court for favor seekers and politicians, and it was there, insiders said, that much of the city's business was transacted.

  Moses' attention had been drawn back to New York even before the Depression. Realizing in 1926 that city officials were not following through on promises to plan a new Queens road network to feed the Long Island parkways he was building, he had, during a solid year of conferences, all but begged the officials to widen Queens, Northern and Conduit boulevards and other major east-west thoroughfares in Brooklyn and Queens, to link Queens Boulevard with the Northern State Parkway, to make good on the promise given to him in 1924 and widen the two-mile stretch of Central

  Avenue, the narrow winding farm road that was the only route to the Southern State Parkway. Disturbed that Bronx and Westchester residents could reach his Long Island parks only by driving down into Manhattan and across the Queensborough Bridge, he had persuaded Al Smith to urge a start on construction of the long-talked-about "triborough" bridge.

  But in 1932, six years later, not even a start had been made on building these thoroughfares (with the exception of Queens Boulevard, on which work was proceeding so desultorily that its completion was nowhere in sight), and the farms that in 1926 could have been acquired cheaply for the right-of-way had become subdivisions the city could no longer afford to buy. Central Avenue was still unwidened; six years after the opening of the most modern highway in the United States the only approach to it was still a farm road. And as for the Triborough Bridge, the ring of the pile drivers hammering in its foundations after Mayor Walker had broken ground on October 25, 1929, had a distinctly hollow undertone, for while city officials were proclaiming that New York's traffic problems would be largely solved on the day that cars could speed up its mighty ramps, Moses was asking the project's chief engineer, a Tammany hack who had entered city service in 1886 as an axman, where the cars were going to go when they came down— and was learning that no one had thought to plan even a single approach road at any one of the bridge's three termini. And upset as Moses was at that, he soon realized that it was likely to be of no consequence. October 25, 1929, was a Friday, the Friday after "Black Thursday," the day of the stock-market crash. The proximity of the two days proved significant. The city's $5,400,000 initial allocation, largely wasted on extravagant condemnation awards, counsel fees and other items of Tammany graft, ran out after the Ward's Island piers had been built, and the city was prevented by the Depression from raising any additional funds for the project; in 1932 it had been at a comp
lete standstill for two years.

  Moses' plans for New York were not confined to Queens. The city's prestigious Park Association, inspired by his Long Island work to attempt again to save the city's fast-disappearing open spaces, had formed the Metropolitan Park Conference and made him its chairman. Assigning selected State Parks Council staffers to city problems (without the knowledge of the Legislature, of course), he furnished the reformers with the ingredient their efforts had been lacking: the expertise of engineers, landscape architects, draftsmen and surveyors experienced in park work. There were plenty of ideas for park acquisition floating around the city; some had been floating around for decades. Now Moses firmed up these ideas, made them concrete, codified them in terms that enabled the reformers to present specific demands to the Walker administration.

  And Moses gave the reformers something as valuable as his organization. He gave them his vision. No sooner had he become chairman of the Metropolitan Park Conference than he began driving endlessly around New York. The big black Packard that had once been pulled up in the yards of Long Island farmhouses was parked now at the edge of the lonely marshes on the shore of Jamaica Bay; in the empty, rocky fields on a deserted Bronx

  peninsula known as Ferry Point; and at the spot on Riverside Drive to which, twenty years before, he had taken taxicabs while he was conceiving his great highway along the Hudson. And while his chauffeur waited in the car, he was walking around, with the same long, restless strides with which he had covered Long Island, lost in concentration, occasionally making sketches on a yellow legal note pad.

  On February 25, 1930, before five hundred civic leaders gathered in the Grand Ballroom of the Hotel Commodore for the Park Association's annual dinner, Robert Moses, dressed in tuxedo and black tie (tied by Mary), rose to his feet and tugged a cord which dramatically pulled the drapery from a huge map of New York City hanging behind the dais. Running across the map were heavy red lines. One, which started in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Bridge, ran along the borough's western and southern shores, skirting Jamaica Bay, and then, in Queens, headed north along the city's eastern boundary. The shore-front portion, Moses said, was a "Marginal Boulevard"—he had not yet named it the "Belt Parkway"—which would provide a quick circumferential passage around Brooklyn. The portion that ran north along the city boundary was a "Cross Island Parkway." A third of the way up its length, it crossed and linked up with the Southern State Parkway. Two-thirds of the way up, it crossed and linked up with the Northern State and with the proposed Grand Central Parkway. And at its end was a bridge—a "Ferry Point-Whitestone Bridge," he called it, not yet having named it the "Bronx-Whitestone"—that would enable motorists to speed across Long Island Sound. And then . . .

  The audience's eyes followed the pointer in Moses' hand. At the northern end of the Ferry Point-Whitestone Bridge was another line, heading northeast to link up with the Hutchinson River Parkway that he had already built in Westchester County almost as far north as the Connecticut border. This, Moses said, was a "Hutchinson River Parkway Extension."

  The audience, most of whose members had been concerned for years about the city's traffic problems, grasped at once the significance of what Moses was showing them. If the Marginal Boulevard, the Ferry Point-Whitestone Bridge and the Hutchinson River Parkway Extension were built, they saw, motorists would be able to leave Manhattan Island on the Brooklyn Bridge and then proceed over broad modern roads, unhindered by a single traffic light, all the way around Brooklyn to the Long Island parkways and parks. In addition, Manhattan and Brooklyn motorists would be presented with a through route to the Bronx, Westchester and New England—and so would motorists from Nassau and Suffolk counties. And, looking at it in reverse, the Bronx, Westchester and New England would suddenly be brought within easy access of the Long Island parks.

