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123-476: The firm's work in New York City was closely associated with the tenure of Robert Moses as NYC Parks Commissioner, and included many major elements of the city's infrastructure. They often worked in concert with architects, other engineers and specialty consultants to complete large and complex urban infrastructure projects. Madigan (1894-1981) was a Danbury, Connecticut native who worked his way up in

246-481: A "semi-memoir" focused on "Caro's selection of observations...on the arts of researching, interviewing and writing". When asked about other works he would have pursued, Caro replied a biography on Al Smith , commenting "the more you learn about Al Smith, the more you realize he is probably the most forgotten consequential figure in American history." After conducting his years-long research, Caro attempts to "see

369-457: A Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 1914, Moses became attracted to New York City reform politics. At the start a committed idealist , Moses developed several plans to rid New York of patronage hiring practices, including authoring a 1919 proposal to reorganize the New York state government, which was ultimately not adopted but drew the attention of Belle Moskowitz ,

492-611: A Robert A. Caro Study Space. A permanent exhibition, named Robert Caro Working , after his 2019 book Working , will be set up at the Society's library. Caro stated that he was "just plain delighted" since his "favorite aunt often took" him there, as well as having spoken there and "been a recipient of its awards". An exhibition called "Turn Every Page": Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive opened on October 22, 2021, becoming "the first permanent public exhibition of an archive devoted to

615-766: A bridge. He also clashed with the chief engineer of the project, Ole Singstad , who preferred a tunnel instead of a bridge. Only a lack of a key federal approval thwarted the bridge project. President Roosevelt ordered the War Department to assert that bombing a bridge in that location would block East River access to the Brooklyn Navy Yard upstream. Thwarted, Moses dismantled the New York Aquarium on Castle Clinton and moved it to Coney Island in Brooklyn, where it grew much bigger. This

738-610: A businessman, spoke Yiddish as well as English, but he did not speak either very often. He was "very silent," Caro said, and became more so after Caro's mother died, after a long illness, when Robert was 12. It was his mother's deathbed wish that he should go to the Horace Mann School , an exclusive private school in the Riverdale section of The Bronx . As a student there, Caro translated an edition of his school newspaper into Russian and mailed 10,000 copies to students in

861-621: A friend and trusted advisor to Governor Al Smith . When the state Secretary of State's position became appointive rather than elective, Smith named Moses. He served from 1927 to 1929. Moses rose to power with Smith, who was elected as governor in 1918, and then again in 1922. With Smith's support, Moses set in motion a sweeping consolidation of the New York State government. During that period Moses began his first foray into large-scale public work initiatives, while drawing on Smith's political power to enact legislation. This helped create

984-785: A job teaching school to fund work on The Power Broker and is the only other person who conducted research for his books. Ina is the author of The Road from the Past: Traveling Through History in France (1996), a book which Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called, at the presentation of her honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from The City University of New York in 2011, "the essential traveling companion ... for all who love France and its history". Newsweek reviewer Peter Prescott commented, "I'd rather go to France with Ina Caro than with Henry Adams or Henry James . The unique premise of her intelligent and discerning book

1107-480: A living author in the country". The title comes from advice that then-editor of Newsday , Alan Hathway , gave to Caro as a young reporter on Caro's first investigative assignment. According to Caro, Hathway "looked at me for what I remember as a very long time … 'Just remember,' he said. 'Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddamn page.'" The advice is the title of the 2022 documentary on Caro and editor Robert Gottlieb 's collaborations, directed by

1230-601: A long period and she may have changed the will of her own accord, and implies that Robert's subsequent treatment of Paul may have been legally justifiable but was morally questionable. During the last years of his life, Moses concentrated on his lifelong love of swimming and was an active member of the Colonie Hill Health Club. Moses died of heart disease on July 29, 1981, at the age of 92 at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip, New York . Moses

1353-576: A member of the Temporary Long Island Railroad Commission, installed after the Richmond Hill train crash on November 22, 1950, that claimed 79 lives. The Commission recommended the state purchase and operation by non-profit public authority of the railway service. Moses had influence outside the New York area as well. Public officials in many smaller American cities hired him to design freeway networks in

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1476-471: A minimum 55-yard (50 m) length, underwater lighting, heating, filtration, and low-cost construction materials. To fit the requirement for cheap materials, each building would be built using elements of the Streamline Moderne and Classical architectural styles. The buildings would also be near "comfort stations", additional playgrounds, and spruced-up landscapes. Construction for some of

