The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York
Page 194
1952-55. "Today we are well underway": RM,
Post, July 28, 1948. He had no doubt: U. 5. News & World Report, Aug. 8,
1952. General Electric: NYT, Jan. 23, 1952. RM's reply: RM to NYT, Feb. 11, 1952.
"Good work, gentlemen": HT editorial, Mar. 16, 1951. Never linked policies with the man: Articles in every NYC newspaper during this period lamented over the traffic problem without linking it to RM's policies.
40. Point of No Return
SOURCES
See "Sources" for Chapter 39. Also:
Books, reports, studies and documents:
Hoover and Vernon, Anatomy of a Metropolis; Leavitt, Superhighway-Su-perhoax; Moses, Dangerous Trade; Owen, The Metropolitan Transportation Problem; Whalen, New York: A City Destroying Itself.
Notes for pages 920-921
1231
Dun and Bradstreet, Inc. (D&B), "Municipal Credit Survey—TBTA," Dec. 30, 1955; June 24, 1957; Mar. 18, 1958; Apr. 30, 1959; Apr. 14, i960; "Municipal Credit Report—TBTA," Nov. 9, 1961; Feb. 12, 1963; May 13, 1963; Apr. 22, 1964; Sept. 30, 1966. Day & Zimmerman, Inc., "Report No. 5849-C to Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission on Comparative Studies of Proposed Alternate Rapid Transit Plans for Northern Queens County and Vicinity, Long Island, N.Y., Including Effects upon Other Transit Operations," Philadelphia, Pa., Jan. 31, 1957. Day & Zimmerman, Inc., "Report No. 5849-Bi to Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission on Expanded Comparative Studies of Proposed Alternate Rapid Transit Plans for Staten Island, New York, via the Proposed Narrows Bridge, Including Effects upon Other Transit Operations," Philadelphia, Pa., Nov. 29, 1956. New York State Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Authority (MCTA), "LIRR Modernization Program—Technical Memorandum No. 3, Travel Volume Projections," Feb. 1967.
Jackson Phillips, director of municipal research for Dun and Bradstreet, "Postwar Default Experience of Municipal Bonds," testimony prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of the House of Representatives, Dec. 1966. Port of New York Authority and TBTA, "Joint Study of Arterial Facilities, New York-New Jersey Metropolitan Area," Jan. 1955. TBTA, various prospectuses for bond issues, of which the most illuminating is "$100,000,000—Narrows Bridge Revenue Bonds, Third Series," Feb. 14, 1963.
Author's interviews:
Henry Barnes, Ernest J. Clark, Howard S. Cullman, Lee Koppelman, Joseph McC. Lieper, Jacob Lutsky, Michael J. Madigan, J. Burch McMorran, Edward Moloney, Warren Moscow, Lawrence M. Orton, Jackson Phillips, Charles F. Rodriguez, Paul R. Screvane, Sidney M. Shapiro, Walter Sheridan, Bertram D. Tallamy, Robert F. Wagner, Jr., Paul Windels.
NOTES
Faster and faster: The number of cars and trucks passing through Triborough's toll booths had reached 39,000,000 in 1941. In 1946, the first full postwar year, the number was 49,000,000. In 1947, the number passed 50,000,000; in 1948, 60,-000,000; in 1949, 70,000,000. In 1950, the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel opened; in that
year, the Authoi -\ trafl waa
90,000,000. [n 11 ..... 11
in 1952, 120,000 ><» I nun I HI nual Reports. 1<,»< ,./ reran* wm surplus: In 1952, I BI.W annual eXjK were only about $4,000,000, abort the same as the annual interest 00 its bonds TBTA, Annual Report, 1952. Surplus worth half a billion: Surveys oi I HI A by D&B listed in "Sources;" Madiftlfl Phillips.
