The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York
Page 205
Watson, Edwin M., 672, 673
Watson, Thomas J., 711
Webb & Knapp, Inc., 1011-12 and n.
Wechsler, James, 1025, 1048
Weeping Beech Park, 986-7
Weinberg, Robert C, 488, 500, 540, 542-8, 550, 551-2, 560, 563, 565, 613, 645; smeared by RM, 502, 547-8
Weiner, Bernard, 863-4
Weisl, Edwin, 1109
Welch, Maj. William A., 250, 251
welfare, 294, 325, 346, 893
Westchester County, 8, 200, 201, 312, 340, 404, 517, 518-19, 545, 551, 900; park restrictions, 144, 1065; population growth, 546-7; traffic congestion, 520
Weston, Andy, 209, 218
West Shore Expressway, 925
West Side Highway, 6, 329, 342, 343, 501, 526; 553, 555-6, 567, 645, 646, 658, 660, 668, 838, 1152; deterioration, 796; traffic congestion on, 563, 913, 914, 929
West Side Improvement: acquisition of land for, 503-7, 535; condemnations for, 532, 534, 538, 543, 550; cost of, 526-39 passim, 543, 549, 551, 556-7, 565; funds for, 526-40 passim, 550-1; RM's genius in financing, 540, 550; neighborhood erosion for, 542-4, 545; and N.Y.C. waterfront, 544-6, 549, 558-9, 560-1, 564, 566; opposition to RM's plan for, 500, 540-9, 552, 560; praise of, 555-7; speed in constructing, 549-52; traffic congestion, 563-4; see also individual projects
Whalen, Grover, 332, 333 n., 652, 771, 815, 1062, 1085, 1092, mi, 1113
Wheatley Hills (Old Westbury), 146, 149, 150, 185, 299-301, 303
White, Andrew D., 60
White, Samuel M., 335-6
White, Stanford, 170
White, Theodore H., 734, 1067-9, 1072
Whitestone Expressway, 6, 863
Whitman, Walt, 145, 169
Whitney, Henry Payne, 184-5
Whitney, John Hay, 1090, 1093
Whitney, Payne, 149, 163, 184-5, 299
Wickersham, George, 95, no, 131,-307
Wilcox, Ansley, 248-57, 399; unjustly treated by RM, 249-55, 290-1, 472, 499, 583
Wildwood State Park, 8, 170, 220, 238
Williams, Arthur B., 710, 873
Williamsburg Bridge, 146, 330, 769, ?n,925
Willowbrook Expressway, 896, 925
Willowbrook Park, 344
Willvonseder, Ernie, 112
Wilson, Malcolm, n 60
Wilson, William, 725-6, 729, 805
Wilson, Woodrow, 55, 59, 82, 87, 149, 580
Windels, Paul, 349, 357, 358, 359, 398, 407, 409, 410, 412, 415, 426, 427, 428, 429-30, 434, 441, 442, 447, 448, 454, 462, 464, 466, 469, 473, 474-5, 514, 515, 586-7, 588, 593, 598, 605, 609, 611-12, 613-14, 635, 658, 671, 672, 680, 685, 691, 692, 766, 778, 806, 966
Wingate, John, 1076
Winston, Norman K., 1090, 1130
Winthrop, Bronson, 185
Winthrop, Col. Henry Rogers, 149, 185, 278, 279, 299
Wise, Stephen S., 961
Witkin, Richard, n 44
Witt, Erwin, 1103, 1104
WNYC radio station, 611-12
Wolfe's Pond Park, 331, 335
Women's City Club, 92, 109, 435; and Title I, 969^76, 978, 983, 1006, 1025
Wood, Franklin S., n 20, 1128
Woodring, Harry H., 672-4
Woolworth, F. W., 150
Wordsworth, William, 284, 286, 555-6
Works Progress Administration (WPA), 471; aid for N.Y.C, 451, 453, 465, 468, 474, 491, 5ii, 513, 5i6, 540, 549, 566, 614, 704, 745, 989; RM and, 457, 476, 487, 515, 550, 569, 573; and non-park projects, 451, 464-5
World War I, 78, 82, 86, 580
World War II, 595, 833; Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel construction stopped by, 683, 689-90; public works construction stopped by, 692, 757, 796; traffic drought of, 690-1, 913
WPIX-TV, 1159
Wren, Sir Christopher, 508
Wright, Frank Lloyd, 471
Yale Alumni Weekly, 49, 51 Yale Courant, 39-40, 42, 43, 44 Yale Daily News, 40, 42 Yale Literary Magazine, 39, 40, 44, 46 Yale University: RM at, 1-2, 35, 38-47, 49, 64, 297, 469, 570, 614, 823, 1089; Kit Cat Club, 44, 46, 443; Minor Sports Association, 2, 3-4, 15,
42-4, 457 Yale Verse, 44
Zaretzki, Joseph, I ill, 1124 Zeckendorf, William, 484, 772-3, ion,
1061 Zenger, John Peter, 648
PHOTO CREDITS
Arnold Newman: Section III: plates 4-$, 6.