1599-524: A new executive budget system, and the four-year term limit for the governorship. During the Depression , Moses, along with Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia , was especially interested in creating new pools and other bathing facilities, such as those in Jacob Riis Park , Jones Beach , and Orchard Beach . He devised a list of 23 pools around the city. The pools would be built using funds from

1722-496: A reporter, Caro wrote The Power Broker (1974), a biography of New York urban planner Robert Moses, which was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century. He has since written four of a planned five volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson (1982, 1990, 2002, 2012), a biography of the former president. Caro has been described as "the most influential biographer of

1845-460: A residential complex specifically designed for these veterans, and purportedly trying to make swimming pool water cold in order to drive away potential African American residents in white neighborhoods. People had come to see Moses as a bully who disregarded public input, but until the publication of Caro's book, they had not known many details of his private life—for instance, that his older brother Paul had spent much of his life in poverty. Moses

1968-526: A role in the merged authority, Moses declined to challenge the merger. On March 1, 1968, the TBTA was folded into the MTA and Moses gave up his post as chairman of the TBTA. He eventually became a consultant to the MTA, but its new chairman and the governor froze him out—the promised role did not materialize, and for all practical purposes Moses was out of power. Moses had thought he had convinced Nelson Rockefeller of

2091-409: A standalone facility at Tompkinsville Pool . Moses, along with architects Aymar Embury II and Gilmore David Clarke , created a common design for these proposed aquatic centers. Each location was to have distinct pools for diving, swimming, and wading; bleachers and viewing areas; and bathhouses with locker rooms that could be used as gymnasiums. The pools were to have several common features, such as

2214-515: A story, you're not being faithful to history." Caro's books have been published by Alfred A. Knopf , first under editor-in-chief Robert Gottlieb and then by Sonny Mehta after Gottlieb's temporary departure to The New Yorker in 1987. Gottlieb remained Caro's primary editor throughout. "We have these unbelievable angry exchanges, but it's always worth it to me," Caro said of his relationship with Gottlieb. "Sometimes we can spend two hours discussing whether to combine two paragraphs." Following

2337-529: A study of Caro's favorite theme: the acquisition and use of power. He expected it would take nine months to complete, but instead it took him until 1974. The work was based on extensive research and a total of 522 interviews, including several with Michael Madigan (who worked for Moses for 35 years); numerous interviews with Sidney Shapiro (Moses's general manager for forty years) and seven interviews with Moses himself. Caro also interviewed men who worked for and knew Moses's mentor, New York Governor Al Smith . During

2460-456: A sudden I said to myself: "This is completely wrong. This isn't why highways get built. Highways get built because Robert Moses wants them built there. If you don't find out and explain to people where Robert Moses gets his power, then everything else you do is going to be dishonest." To do so, Caro began work on a biography of Moses, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York , also

2583-477: A supplier that would manufacture them on the condition that Caro order a dozen gross , or 1,728 units. He edits with the use of red 314 Berol Draughting pencils and keeps "a ledger tracking how many words he has written against his stringent 1,000-word daily goal". Though he now works in an office, at one point he wrote "in the woods ... in a shack, a 12×15 ... put on cinderblocks". For his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson, Caro has won

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2706-498: A tunnel connecting Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan . A 1941 publication from the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority claimed that the government had forced them to build a tunnel at "twice the cost, twice the operating fees, twice the difficulty to engineer, and half the traffic," although engineering studies did not support these conclusions, and a tunnel may have held many of the advantages Moses publicly tried to attach to

2829-562: A tunnel. LaGuardia and Lehman as usual had little money to spend, in part due to the Great Depression , while the federal government was running low on funds after recently spending $ 105 million ($ 1.8 billion in 2016) on the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and other City projects and refused to provide any additional funds to New York. Awash in funds from Triborough Bridge tolls, Moses deemed that money could only be spent on

2952-476: A year. The Authority was thus able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars by selling bonds, a method also used by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to fund large public construction projects. Toll revenues rose quickly as traffic on the bridges exceeded all projections. Rather than pay off the bonds, Moses used the revenue to build other toll projects, a cycle that would feed on itself. In

3075-463: Is also a Robert Moses Playground in New York City. There are other signs of the surviving appreciation held for him by some circles of the public. A statue of Moses was erected next to the Village Hall in his long-time hometown, Babylon Village, New York . During his tenure as chief of the state park system, the state's inventory of parks grew to nearly 2,600,000 acres (1,100,000 ha). By

