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

by Caro, Robert A

  The reformers' influence guaranteed that the city's officials—and taxpayers—would hear their side. In the crusty Singstad, they possessed an ally expert not only in engineering but in public relations, and he demonstrated that Moses had no monopoly on misleading drawings. Moses', to minimize

  the impact of the bridge, portrayed it from directly overhead; Singstad's, to dramatize that impact to the maximum, portrayed it from ground level— possibly, judging from some of the angles, from below ground—thus making the structure seem even higher than it was. (There was something funny about the perspective, too. Moses wasn't sure exactly what it was; the best he could do was to rage that the drawings were "completely phony.") By the time the controversy came before the City Planning Commission, in the first step of the process through which the reformers believed the public will was to be expressed, they had the facts and figures—and pictures—ready to go.

  The day before the process began, however, the reformers' morning newspapers informed them that at Moses' request bills had been introduced in Albany that would rescind the Tunnel Authority's authorization to build the Battery Crossing and transfer that authorization to the Triborough Bridge Authority. Such bills would, of course, be necessary if the city approved Moses' plans. But by introducing them before the approval had been given, Moses was acting as if it were a mere formality, as if the city had no choice but to give it.

  And, the reformers learned the next day, such was in fact the case. At the Planning Commission hearing, the reformers presented their painstakingly prepared facts and figures, maps and drawings. The Regional Plan Association said that if a tunnel proved too expensive the alternative should not be a new bridge that would destroy the harbor and park but a rebuilding of the three old East River bridges and the construction of a link between them, and between the Belt Parkway to the south and the Triborough Bridge to the north (along the lines of the future Brooklyn-Queens Expressway), a solution which the RPA pointed out would detour traffic around Manhattan instead of pouring more of it into its most congested area. The RPA had prepared preliminary plans and cost estimates for its proposal, but the commission did not make even a pretense of giving them serious study. Two weeks later, by a 4-2 vote, it approved the Brooklyn-Battery Bridge. The two dissenting commissioners said that the bridge would destroy values that the city would never be able to replace. The majority opinion did not disagree. The harbor would "undoubtedly be altered" by the bridge, it said. The park would "undoubtedly" be damaged. "There are . . . valid objections to a bridge"; in fact, they too favored a tunnel. But, the majority pointed out, "the commission is not at this time called upon to choose between a tunnel and a bridge." No one was offering to finance a tunnel. Someone was offering to finance a bridge. A Brooklyn-Battery Crossing was urgently—desperately—needed. If the only type of crossing available was a bridge, a bridge it would have to be. One of the commissioners who voted for the bridge, Lawrence M. Orton, a former RPA member himself, would spell it out even more plainly to the author years later: "The city didn't have the money for a crossing. Neither did the Tunnel Authority. Only one person had the money—Moses. And Moses wasn't giving us any choice. He just wouldn't build a tunnel. It was the bridge or nothing. Take it or leave it. We didn't have any choice."

  In Albany, meanwhile, Moses' bills—sponsored in the Assembly by Robert J. Crews, brother of Triborough insurance co-broker John R. Crews, and backed by Assembly minority leader Irwin Steingut ("Irwin considered Moses a practical fellow") and by the Republican leadership of both houses—were eating up the legislative track, ordinarily so slow, like thoroughbreds among a pack of Percherons. Passed by the Assembly one afternoon, they were rushed that same afternoon to a Senate committee—and were released that same afternoon to the floor of the Senate for a vote. One upstate senator innocently requested time to consider the measures; he was handed a message asking him to take an urgent telephone call; when he returned to the floor, he dropped the request.

  But back in New York, Stanley Isaacs, studying the bills in his quiet way, noticed a point that everyone else had apparently overlooked: there was no home-rule message from the City Council attached to them as the law required. And the arena in which the Battery Crossing fight was being staged was thereupon switched from the State Capitol to the Council Chamber on the second floor of City Hall.