  Moses' pointer reversed itself, tracing the Marginal Boulevard backward around Brooklyn. When it got to the Narrows, at a point opposite Staten Island, it stopped. Planners had long dreamed of a crossing between Brooklyn and Staten Island, Moses said; the Narrows Tube had been only one of several abortive attempts to make that dream reality. Now it was time to finish the tube. As soon as it was built, it could be linked with a parkway

  system on scenic Staten Island—more red lines rimmed the shoreline there —and, via a parkway straight across the island, with the Goethals and Outerbridge Crossing bridges on its western shore. And on the other side of those crossings, the audience realized with a start, was New Jersey! Moses' plan would give the city at last the long-discussed "northeastern bypass," the route, so long vaguely dreamed of by planners, that would enable traffic to and from New England and points south of the city to avoid crowded Manhattan Island and stop jamming its streets, that would free Manhattan forever from tens of thousands of cars and trucks that flooded into it every day although it was not their destination.

  And there wouldn't be only one bypass route. The pointer flicked back across the Narrows and then eastward and northward along the Marginal Boulevard until it reached its intersection with the Grand Central Parkway. The western terminus of the Grand Central was no longer Queens Boulevard, the audience saw; now the parkway extended westward all the way to the point where the Triborough Bridge was supposed to touch down in Queens. And from the proposed Bronx terminus of the Triborough, red lines radiated out northwestward along the Harlem River to the Saw Mill River Parkway he was building in Westchester County and northeastward along Bruckner Boulevard to the Hutchinson River Parkway Extension. These, Moses said, would be other parkways—and as he said it, the reform leaders sitting on the dais suddenly realized that the lines behind Moses formed a whole series of rough but concentric rings that would provide a whole series of possible bypass routes around the city and at the same time would make the parks and parkways Moses had built on Long Island easily accessible to any family in the city with a car. Manhattan motorists would be able to drive all the way to Jones Beach without ever being slowed by a traffic light or intersecting traffic. Turn those red lines on Moses' map into concrete, they realized, and motorists in great sections of the city would be largely freed from the trap of local streets in which they had been so long confined.

  There were other lines on the map, too. One ran along the western shore of Manhattan Island all the way up to the Harlem River, over the river and up through the Bronx. If the West Side Elevated Highway was extended up through Riverside Park, Moses said, and if it was carried across the Harlem by the Henry Hudson Bridge, and if it then ran north to the city line, its northern terminus would be within three miles of the southern terminus of the Saw Mill River Parkway the state was constructing. If the city built the parkway—the "Henry Hudson Parkway," he called it—he would see that the state extended the Saw Mill River Parkway south to meet it, and there would be a continuous through route from the bottom of Manhattan Island to Westchester County.

  A Henry Hudson Parkway would provide further advantages, Moses explained. It would give the city a fast, modern route to the George Washington Bridge. On the other side of that bridge was Palisades Interstate Park. It would no longer be difficult to reach it. All New Jersey, in fact, would be opened to motorists from the west side of Manhattan. And if the

  Henry Hudson Parkway was built properly and a great park created alongside it on what was now the mud flats of Riverside Park, the city's residents would not even have to leave the city to find beauty. They would be able to drive along the water, the river stretching to one side of them, the green of the park to the other, above the park the spires of Manhattan. It would be a public improvement unequaled in the world!

  Before he finished talking about parkways, Moses said, he had a final point. The plan he proposed was admittedly somewhat ambitious. But it was realistic—and it was realizable. The dream of opening to the residents of New York Gity the beauty of the lands around it was in reach. After all, he said, much of it was already reality. The Southern State, Northern State and Hutchinson River parkways were already built, the Saw
Mill River Parkway begun. Much of the rest of it was begun: the State Council of Parks was committed to building the Saw Mill River Parkway and Hutchinson River Parkway extensions; at least a start had been made on the Tri-borough Bridge and the West Side Highway. All that needed to be done was to knit these elements together.

  Now, he said, he wanted to discuss parks. His listeners, who had noticed that the park along the Henry Hudson Parkway was colored green on the map, saw that much of the land bordering the other parkways Moses was proposing was also green.

  All along the parkways, he said, there should be small parks. The parkways' right-of-way itself should be "ribbon parks" similar to those along the parkways on Long Island. Obtaining the necessary land would be easy along much of the Marginal Boulevard and Cross Island Parkway, and along all the parkways in Staten Island, because the areas these parkways ran through were still largely undeveloped and land there was cheap. It would be expensive to buy land along some of the other parkways. But it was never going to become cheaper. It would only become more expensive. It should be bought now.

  The larger green areas on the map, he said, represented larger parks. Specifically, he said, they represented a substantial portion of the last areas of natural beauty remaining in the city. The corridor parks he was proposing in eastern Queens, for example, running roughly along the route of the proposed Grand Central Parkway, represented the last undeveloped portions of the heavily forested hills of the glacial moraine. The parks he was proposing along the north shore of Jamaica Bay represented the last chance to preserve from commercial exploitation the bay's wild marshes and abundant animal and bird life. The park he was proposing on the meadows at Flushing Bay represented the last chance to preserve a portion of that bay from development. These parks, he said, should be purchased at once. His engineers had compiled estimates of their cost, and it was $30,000,000. A bond issue for that amount should be authorized at once by the Board of Estimate. Admittedly it would take a hard fight to persuade the Board to do what had to be done. He invited the people listening to him to join in that fight.