3198-633: Is blamed for having destroyed more than a score of neighborhoods by building 13 expressways across New York City and by building large urban renewal projects with little regard for the urban fabric or for human scale. Yet the author is more neutral in his central premise: the city would have developed much differently without Moses. Other U.S. cities were doing the same thing as New York in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s; Boston , San Francisco , and Seattle , for instance, each built highways straight through their downtown areas just as Moses wished to do in New York. The New York City architectural intelligentsia of

3321-477: Is now SoHo . This plan and the Mid-Manhattan Expressway both failed politically. One of his most vocal critics during this time was the urban activist Jane Jacobs , whose book The Death and Life of Great American Cities was instrumental in turning opinion against Moses's plans; the city government rejected the expressway in 1964. Moses's power was further eroded by his association with

3444-652: Is so startling that it's a wonder no one has thought of it before." Ina frequently writes about her travels through France in her blog, Paris to the Past . In June 2011, W. W. Norton published her second book, Paris to the Past: Traveling Through French History by Train . Robert Caro had a younger sibling, Michael, a retired real estate manager, who died in 2018. Caro's son, Chase, pled guilty to second-degree grand larceny in 2007 for stealing over $ 750,000 from three former clients in

3567-534: Is widely viewed as a seminal work because it combined painstaking historical research with a smoothly flowing narrative writing style. The success of this approach was evident in his chapter on the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway , where Caro reported the controversy from all perspectives, including that of neighborhood residents. The result was a work of powerful literary as well as academic interest. Upon its publication, Moses responded to

3690-723: The Home News Tribune , in New Jersey. He took a brief leave to work as a publicist for the Middlesex County Democratic Party . He left politics after an incident where he was accompanying the party chair to polling places on election day. A police officer reported to the party chair that some African Americans Caro saw being loaded into a police van , under arrest, were poll watchers who "had been giving them some trouble". Caro left politics right there. "I still think about it," he recalled in

3813-475: The 1964 New York World's Fair . His projections for attendance of 70 million people for this event proved wildly optimistic, and generous contracts for fair executives and contractors made matters worse economically. Moses's repeated and forceful public denials of the fair's considerable financial difficulties in the face of evidence to the contrary eventually provoked press and governmental investigations, which found accounting irregularities. In his organization of

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3936-794: The American Academy in Berlin , Germany but then was unable to attend. In 2010, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama, the highest award in the humanities given in the United States. Delivering remarks at the end of the ceremony, the President said, "I think about Robert Caro and reading The Power Broker back when I was 22 years old and just being mesmerized, and I'm sure it helped to shape how I think about politics." In 2011, Robert Caro

4059-740: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee 's Research Department. In 2011, his alma mater, Horace Mann School , began awarding the Robert Caro '53 Prize for Literary Excellence in the Writing of History, at a ceremony held annually at the head of school's home. In 2017, the school named a classroom at Tillinghast Hall, the "Robert A. Caro '53 History Classroom", to which Caro reacted by stating that it would be "hard for [him] to think of anything that would make [him] happier". Motherless Brooklyn ,

4182-538: The Ground Zero site of the former World Trade Center or to the delays and technical problems surrounding the Second Avenue Subway and Boston's Big Dig project. Robert Caro Robert Allan Caro (born October 30, 1935) is an American journalist and author known for his biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson . After working for many years as

4305-610: The Long Island newspaper Newsday . An early article, "Anatomy of a $ 9 Burglary," investigating the lives of those affected by a theft of $ 9 from a Long Island home, was held by The New York Times as a strong example of Caro's ceaseless research process to uncover the deep truth behind a story. One of the articles he wrote was a long series about why a proposed bridge across Long Island Sound from Rye to Oyster Bay , championed by Robert Moses , would have been inadvisable, requiring piers so large it would disrupt tidal flows in

4428-526: The National Humanities Medal . Due to Caro's reputation for exhaustive research and detail, he is sometimes invoked by reviewers of other writers who are called "Caro-esque" for their own extensive research. Caro was born in New York City, the son of Jewish parents Celia (née Mendelow), born in New York, and Benjamin Caro, born in Warsaw, Poland . He grew up on Central Park West at 94th Street. His father,