  In this arena the reformers had hope of success. Three councilmen were, after all, reformers themselves, nominees of the Fusion Party. Five were members of the American Labor Party, and organized labor favored a tunnel because it would furnish 2,600,000 man-hours of work as against 600,000 for a bridge. And all twenty-six councilmen were susceptible to pressure from civil service organizations angry as always at Moses because of his refusal to use civil service engineers on his authority jobs (he had recently stated it cost twice as much to do so), who wanted the more compliant Tunnel Authority to build the Crossing. Isaacs had, moreover, noticed in the bills a buried clause everyone else had overlooked: a clause specifically prohibiting Triborough from paying for the $11,000,000 West Side Highway link. Surely, the reformers felt, now that this had been pointed out to the councilmen, they would not ask the Legislature to approve the measures and thereby obligate the city, recently obligated to a $16,000,000 expenditure it could not afford for one Moses project, to spend $11,000,000 more.

  The reformers were also encouraged by the attitude of the Mayor, whose reaction to Isaacs' discovery of the buried clause was foot-stamping fury; Moses had won his support for the bridge by promising him in so many words that it would cost the city nothing; knowing how Moses worked, the Mayor was sure that the clause was not in the bills by accident but was rather an attempt by Moses to sneak out of his promise—and cost the city $11,000,000. A faint ray of hope was, moreover, beginning to appear on La Guardia's horizon from the direction of Washington. Sentiment was building up in Congress for increased appropriations to the PWA; if the Mayor could grab off a $30,000,000 piece of that action for a tunnel, the cooperative Tunnel Authority instead of arrogant Triborough could build the Crossing. The Mayor considered that "if" big—sounding out

  Ickes, he was informed that $30,000,000 more for New York was absolutely out of the question—but La Guardia evidently felt that as long as there was any option at all, he should keep it open. He told key legislators privately that he had had second thoughts about authorizing Moses to build the Crossing; he favored the bill authorizing Triborough to build a Crossing, he said, but not the bill stripping such authorization from the Tunnel Authority, because he wanted both bridge and tunnel options kept alive; if PWA money came through, he could have the Crossing built by the Tunnel Authority; if it did not, Triborough could build it.

  The reformers were also hopeful because their aim was modest. They were not, after all, insisting that the bridge proposal be defeated. They were only asking that it be studied. With three competing plans for a solution to Lower Manhattan's traffic problem—and wildly conflicting estimates of the cost and effects of each plan—surely an impartial study was needed to determine the true costs and effects before a decision was made. Moses was insisting on the need for haste, they said, but wasn't the need really for delay, a delay which would provide time for mature consideration? The decision the city took on the proposals would vitally affect it for decades— centuries perhaps. Was it not only rational to take a few more weeks or months to make sure the decision taken was the right one?

  Finally the reformers were hopeful because they knew their own strength. United, they felt they could defeat any politician; in the last city-wide election, in fact, their victory had been nearly total; Fusion had taken all three citywide offices—Mayor, Comptroller and Council President—as well as the presidencies of the two most populous boroughs in 1937. And never had they been more united. Four years before, the leaders of New York's Good Government organizations had formed a "Central Committee" of civic organizations to support Robert Moses in his fight against Franklin Roosevelt's attempt to oust him from t
he Triborough chairmanship. Now they formed another "Central Committee," a "Central Committee of Organizations Opposing the Battery Toll Bridge," to oppose Moses. Within a week after its formation, its chairman, eighty-three-year-old Albert S. Bard, had assigned speakers to address every civic-minded body in the city, and every organization concerned with the preservation of beauty and architectural excellence within it; within a week a score of such groups had joined the committee. Under the direction of Eric Gugler, a group of the city's most respected architects were visiting and enrolling other architects in the cause. Famous artists who had held aloof from the issue were contacted by artists of equal stature and persuaded that their participation was needed to preserve a beautiful and majestic scene. Bard was making sure that every reformer who had entree to a politician in City Hall, Albany or Washington was using that entree; a sextet of septuagenarians, for example, spent a week in Washington explaining the situation to New York congressmen. And the most difficult of politicians—Fiorello Henry La Guardia—Bard left to the most respected reformer of them all: the legendary Burlingham, Charles Culp Burlingham, eighty-one years old, almost deaf, but still "the only man from whom La Guardia would take a scolding." "CC" hobbled,