Bonds could be paid off within six years: In 1953, TBTA had $215,000,000 in outstanding bonds, but $27,000,000 in cash in its General Fund could be applied to them, leaving a balance of $188,000,-000. Its surplus in that year was $21,-760,000; it was rising every year, but even if it stayed the same, $25,000,000 a year would pay off the bonds in seven years. (D&B,)
Dreams greater than resources: TBTA, Annual Reports, 1952-54. RM's thinking: Shapiro, but, without being stated specifically, it also comes through in many articles and brochures he wrote at this time.
Interstate Highway System; working with Adams and Clay: RM, Madigan, Shapiro; Leavitt, p. 30. $50 billion over ten years his figure: RM, "How to Plan and Pay for Better Highways," Aug. J953, quoted in Dangerous Trade, p. 281, when, as RM notes on p. 280, "the recommendations since adopted were novel, disturbing and controversial." See also his testimony before the Clay Committee, Oct. 7, 1954, largely a restatement of the 1953 essay. Although historians of the Interstate System such as Leavitt do not credit RM with a formative role in planning the administration of this system, such a role emerges from discussions with such BPR administrators as Francis Turner and Bertram D. Tallamy and from RM's correspondence with Clay, such as RM to Clay, 1955, quoted in Dangerous Trade, p. 294. Madigan and Shapiro, who spent months in Washington in 1954, 1955 and 1956—along with Hodgkiss and other Moses Men— working with congressional proponents of the System and with staffers of Clay's Advisory Committee in a National Highway Program, confirm the Turner and Tallamy impression of RM's ciucial role. Key revision: Madigan; a discussion of negotiations on the point contained in numerous internal TBTA memos made available to the author, including Hodgkiss to RM, Aug. 20 (or 26—date unclear), 1955.
Notes for pages 921-933
1232
Rapprochement with Port Authority:
RM, Cullman, Wagner and numerous TBTA, Port Authority and Wagner administration officials who prefer to remain unidentified. Also Lieper, Madi-gan, Orton, Phillips, Tallamy, Windels. Wagner on Cullman and Tobin: Wagner.
Port Authority finances: Port Authority Annual Report, 1954. Worth $700,000,-000: Cullman, quoted in NYT, Mar. 12, 1954, as saying the Authority would be able to finance this much worth of new projects in the next ten years. Short on dreams: Orton.
RM broaching his plan: Cullman, Orton. Port Authority thinking: Cullman, Madigan, Orton, Shapiro, Wagner, confidential sources. Pressure on Port Authority: Doig, pp. 80-139. "Ever widening ripples": D&B, Apr. 30, 1959, p. 30. Port Authority profit from "Joint Program": Port Authority Annual Reports, 1966-70. TBTA profit: TBTA Annual Reports, 1956-70.
"The bridge of my dreams": RM, quoted in J-A, Dec. 10, 1954.
In lockstep: Observers behind the closed doors of Board of Estimate executive sessions such as Lutsky, Moscow, Rodriguez, Screvane and numerous confidential sources. Cashmore: Moscow.
Triborough's share would have modernized LIRR: The cost of doing everything necessary to modernize the LIRR except buying the land for the new terminals and parking garages and building a new line down the LIE—of buying new cars and high-speed locomotives and rebuilding the trackage; of building the new switching yards—was set at $60,-000,000 in 1954 by a special state commission. The cost of building an 80-mile-per-hour rapid transit line down the center of the LIE was estimated at $85,000,000 by the State DPW. The cost of the land for the new terminals and garages was not estimated at any time during the 1950's, but it would have been relatively minor, considering the relative cheapness of land in Suffolk and western Nassau counties. In 1965, a state Special Committee on the LIRR (the so-called Ronan Committee) estimated the cost of a full-scale modernization program—with, as far as can be determined from its hazy wording, provision for only a few terminals—at $200,-000,000: Special Committee, A New Long Island Rail Road, Feb. 1965. A full fifteen years after 1955—on July 6, 1970 — Newsday could report that "the Metropolitan Transportation Authority . . .
sees the full program of LIRR modernization as a 20-year, $500,000,000 project" (italics added). It is of interest—although many factors clouded the picture—that when the state purchased the LIRR from the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1965, the total cost of its rolling stock and all other physical facilities amounted to only $65,000,000.
