Kenneth Jackson: belief

Transcript context

…Many people will have heard of Robert Moses and be vaguely aware of him through the popular biography of him by Robert Caro, The Power Broker, but most people will not be aware of the extent of his influence on New York City. Can you give a summary of the things he was able to get built in New York City? One of the best comparisons I can think of is by Caro himself, when he compared him to Christopher Wren in London, he said, if you would see his monuments and look around it's almost easier to talk about what Moses didn't do than what he did do. Essentially all the big roads, all the bridges, all the parks, the United Nations, the Lincoln Center, the World's Fairs of 1939 and 1964, and hundreds of other things he built. He didn't actually do it with his own two hands, but he was in charge. He got it done. Robert Caro wrote a really great book. I think the book was flawed because I think Caro only looked at Moses's own documents and Moses had a very narrow view of himself. He thought he was a great man but he didn't pay any attention to what was going on in LA very much, for example. But clearly, by any standard, he's the greatest builder in American history. There's nobody really in second place. And not only did he build and spend this vast amount of money, he was in power for a long time, a half century more or less. He had a singular focus. He was married, but his personal life was not important to him. He did it without scandal, even Caro admits that he really died with less than he started with. He wanted power, and boy did he have power. Technically he was subservient to governors and mayors, but since he built so much and since he had multiple jobs, that was part of his secret. He had as many as six, eight, ten different things at once. If the mayor fired him or got rid of him, he had all these different ways which he was in charge of that the mayor couldn't. So people were afraid of him, and they also respected him. He was very smart and he worked for a dollar a year. So what are you going to get him for? As Caro says, nobody is ready to be compared with Robert Moses. In fact, compare him with an act of nature. In other words, the person you can compare him with is God. That's the person. He put the rivers in. He put the hills in. He put the island in. Compare that to what Moses did. No other person could compare to that. That's a little bit of exaggeration, but when you really think about Robert Moses and you read the Power Broker, you are just stunned by the scope of his achievement. Even beyond New York, when we think of the interstate highway system, which starts in 1954/55/56, and which is 40- thousand miles of interstate highways, those were built by Moses' men, people who had in their young life had worked with the parkways and expressways in and around New York City. So they were ready to go. Moses also worked both outside and inside New York City. He achieved so much. You need to understand that it's not easy to get things done in New York. It's very, very dense. Twice as dense as any place in the United States and full of neighborhoods that feel like and are little cities that don't want change, even today. A place like Austin, for example, is heavy into development, not New York. place in the United States and full of neighborhoods that feel like and are little cities that don't want change, even today. A place like Austin, for example, is heavy into development, not New York. You want to build a tall building in New York, you have got to fight for it. And the fact that he did so much in the face of opposition speaks a lot to his methods. And how did Moses do what he did? That is a huge question because it isn't happening anymore, certainly not in New York City.…

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