  gaunt and stooped, up the steps of City Hall one morning, and was ushered in to see the Mayor—as La Guardia hastily shooed a group out of his office, so that the old man would not have to wait a minute. Burlingham emerged to relay to intimates a promise from La Guardia that while he would support a home-rule message for the bill authorizing Triborough to build a Crossing, he would not support—or sign—one for the bill stripping the Tunnel Authority of its authorization. The Mayor told Burlingham that he would wait until the War Department, which had jurisdiction over all structures built in or across navigable waters and which had scheduled a hearing on the bridge in April, had formally given approval to build it. The approval was only a formality, La Guardia said, but at least it would give him an excuse to offer Moses for delaying. If, he promised, at any time until the War Department approval was received, money became available for a tunnel, he would see that it, rather than a bridge, was built. And the Mayor promptly proved that he meant what he said by giving the Tunnel Authority permission to lobby in Albany against the bill—and by letting key legislators know that the lobbying had his sanction.

  The "Central Committee" did not neglect the public at large. Unlike the usual run of Moses' opponents, the prestigious reformers had entree both to letters-to-the-editor columns and to editors, who usually heard in person only Moses' side of the controversy. Soon, even the Times was pointing out that "a brief delay wouldn't hurt the plan. . . . The bridge, if built, will be there a long time. It is worth while taking the time to get it right." The Herald Tribune demanded that Moses make public all the facts about the bridge and, urging the Council not to take action until he had done so, and until those facts had been studied, said:

  It seems clear now that a major alteration in the city's design and appearance is involved. No conceivable need for hurry has been suggested. The need is therefore for the carefulest consideration and full public discussion, with every opportunity for alternatives to be reviewed impartially and thoroughly. No possible risk should be run of building in haste and repenting for generations to come.

  With the organized construction trades and the civil service organizations backing a tunnel, and with the letters-to-the-editor showing support of the need for further discussion, it was clear that the tide of public opinion was running against Moses' proposal—to an extent it had never run against him before.

  Public opinion was the crucial factor in the reformers' philosophy and strategy. Public opinion was democratic government, the government they believed in. If it was not listened to, government was not democratic. "A decent respect for public opinion" had been a key ground for their demand that Roosevelt back down from his attempt to oust Moses. And they repeated that phrase in demanding that Moses back down now, and in insisting that, if he didn't back down voluntarily, the Mayor and councilmen make him.

  The reformers felt certain that the Mayor and councilmen would.

  They were, after all, politicians, and thus necessarily responsive to public opinion.

  But all the reformers' hopefulness proved was that they didn't understand how much power—power over politicians—Moses had been given, or how independent of public opinion he now was. Moses understood. So unconcerned was he about the reformers' efforts that he spent the three weeks before the Council hearing vacationing in Key West, Florida. And the accuracy of his assessment of the situation was proven when, returning from a day fishing among the Keys (he caught two flounders), he received a telephone call informing him of La Guardia's statement that he would delay signing a home-rule message on the Tunnel Authority bill even if the Council passed one. Strolling down to the Key West Western Union office, he wrote out a telegram to the Mayor, addressed to him at his apartment so that the Mayor would receive it that same evening: no possible way of

  KEEPING BOTH PROJECTS ALIVE UNTIL AFTER WAR DEPARTMENT HEARING STOP THEREFORE REQUEST YOU SIGN BOTH MESSAGES STOP OTHERWISE BRIDGE PROJECT MUST BE ABANDONED AND ALBANY NOTIFIED TO THIS EFFECT.