4551-671: The New York Mets , who played at Shea until 2008, when the stadium was demolished and replaced with Citi Field . The NFL's New York Jets also played its home games at Shea from 1964 until 1983, after which the team moved its home games to the Meadowlands Sports Complex in New Jersey. Moses's reputation began to fade during the 1960s. Around this time, Moses's political acumen began to fail him, as he unwisely picked several controversial political battles he could not possibly win. For example, his campaign against

4674-968: The Pulitzer Prize for Biography twice, the National Book Critics Circle Award for the Best Nonfiction Book of the Year three times, and has won various other major literary honors, including two National Book Awards (one for Lifetime Achievement), the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Art and Letters , and the Francis Parkman Prize . In October 2007, Caro was named a "Holtzbrinck Distinguished Visitor" at

4797-522: The Robert F. Kennedy Bridge ) opened in 1936, connecting the Bronx , Manhattan , and Queens via three separate spans. Language in its Authority's bond contracts and multi-year Commissioner appointments made it largely impervious to pressure from mayors and governors. While New York City and New York State were perpetually strapped for money, the bridge's toll revenues amounted to tens of millions of dollars

4920-903: The Robert Moses Causeway on Long Island, and the Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant in Lewiston, New York . The Niagara Scenic Parkway in Niagara Falls, New York was originally named the Robert Moses State Parkway in his honor; its name was changed in 2016. The Moses-Saunders Power Dam in Massena, New York also bears his name. Moses also has a school named after him in North Babylon, New York on Long Island; there

5043-562: The Throgs Neck Bridge , as well as several major highways. These roadways and bridges, alongside urban renewal efforts that destroyed huge swaths of tenement housing and replaced them with large public housing projects , transformed the physical fabric of New York and inspired other cities to undertake similar development endeavors. Moses's reputation declined after the publication of Robert Caro 's Pulitzer Prize -winning biography The Power Broker (1974), which cast doubt on

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5166-627: The Voting Rights Act , and his consummate skill in getting this enacted in spite of intense opposition from Southern Democrats . Among sources close to the late president, Johnson's widow Lady Bird Johnson "spoke to [Caro] several times and then abruptly stopped without giving a reason, and Bill Moyers , Johnson's press secretary, has never consented to be interviewed, but most of Johnson's closest friends, including John Connally and George Christian , Johnson's last press secretary, who spoke to Caro practically on his deathbed, have gone on

5289-646: The Works Progress Administration (WPA), a federal agency created as part of the New Deal to combat the Depression's negative effects. Eleven of these pools were to be designed concurrently and open in 1936. These comprised ten pools at Astoria Park , Betsy Head Park , Crotona Park , Hamilton Fish Park , Highbridge Park , Thomas Jefferson Park , McCarren Park , Red Hook Park , Jackie Robinson Park , and Sunset Park , as well as

5412-433: The federal government found itself with millions of New Deal dollars to spend, yet states and cities had few projects ready. Moses was one of the few local officials who had projects shovel ready . For that reason, New York City was able to obtain significant Works Progress Administration (WPA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and other Depression-era funding. One of his most influential and longest-lasting positions

5535-462: The subway system . Moses opposed this idea and fought to prevent it. Lindsay then removed Moses from his post as the city's chief advocate for federal highway money in Washington. The legislature's vote to fold the TBTA into the newly created Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) could have led to a lawsuit by the TBTA bondholders. Since the bond contracts were written into state law, it

5658-408: The "development scheme" mentality cultivated by Moses even though it was the impoverished Pennsylvania Railroad that was actually responsible for the demolition. This casual destruction of one of New York's greatest architectural landmarks helped prompt many city residents to turn against Moses's plans to build a Lower Manhattan Expressway , which would have gone through Greenwich Village and what

5781-557: The 11 pools began in October 1934. By mid-1936, ten of the eleven WPA-funded pools were completed and were being opened at a rate of one per week. Combined, the facilities could accommodate 66,000 swimmers. The eleven WPA pools were considered for New York City landmark status in 1990. Ten of the pools were designated as New York City landmarks in 2007 and 2008. Moses allegedly fought to keep African American swimmers out of his pools and beaches. One subordinate remembers Moses saying

5904-626: The 1930s to the 1960s, Robert Moses was responsible for the construction of the Triborough , Marine Parkway , Throgs Neck , Bronx-Whitestone , Henry Hudson , and Verrazzano-Narrows Bridges . His other projects included the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and Staten Island Expressway (together constituting most of Interstate 278 ); the Cross-Bronx Expressway ; many New York State parkways ; and other highways. Federal interest had shifted from parkway to freeway systems, and