New York Daily News Photos: Section I: plates 6 (top), 8 (top and center), 13 (top and center), 14 (center), ij (bottom right). Section II: plates 1, 2-3 (all but bottom right), 4, 6, 7, // (bottom left), 12 (bottom), 13 (top right and bottom right), 14 (top right), 16. Section III: plates 2 (bottom right), 3 (top right), 7 (center right and bottom right).
Wide World Photos: Section I: plates 3 (top), 7 (bottom), 10 (top right and bottom right), 12 (top and center). Section II: plates 10 (center), 11 (bottom right), 13 (center), 14 (bottom), 1$ (top and bottom left).
The New York Times: Section I: plate 10 (bottom left), plate 16 (bottom).
Power Authority of the State of New York: Section I: plate 10 (top left). Section II: plate to (top and bottom), Section III: plate 7 (bottom left).
United Nations: Section III: plate 13 (top left).
Cartography by Jean-Paul Tremblay Design by Philip Grushkin
Robert A. Caro was born and lives in New York City. A graduate of Princeton University, later a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, where he studied urban planning, he was an award-winning investigative reporter for News-day for six years. To create The Power Broker, he spent seven years tracing and talking with hundreds of men and women who worked with, for or against Robert Moses, and examining mountains of files never opened to the public gaze. It was a sustained feat of investigative reporting and superb writing that has resulted in a triumph of biography, of history and of insight into the very essence of politics, and into the effect of power on personality.
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BAN STUDIES AND BIOGRAPHY
THE POWER BROKER
"In the future, the scholar who writes the history of
American cities in the twentieth century will
doubtless begin with this extraordinary eff ort."
—Richard C. Wade, The New York Times Book Review
"A ripe yarn of intrigue and of powerful figures in collision, from Al Smith to Nelson Rockefeller."
—William Greider, Washington Post Book World
"A study of municipal power that will change the way any reader of the book hereafter peruses his newspaper."
—Philip Herrera, Time
"Required reading for all those who hope to make their
way in urban politics; for the reformer, the planner,
the politician and even the ward heeler."
—Jules L. Wagman, Cleveland Press
One of the most acclaimed books of the decade, the winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman Prizes, THE POWER BROKER tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York (city and state) and makes public what few have known: that Robert Moses has been, for almost half a century, the single most powerful man of our time in New York, the shaper not only of the city's politics but of its physical structure and the problems of urban decline that plague us today.
In revealing how Moses did it—how he developed his public authorities into a political machine that was virtually a fourth branch of government, one that could bring to their knees Governors and Mayors (from La Guardia to Lindsay) by mobilizing banks, contractors, labor unions, insurance firms, even the press and the Church, into an irresistible economic force—Robert Caro reveals how power works in all the cities of the United States. Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He personally conceived and completed public works costing 27 billion dollars—the greatest builder America (and probably the world) has ever known. Without ever having been elected to office, he dominated the men who were—even his most bitter enemy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, could not control him—until he finally encountered, in Nelson Rockefeller, the only man whose power (and ruthlessness in wielding it) equalled his own.
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