Port Authority's share would have built trans-Hudson loop, etc.: Metropolitan Rapid Transit Survey, Report of the Project Director, sets the "capital requirements" figure at $345,000,000 (p. 39). Several sources involved, in fact, believe this figure was set at its upper limits and that the loop could have been built for less.
Subway system: Various newspaper articles, 1953, 1954, 1955. A figure of $587,000,000 was given in NYC Transit Authority, Report, 1953-54, p. 25.
$
1,187,000,000: NYC Transit Authority, Report, 1953-54, PP- 10-36; also see Reports for 1957-58. NYT, July !4> 1955- East River tunnel and extension into Queens: "The proposed subway tunnels from 76th Street to Astoria [in connection with the Second Avenue Trunk Line Plan] provide the key to the solution [of additional transit service to Queens and LI]. The Astoria extension has been proposed to run to the LIRR at Woodside and thence along the LIRR to Rego Park and a connection to the subway line at the Rockaways. The cost of the branch from mid-Manhattan to Woodside has been estimated at $110 million" (italics added). (MRTC, "Staff Report," pp. 20, 21.) The cost of modernizing the Port Washington branch of the LIRR and linking it up with the city subway at Woodside or Long Island City —the total capital cost, including new cars—would have been $47,000,000. (Day & Zimmerman report cited below under "Long Island Expressway.")
Expenditures under Joint Program: All figures from "Arterial Progress," Nov. 8, 1965, pp. 26-31. (See Appendix "A.")
"The parking lots": Whelan, p. 82.
Plans from father: Robert Olmsted, quoted in DN, Aug. 29, 1969.
Black Hole: Solarz in NYT, Feb. 7, 1970.
Ancient cars; deferred maintenance; toll mounting: NYT, DN, Post, various articles, 1964-72. 45 cars break down per day: NYT, Feb. 6, 1970. "There have been more serious accidents": NYT, July 29, 1970. 'Terrified, smoke-blinded": DN, "Our Staggering Subways."
Notes for pages 934-969
"There is little need": RM quoted in Hoover and Vernon, p. 130. "Busted, lazy": RM, quoted in Doig, p. 151.
Baker: NYT, Feb. 5, 1970. LIRR lateness record: "Track Record," Newsday, various issues, 1970.
Long Island Expressway: A chance to reshape LI: Koppelman, Barnes; Nassau-Suffolk Regional Planning Board, various publications; the following discussion is based on extensive interviewing of lo-cational consultants, trucking and bus company and business firm presidents, Nassau and Suffolk County public officials and staffers of the Nassau-Suffolk Regional Planning Board and the Regional Plan Association that the author conducted in 1965 for a Newsday series he wrote entitled "Suffolk the Sick Giant." Car trips: MCTA, "LIRR Modernization Program—Technical Memorandum No. 3." Buses: Koppelman, Barnes, bus company executives. The seven-mile stretch: Day & Zimmerman, "Report No. 5849-C" The other 78 miles: Barnes, Ingraham, confidential sources. $15,000,000 per mile: Day & Zimmerman, "Report No. 5849-C." They had to report: Day & Zimmerman, p. 47; Lieper. Traffic load: Newsday, various articles. Solution—make it bigger: Clark; confidential sources in DPW. Koppelman told a friend: The friend was the author.
41, Rumors and the Report of Rumors
SOURCES
Books, articles, brochures and documents:
Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time; Moses, Dangerous Trade; Talese, The Kingdom and the Power.
Fred J. Cook and Gene Gleason, "The Shame of New York," The Nation, Oct.