6027-747: The 1930s to well into the 1960s because the parkways and expressways that were built replaced, at least to some extent, the planned subway lines. The 1968 Program for Action (which was never completed) was hoped to counter that. Other critics charge that he precluded the use of public transit, which would have allowed non-car-owners to enjoy the elaborate recreation facilities he built. Caro's The Power Broker also accused Moses of building low bridges across his parkways to make them inaccessible to public transit buses, thereby restricting "the use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families" who did not own cars. Caro also wrote that Moses attempted to discourage Black people in particular from visiting Jones Beach,

6150-408: The 1940s and 1950s, who largely believed in such proponents of the automobile as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe , had supported Moses. Many other cities, like Newark , Chicago , and St. Louis , also built massive, unattractive public housing projects. Caro also points out that Moses demonstrated racist tendencies . These allegedly included opposing black World War II veterans to move into

6273-558: The 1940s and early 1950s. For example, Portland, Oregon hired Moses in 1943; his plan included a loop around the city center , with spurs running through neighborhoods. Of this plan, only I-405 , its links with I-5 , and the Fremont Bridge were built. Moses himself did not know how to drive an automobile. Moses's highways in the first half of the 20th century were parkways—curving, landscaped "ribbon parks" that were intended to be pleasures to travel on, as well as "lungs for

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6396-604: The 1948 runoff for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate was only achieved through extensive fraud and ballot box stuffing , although this is set in the practices of the time and in the context of Johnson's previous defeat in his 1941 race for the Senate, the victim of exactly similar chicanery. Caro highlighted some of Johnson's campaign contributions, such as those from the Texas construction firm Brown and Root . In 1962

6519-579: The 1967–1968 academic year, Caro worked on the book as a Carnegie Fellow at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism . His wife, Ina , functioned as his research assistant. Her master's thesis on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge stemmed from this work. At one point she sold the family home and took a teaching job so Robert would be financially able to finish the book. The Power Broker

6642-468: The 2012 Times Magazine profile. "It wasn't the roughness of the police that made such an impression. It was the – meekness isn't the right word – the acceptance of those people of what was happening." After briefly enrolling in the English doctoral program at Rutgers University , where he served as a teaching assistant, he spent six years as an investigative reporter with

6765-616: The 2019 film directed by Edward Norton , loosely based on the 1999 novel of the same name by Jonathan Lethem , was inspired by Caro's biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker . León Krauze wrote in Slate comparing Norton's character in that film to Caro himself. In January 2020, the New-York Historical Society acquired Caro's complete archive, consisting of "200 linear feet of material", part of which will be digitized and made wholly available to researchers in

6888-538: The Caro mold" for their own extensive research. These include Renata Adler , Taylor Branch , David Garrow , Garrett Graff , Gerard Henderson , Jason Horowitz, Francis Jennings , Robert G. Kaiser , David Paul Kuhn , Roland Lazenby , David Maraniss , David McCullough , Charles Moore , Edmund Morris , Roger Morris , David Nasaw , Richard Neustadt , Les and Tamara Payne, Steven Pressfield , Michael Shnayerson , Lytton Strachey , Julia E. Sweig , William T. Vollmann , Mark Lewisohn , and

7011-507: The Development of Ernest Hemingway's Thought", was so long, Caro claims, that the university's English department subsequently established a maximum length for senior theses by its students. He graduated cum laude in 1957. According to a 2012 New York Times Magazine profile, "Caro said he now thinks that Princeton, which he chose because of its parties, was one of his mistakes, and that he should have gone to Harvard . Princeton in

7134-465: The Smith Coronas, send theirs to him. Other individuals have attempted to sell Caro theirs. However, he only answers letters offering them as gifts. Since Caro retypes several versions of his manuscripts before submitting them for publication, he prefers a bolder text, which he achieves by using cotton ribbon , instead of the now-common nylon. As the former were discontinued, his wife Ina found

7257-666: The Soviet Union, were all BIE members and they declined to participate, instead reserving their efforts for Expo 67 in Montreal . After the World's Fair debacle, New York City mayor John Lindsay , along with Governor Nelson Rockefeller , sought to direct toll revenues from the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority 's (TBTA) bridges and tunnels to cover deficits in the city's then financially ailing agencies, including

