A Kinder Retrospective
Moses the Colossus Gets a Parks View

By MEREDITH KOLODNER

Some called it a long-delayed but richly-deserved re-appreciation of Robert Moses. Others said it was a regressive, revisionist rehabilitation of his more-than four decades of dominance in city politics.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow 'A GREAT MAN': Henry J. Stern, whose longevity as city Parks Commissioner was second only to Robert Moses's and who like his predecessor has been accused of racially insensitive policies, called him 'a genius who was able to exercise the levers of power.'

But no one at the April 4 panel in Manhattan about Mr. Moses's impact on city parks walked away with any doubt about the massive footprint the contentious urban planner left on the city's open spaces.

A Giant of His Time

For the most part, the former Parks officials and academics, including ex-Commissioner Henry J. Stern, agreed that Mr. Moses's contributions had been unfairly maligned and underappreciated.

They pointed to the transformation of Central Park into a recreational paradise under his reign and disputed claims that Mr. Moses's approach to urban planning was tainted by racism. They argued that rather than seeing Mr. Moses as a power-hungry man motivated by unbridled ambition, he was a much-needed product of the time in which he lived.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow A CHAMPION OF RECREATION: Although Robert Moses lacked the political skills to make him popular with voters, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers said it was his vision that led to Central Park's development as a place for recreation for all visitors, rather than a horticultural enclave for the upper class.

"There is no question he was a great man," said Mr. Stern, who is second only to Mr. Moses as the longest-serving Parks Commissioner, "He was a genius who was able to exercise the levers of power."

The discussion held at the Museum of the City of New York was part of a three-museum exhibit and a series of over a dozen panels re-casting Mr. Moses and his contributions to the city's parks, bridges, housing, roadways and beaches.

A Master Builder

The discussion focused on only a slice of Mr. Moses's awesome span of power, between 1924 and 1968, during which he once held 12 positions simultaneously, including city Parks Commissioner and heads of the State Parks Council, the State Power Commission and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. The man dubbed "The Power Broker" by Robert Caro in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1974 biography built 658 playgrounds and 416 miles of parkways during his reign. Before he gripped the controls of so many city agencies, there was no Triborough Bridge, Jones Beach State Park, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, West Side Highway, or parkway system in Long Island.

MASTER OF ALL HE SURVEYED: Robert Moses, standing before a map of New York City more than a half-century ago, helped redefine that map as the prime mover behind projects ranging from the Triborough and Verrazano-Narrows Bridges to highways that uprooted many New Yorkers from their communities, such as the Cross-Bronx and Brooklyn-Queens Expressways. He was also responsible, in a variety of government positions that he held simultaneously covering parks, housing and transportation, for projects ranging from the Grand Central Parkway to the New York City Housing Authority to Jones Beach.

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, another panel member, was the city's Central Park Administrator from the position's inception in 1979 and the president of the Central Park Conservancy starting in 1980. She served in both positions until 1996 and is now president of the Foundation for Landscape Studies. Mr. Stern introduced her as "the person who has done more for city parks in the past 50 years than anyone else," noting that for the 50 years prior "that honor goes to Moses."

Ms. Rogers presented Mr. Moses as a man whose firm roots in the Progressive Era shaped his approach to changing and creating city parks. When Central Park was built during the mid-19th century, she argued, natural landscape was seen as therapeutic and a necessary escape from the congestion of the city.

'A People's Park'

"The horse-drawn carriages and promenading around the park was a wonderful refuge," she said, "when there was a notion that beauty really counted, going on boat rides, doing relaxing things." She asserted that these were not only activities of the wealthy, but that Central Park was "truly a people's park," with the working classes enjoying its expanse as well.

An alternative interpretation by left-wing social historians has been that the greenery and walkways were opened to the poor in an effort to calm the teaming masses who were rebelling under the wretched conditions of the city's slums in the late 19th-and early 20th century.

Regardless, Ms. Rogers said that in the early 20th century, the Progressive Era ushered in the idea that recreation mattered more than horticulture. Casinos and nightclubs made their way into Central Park and the lawns became a little more scruffy.