3i, I959-
City Planning Commission, Tenant Relocation Report, Jan. 20, 1954. Mayor's Slum Clearance Committee, "Manhattan-town Slum Clearance Plan," Sept. 1951. Women's City Club of New York, Tenant Relocation at West Park, Mar. 1954; Manhattantown Two Years Later, Apr. 1956 (Manhattantown was the original name for "West Park"). "Hearings, U. S. Congress, Senate Banking and Currency Committee," Vol. 49 (New York City, Oct. 1, 1954).
Elinor Black Papers, including the "Relocation Questionnaires" filled out by dis-
1233
placed residents of the Manhattan; site, and the "Black Log," an informal record of her activities on their behalf.
Author's interviews:
Algernon and Elinor Black, Fred J Cook, Walter S. Fried, Hortense Gabel William J. Haddad, Joseph Kahn, Lawrence M. Orton, Robert C. Weinberg.
NOTES
Rumors: Gabel. The only one: NYT,
Apr. 3, 1962.
Statistics: Orton. Federal requirement:
"Contracts for financial aid shall be made only with a duly authorized local public agency and shall require that . . . there are or are being provided ... at rents or prices within the financial means of the families displaced from the project area, decent, safe, and sanitary dwellings equal in number of and available to... displaced families and reasonably accessible to their places of employment..." Sec. 105c, Title I: Slum Clearance and Community Development and Redevelopment, National Housing Act of 1949. "To set at rest": RM, "Manhattantown Slum Clearance Plan," p. 17. Columns of statistics: "Plan," p. 18. RM's statistics false: See below.
Garbage cans: Fried.
"Like cattle": Isaacs quoted in Lowe,
p. 83.
Liberals' feelings: Liberals Elinor and Algernon Black, Gabel, Orton, Weinberg.
"Not a crusading paper": Black Log. HT, DN: Orton.
"Going underground": Orton. The Bureau was under RM's thumb: "Shame," pp. 300-06. RM kept count too low: Author's comparison of City Planning Commission Report figures with RM's figures. 170,000 evicted: CPC Report, p. 40. Orton leaned too far: Author's analysis of figures in CPC Report for Manhattantown, pp. 46-47, compared with figures from on-site investigation by Women's City Club members, in the club's two brochures. 12,000 for Stuyvesant Town: Moses, Dangerous Trade, p. 433-
Their color: CPC Report, p. 42. Their income: Report, p. 47- Evicting people least able to afford new homes: The 1950 census reported that 29 percent of the city's nonwhite families—almost one out of every three—were living in accommodations listed as "substandard."
The city's pledge: Summarized in CPC Report, p. 1. Shuttled within site: Report, pp. 50-51. Few into public housing: Report, pp. 48-49. The actual percentage
Notes for pages 969-983
1234
was 27.1, Report, p. 47. Disappeared: Report, p. 37; "43% of all relocatees moved to an unknown address." Were doubling up or moving into border areas: Gabel, Orton.
50,000 per year: CPC Report, p. 43. Practices should be changed: Report, pp.
31-34.
Veteran women campaigners for better housing: The club's board of directors, for example, included Mrs. Elinor Black, Stanley Isaacs' wife and daughter and Mrs. Nathan Straus, wife of the federal housing administrator.
"Bombed-out Berlin": "Shame," p. 286. Experiences of Women's City Club volunteers: As they recorded them for Mrs. Black on the "Relocation Questionnaires" preserved in the club's files.
Length of Puerto Ricans 9 tenancy: Tenant Relocation at West Park, p. 8. "Since it was built": A phrase repeated on relocation questionnaires. Average income: Tenant Relocation, p. 6. Buildings old, overcrowded: Tenant Relocation, pp. 1, 7. But area friendly: Interview forms; Mrs. Black. Volunteers envious of sense of neighborhood: This emerges clearly in some of the interviews. "Well satisfied": Tenant Relocation, p. 8. Average rent: Tenant Relocation, p. 7.