7380-849: The Taconic State Park Commission, who favored the prompt construction of a parkway through the Hudson Valley . Moses succeeded in diverting funds to his Long Island parkway projects (the Northern State Parkway , the Southern State Parkway and the Wantagh State Parkway ), although the Taconic State Parkway was later completed as well. Moses helped build Long Island's Meadowbrook State Parkway . It

7503-645: The USSR. Graduating in 1953, he went on to Princeton University , where he majored in English. He became managing editor of The Daily Princetonian , second to Johnny Apple , later a prominent editor at The New York Times . His writings, both in class and out, had been lengthy since his years at Horace Mann. A short story he wrote for The Princeton Tiger , the school's humor magazine, took up almost an entire issue. His 235-page long senior thesis on existentialism in Hemingway , titled "Heading Out: A Study of

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7626-400: The United States. Never elected to any office, Moses held various positions throughout his more-than-40-year career. He held as many as 12 titles at once, including New York City Parks Commissioner and chairman of the Long Island State Park Commission . By working closely with New York governor Al Smith early in his career, he became expert in writing laws and navigating and manipulating

7749-435: The anti-development sentiment was now insurmountable and in 1973 Rockefeller canceled plans for the bridge. Moses's image suffered a further blow in 1974 with the publication of The Power Broker , a Pulitzer Prize –winning biography by Robert A. Caro . Caro's 1,200-page opus (edited down from 2,000 or so pages) showed Moses generally in a negative light; essayist Phillip Lopate writes that "Moses's satanic reputation with

7872-425: The biography in a 23-page statement repudiating the book. Following The Power Broker , Caro turned his attention to President Lyndon B. Johnson . Caro's editor Robert Gottlieb initially suggested the Johnson project to Caro in preference to the planned follow-up to the Moses volume, a biography of Fiorello LaGuardia . The ex-president had recently died and Caro had already decided, before meeting with Gottlieb on

7995-406: The book would be finished, mentioning anywhere from two to ten years. As of January 2020, Caro had completed 600 typed manuscript pages and was working on a section relating to the passage of Medicare in 1965. Caro's books portray Johnson as a complex and contradictory character: at the same time a scheming opportunist and visionary progressive. Caro argues, for example, that Johnson's victory in

8118-580: The bridge option. This had not been the first time Moses pressed for a bridge over a tunnel. He had tried to upstage the Tunnel Authority when the Queens-Midtown Tunnel was being planned. He had raised the same arguments, which failed due to their lack of political support. Moses's power increased after World War II after Mayor LaGuardia retired and a series of successors consented to almost all of his proposals. Named city "construction coordinator" in 1946 by Mayor William O'Dwyer , Moses became New York City's de facto representative in Washington . Moses

8241-423: The bridge was opposed by the Regional Plan Association , historical preservationists, Wall Street financial interests, property owners, various high society people, construction unions , the Manhattan borough president , Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia , and governor Herbert H. Lehman . Despite this, Moses favored a bridge, which could both carry more automobile traffic and serve as a higher visibility monument than

8364-556: The builder who can remove ghettos without moving people as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs." Additionally, there were allegations that Moses selectively chose locations for recreational facilities based on the racial compositions of a neighborhood, such as when he selected sites for eleven pools that opened in 1936. According to one author, Moses purposely placed some pools in neighborhoods with mainly white populations to deter African Americans from using them, and other pools intended for African Americans, such as

8487-427: The car and drove home to Long Island, and I kept thinking to myself: 'Everything you've been doing is baloney. You've been writing under the belief that power in a democracy comes from the ballot box. But here's a guy who has never been elected to anything, who has enough power to turn the entire state around, and you don't have the slightest idea how he got it.'" Caro gave a speech to introduce Senator Ted Kennedy on

8610-477: The centerpiece of the Long Island state park system, by such measures as making it difficult for Black groups to get permits to park buses, and assigning Black lifeguards to "distant, less developed beaches". While the exclusion of commercial vehicles and the use of low bridges where appropriate were standard on earlier parkways, where they had been instituted for aesthetic reasons, Moses appears to have made greater use of low bridges, which his aide Sidney Shapiro said

8733-538: The city and removed the Zoning Commissioner from power in the process. Moses was also empowered as the sole authority to negotiate in Washington for New York City projects. By 1959, he had overseen construction of 28,000 apartment units on hundreds of acres of land. In clearing the land for high-rises in accordance with the towers in the park concept, which at that time was seen as innovative and beneficial by leaving more grassy areas between high-rises, Moses sometimes destroyed almost as many housing units as he built. From