"There was no longer a protective approach to the parks," she said. "It was still a happy place, but it was very deteriorated."

A Place for Recreation

The Depression only continued this trend, with squatters shacking up in the great open spaces. "In 1934, all this stopped," she said, "and Robert Moses's vision, which was all about recreation, took over."

Mr. Moses built 19 of the current 22 playgrounds in Central Park, and with a short break due to World War II in the 1940s, continued to build in the 1950s.

She said that while the recreation spots were very popular, "none of it really had much respect for what was one of the greatest achievements of 19th century-landscape architecture." By the 1960s, people "began to protest when they felt that the Park was being encroached upon more and more."

Mr. Stern indicated that Mr. Moses was not the only one caught up in this sort of debate. "He wasn't trying to build housing or a racetrack in the park," said the former Parks Commissioner who served under Mayors Koch and Giuliani. "There's always a conflict of space between parks and recreation."

Tried to Bulldoze Moms

One of Mr. Moses's rare defeats came during the 1960s, when a group of West Side mothers laid down in front of bulldozers to prevent the construction of a new parking lot. Mr. Moses erected a fence and had the machines come in the dead of night, and the trees began to fall. But the mothers took Mr. Moses to court and eventually prevailed.

Ms. Rogers said that Central Park advocates have tried to strike a balance since that time. "There has been a preservation ethos over the last 25 years," she said. "We have tried to reanimate the great landscape and at the same time to respect these encroachments for recreation because they remain incredibly popular."

Mr. Stern responded to Ms. Rogers's presentation by noting another instance of overreaction to Mr. Moses's excesses. He said that eight years ago at a Columbia University symposium on Robert Moses, a speaker proclaimed that on his better days, Mr. Moses might be best compared to Albert Speer, who was Adolf Hitler's chief architect. "That's the kind of things people say," he mused, shaking his head.

The mostly white and greying audience of almost 200 people had little visible reaction when Mr. Stern and Hudson Institute President Herb I. London argued against Mr. Moses's reputation for racially discriminatory polices.

'Unfairly Called Racist'

"He's been called a racist," said Mr. London, who ran unsuccessfully for Mayor in 1989 and for Governor in 1990, "and unfairly accused of that, just because he didn't build a park in Harlem."

Mr. Moses's critics point most often to his approach to "clearing slums" in immigrant and black neighborhoods, which dislocated more than half a million people in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Long island.

Mr. Stern agreed with Mr. London's assessment, but said that Mr. Moses did have one bias.

"He wasn't that much of a racist," said Mr. Stern, because "there were not very many blacks around then. He was a self-hating Jew; his hiring decisions showed he was hostile to Jews."

In fact, the city's black population more than doubled between 1940 and 1960 to exceed one million, according to census figures.

'Couldn't Exist Today'

Mr. London sought to locate Mr. Moses's legacy as part of the dynamics of his time. "The Robert Moses we talk about tonight could not exist in 2007," he said. "Not with community impact statements, planning commissions, and community boards. He was a function of a particular time in history."

Some historians have noted that the growth of many of these community-based and regulatory bodies are a product of the excesses of Mr. Moses's approach to city planning.

Mr. London argued that it was important to use historical perspective to evaluate the massive parkways that cut through multiple neighborhoods, provoking protest and, some would argue, creating new slums in places like Red Hook.

"The Progressives believed that you had to take people out of the city and give them a sense of life out of the city," he asserted. "The automobile - we think about it differently now - was the technology that could allow for this combination of urban and rural."

Mr. London said he did have one complaint about Mr. Moses.

"I do have a problem with the Cross-Bronx Expressway," Mr. London said to a ripple of laughter from the crowd. "Trying to get on or off of that thing is the nightmare of my life."

Others have argued that the impact its construction had in dividing neighborhoods played a central role in The Bronx's decline beginning in the 1960s.

Upcoming panels on April 11 and May 2 will feature former Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Richard Ravitch, Commissioner of Transportation Iris Weinshall, and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, and will focus respectively on Mr. Moses's impact on city transportation and zoning laws.