"I would die": Unnamed resident, quoted in Tenant Relocation, p. 5. Anywhere. But not Harlem: Questionnaires.
Color and poverty barred them from most areas: Tenant Relocation, pp. 5, 8-10; quotes, p. 10, p. 5.
No applications being accepted: "Interview, Nov. 25, 1952. Dr. Wortis, Mrs. Black at the Bureau of Real Estate, 10 to 11:15 a.m.," Mrs. Black's notes, Black Papers. 300 of 400 wanted public housing: Tenant Relocation, p. 9. Only fifty: Two Years Later, p. 19.
The notice: Tenant Relocation, p. 2. No help available: pp. 10-11; questionnaires. Typical: p. 7.
Finding out wasn't easy: Mrs. Black's Log records her efforts. Difficulty in tracing tenants: Two Years Later, pp. 7-8. Only 167: Two Years Later, p. 8. Probably the best off: Isaacs to Black, Feb. 21, 1956, Black Papers. Quotes from relocatees: Questionnaires.
"Seriously affected": Two Years Later, p. 27. Could picture: Mrs. Black. From one building to another: Tenant Relocation, p. 10; "Shame," p. 263. Leaned over backwards: After reading her report, Isaacs wrote her, "You are too much of a lady and far too gentle to make the emphatic comments that some of the
facts that you have uncovered really deserve. ... I am really tired of the way that what has been done so badly has been covered up so effectively," Isaacs to B
lack, Feb. 21, 1956, Black Papers. "Human decency": Tenant Relocation, p. 13.
City Planning Commission report: Infighting: Gabel, Orton, confidential source. Resolution: Board of Estimate calendar, No. 363, Mar. 12, 1953. Constable's shock: Orton. Bennett reaping profit: See "Notes" for Chapter 43. RM's rewriting: The "Minority Report" gives some examples, p. 33. "The outlook": "Minority Report," pp. 4-5. Civics demand: Lowe, pp. 83-84. The report RM suppresses: Post, Dec. 11, 1953; Post, NYT, HT, Dec. 14, 1953.
Rosenman's statement: "Hearings" transcript, p. 3151.
"Moses wasn't God": Gabel. Bennett's confession: NYT, Jan. 21, 1954. Papers led: NYT, HT, DN, Jan. 21, 1954. Bennett locked up copies: Orton, confidential source. Only the Post: Post, Jan. 21, 1954. Why press didn't coven Cook, Gabel, Haddad, Kahn, Orton; Talese, pp. 99-101, gives the Times's general handling of RM. Gabel before Board: NYT, 1958. "Bunk": RM, quoted in Post, Jan. 28, I954-
Senate hearings: Caspert testimony: "Hearings" transcript, Vol. 49, pp. 3097, 3133. Example of Rosenman's interventions: p. 3103. Rosenman-Simon-Bush exchange: pp. 3139-40. Profits huge: pp. 3118-43; passim. For individual profits, see charts pp. 3144, 3146. "Different people": Simon, on p. 3129. $375,000: p. 3129. Comptroller renting appliances: pp. 3123-24, but best summing up is done by Cook in "Shame," p. 287.
Didn't mention Moses once: NYT, Oct. 2, 1954.
Reporters refused permission: Cook, Kahn tell of them.
Six agencies investigating: Lowe, p. 82.
Pallid series: WT&S, May 9-10, 1955.
42. Tavern in the Town
SOURCES
Books, pamphlets and documents:
Isaacs, Love Affair with a City, Kieley, Moses on the Green; Reed and Duckworth, Central Park.
Moses, "Statements by Mr. Arnold Newman et Al., Concerning Reconstruction of the Tavern on the Green," Apr. 17, 1956.
Notes for pages 984-1002
123!
Wagner Papers, esp. various files in Box 1943—"Community Activities," and Box 1944—"Tavern on the Green."