  If the Mayor did not immediately guarantee that there would be no Battery tunnel, Moses was saying, he, Moses, would never give him the money for a Battery bridge. Either guarantee immediately that Moses could build the Crossing—and build the kind of Crossing he wanted—or there wouldn't be any Crossing. The telegram was not a request but an ultimatum, not an appeal from a subordinate to a superior, not a plea from a commissioner appointed by the Mayor that the Mayor change a decision, but a demand from someone who had the money to give the Mayor something he wanted.

  La Guardia understood. After all his stalling, Moses' money was still the only money available. If he wanted the Battery Crossing, he would have to do what Moses wanted. The Mayor had no more choice than the City Planning Commission had had. Summoning the Council leaders to his office, he let them know that his feelings in the matter to be discussed at the upcoming hearing had changed.

  Robert Moses returned from Florida on the night before the Council committee hearing. The Fine Arts Federation of New York, representing eighteen leading art societies, had that day issued a statement warning that the bridge would "disfigure perhaps the most thrillingly beautiful and world-renowned feature of this great city." A reporter asked Moses about the statement.

  "The same old tripe," he said. "We'll take care of it all tomorrow."

  Tomorrow was the City Council Chamber.

  City Hall filled a gap in the blank-eyed skyscraper wall with the dignity and grace and elegance of another age, and of all its rooms, its

  mdl Chamber best evoked the values that the reformers had come to see were the .ues in the Battle of the Battery Crossing: respect for the

  institutions and through which, in a democratic society, the will of

  the people found Jon and realization. And that room evoked as well

  the manner that, in the age which had produced those institutions and laws (and many . had been so much more important—the

  dignity, grace and elegance in speech as well as appearance, the courtliness, the courtesv ; the %entlemanliness; before its mahogany panels, beneath its delicate wainscoting .pie's elected representatives deliberated under a

  delicately curving little gallery with an intricately detailed railing, at slanting-topped eighteenth-century desks arranged in a semicircle, before a presidential dais flanked by flags oi city and nation, under a ceiling, its details picked out in gold, featuring a huge mural of "New York Receiving the Tribute of the Natioi

  If the setting for the drama was apt, so was the casting. 7 he audience that day was not the typical City Council audience. In the memory of participants, there wasn't even a lone housewife present, not a single claque from a neighborhood civic association to bounce boos and hisses, cheers and the noise of foot stamping off the mahogany-paneled walls and make Jefferson, observing bron
ze from the back wall, wonder if perhaps Hamilton had been right after all. Instead, sitting rank on rank in the gallery or on chairs set up to handle the overflow, was the very flower of the city's civic leadership, men of wealth and talent devoted to the rule of Jaw and the institutions of democracy that City Hall symbolized, men who had proven that devotion by spending their talent and their time in a dozen great civic battles. For the audience included not only young reformers but elderly men whose first hero had been not La Guardia but Police Board President Theodore Roosevelt—the Burlinghams and Sea-burys, Schieffelins and McAnenys, the men who had formed the heart of the Committee of One Hundred and Seven and the Committee of One Thousand—who had been fighting for generations against every threat to the institutions which they felt made their city great. There were starched wing collars in that audience, and vests crossed with heavy gold watch chains, and pince-nez, and walking sticks—and a spirit of reform that went back half a century and more. Jf New York had an aristocracy of civic leadership, it was assembled in the Council Chamber that day when the long fleet of black limousines screeched up in front of City Hall, and the man whom they had once believed to be the living embodiment of their ideals, dressed in a double-breasted dark-blue suit that only emphasized his burliness and with a close-clipped haircut that emphasized the massiveness of his face and his bull neck, impatiently flung open the door of the first of the limousines without waiting for the chauffeur to come around and, with a full score of aides half running behind him to keep up, stalked into City Hall, pounded up the delicate curve of the hanging staircase, strode past the slender fluted columns on the Rotunda, and burst through the Chamber door.