8856-554: The city". However, post–World War II economic expansion , and notion of the automotive city , led to the creation of freeways , most notably in the form of the vast, federally funded Interstate Highway network . When the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers , Walter O'Malley , sought to replace the outdated and dilapidated Ebbets Field , he proposed building a new stadium near the Long Island Rail Road on

8979-611: The company was acquired by another Texas firm, Halliburton , which became a major contractor in the Vietnam War . Caro argued that Johnson was awarded the Silver Star in World War II for political as well as military reasons, and that he later lied to journalists and the public about the circumstances for which it was awarded. Caro's portrayal of Johnson also notes his struggles on behalf of progressive causes such as

9102-404: The construction industry without formal education and who did not complete high school. Hyland received his training as a civil engineer from Notre Dame University . The two met in 1927 and formed the firm shortly after, with Madigan providing business experience and New York City connections, complemented by Hyland's professional design expertise. Madigan had met and impressed Robert Moses - then

9225-642: The construction of Jones Beach State Park , the most-visited public beach in the United States, and was the primary architect of the New York State Parkway System . As head of the Triborough Bridge Authority , Moses had near-complete control over bridges and tunnels in New York City as well as the tolls collected from them; he built, among others, the Triborough Bridge , the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel , and

9348-462: The corner of Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush Avenue (next to the present-day Barclays Center , home of the NBA 's Brooklyn Nets ). O'Malley urged Moses to help him secure the property through eminent domain, but Moses refused, having already decided to build a parking garage on the site. Moreover, O'Malley's proposal — to have the city acquire the property for several times as much as he had originally said he

9471-529: The course of real estate transactions. In April 2008, he was sentenced to 2 + 1 ⁄ 2 – 7 + 1 ⁄ 2 years in prison after admitting to stealing $ 310,000 meant for his grandparents' trust fund. Chase agreed to pay restitution of $ 1.1 million, which includes funds from a third theft. All his sentences ran concurrently. As of 2012 , Chase works in information technology. Due to Caro's work ethic and voluminous work several authors have been compared to him and labelled as "Caro-esque", "Caro-like" or "in

9594-603: The day. O'Malley vehemently opposed that plan, citing the team's Brooklyn identity. Moses refused to budge and, after the 1957 season, the Dodgers left for Los Angeles and the New York Giants left for San Francisco . Moses was later able to build the 55,000-seat multi-purpose Shea Stadium on the site. Construction ran from October 1961 to its delayed completion in April 1964. The stadium attracted an expansion franchise,

9717-418: The deaths of Mehta and Gottlieb, primary editing responsibility fell to his long-time second editor Kathy Hourigan. A 2022 documentary, Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb , examined Caro and Gottlieb's working relationship. Caro has expressed hope of writing a "full-scale memoir" after completing The Years of Lyndon Johnson . His 2019 book Working has been described as

9840-491: The development of Jones Beach State Park . Displaying a strong command of law as well as matters of engineering , Moses became known for his skill in drafting legislation, and was called "the best bill drafter in Albany ". At a time when the public was accustomed to Tammany Hall corruption and incompetence, Moses was seen as a savior of government. Shortly after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933,

9963-762: The estates of the rich, but told owners of the family farms who lost land that it was an unbiased decision based on "engineering considerations." The book also charged that Moses libeled officials who opposed him, attempting to have them removed from office by calling them communists during the Red Scare . The biography further notes that Moses fought against schools and other public needs in favor of his preference for parks. Moses's critics charge that he preferred automobiles over people. They point out that he displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in New York City and destroyed traditional neighborhoods by building multiple expressways through them. The projects contributed to

10086-464: The fair, Moses's reputation was now undermined by the same personal character traits that had worked in his favor in the past: disdain for the opinions of others and high-handed attempts to get his way in moments of conflict by turning to the press. The fact that the fair was not sanctioned by the Bureau of International Expositions (BIE), the worldwide body supervising such events, would be devastating to

10209-546: The first nine years of his life living at 83 Dwight Street in New Haven, two blocks from Yale University . In 1897, the Moses family moved to New York City, where they lived on East 46th Street off Fifth Avenue. Moses's father was a successful department store owner and real estate speculator in New Haven. In order for the family to move to New York City, he sold his real estate holdings and store, then retired. Moses's mother

10332-582: The free Shakespeare in the Park program received much negative publicity, and his effort to destroy a shaded playground in Central Park to make way for a parking lot for the expensive Tavern-on-the-Green restaurant earned him many enemies among the middle-class voters of the Upper West Side . The opposition reached a climax over the demolition of Pennsylvania Station , which many attributed to

10455-567: The full project had expanded to five volumes with the fifth requiring another two to three years to write. It will cover Johnson and Vietnam, the Great Society and civil rights era, his decision not to run in 1968, and eventual retirement. In a 2017 interview, Caro expressed his intent to embark shortly on a research trip to Vietnam. In an interview with The New York Review of Books in January 2018, Caro indicated he did not know when

10578-523: The industry. Distinguished employees of the firm included Emil Praeger , a notable engineer and designer in his own right. The firm was also part of a large team of consultants who contributed to the design of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge , including principal designer Othmar Ammann , and was also involved in the later strengthening and widening of the bridge. Robert Moses Robert Moses (December 18, 1888 – July 29, 1981)

10701-424: The initial funding approved by the New York State legislature, knowing the legislature would eventually have to fund the full project to avoid appearing to have provided ineffective oversight ( fait accompli ). He was also characterized as using his political power to benefit cronies, including a case in which he secretly shifted the planned route of the Northern State Parkway large distances to avoid impinging on

10824-663: The last century". For his biographies, Caro has won two Pulitzer Prizes in Biography , two National Book Awards (including one for Lifetime Achievement), the Francis Parkman Prize , three National Book Critics Circle Awards , the Mencken Award for Best Book, the Carr P. Collins Award from the Texas Institute of Letters , the D. B. Hardeman Prize , and a Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In 2010 President Barack Obama awarded Caro

10947-427: The late 1930s a municipal controversy raged over whether an additional vehicular link between Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan should be built as a bridge or a tunnel. Bridges can be wider and cheaper to build, but taller and longer bridges use more ramp space at landfall than tunnels do. A "Brooklyn Battery Bridge" would have decimated Battery Park and physically encroached on the financial district, and for this reason,

11070-662: The mid-1950s was hardly known for being hospitable towards the Jewish community, and though Caro says he did not personally suffer from anti-Semitism , he saw plenty of students who did." He had a sports column in the Princetonian and also wrote for the Princeton Tiger humor magazine. Caro began his professional career as a reporter with the New Brunswick Daily Home News , now merged into

11193-452: The need for one last great bridge project, a span crossing Long Island Sound from Rye to Oyster Bay . Rockefeller did not press for the project in the late 1960s through 1970, fearing public backlash among suburban Republicans would hinder his re-election prospects. A 1972 study found the bridge was fiscally prudent and could be environmentally manageable (according to the comparatively low environmental impact parameters of that period), but

11316-582: The new Long Island State Park Commission and the State Council of Parks. In 1924, Governor Smith appointed Moses chairman of the State Council of Parks and president of the Long Island State Park Commission. This centralization allowed Smith to run a government later used as a model for Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal federal government. Moses also received numerous commissions that he carried out efficiently, such as

11439-482: The new roads mostly conformed to the new vision, lacking the landscaping or the commercial traffic restrictions of the pre-war highways. He was the mover behind Shea Stadium and Lincoln Center , and contributed to the United Nations headquarters . On November 25, 1950, Governor Thomas E. Dewey appointed Moses along with former Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson and former Justice Charles C. Lockwood as

11562-543: The one in Colonial Park (now Jackie Robinson Park ), were placed in inconvenient locations. Another author wrote that of 255 playgrounds built in the 1930s under Moses's tenure, only two were in largely Black neighborhoods. Caro wrote that close associates of Moses had claimed they could keep African Americans from using the Thomas Jefferson Pool , in then-predominantly-white East Harlem , by making

11685-411: The pools should be kept a few degrees colder, allegedly because Moses believed African Americans did not like cold water. Although Moses had power over the construction of all New York City Housing Authority public housing projects and headed many other entities, it was his chairmanship of the Triborough Bridge Authority that gave him the most power. The Triborough Bridge (later officially renamed

11808-746: The president of the Long Island Park Commission - the year before while serving as superintendent on a portion of the development of Jones Beach State Park for another company. During World War II , he was a special assistant to Robert Patterson , then the Undersecretary of War, and was awarded the Medal for Merit as acknowledgement of his efforts. Subsequent to the war, he became the World Bank 's chief engineer from 1947-49 and again from 1951-67 at which point he retired from

11931-553: The public can be traced, in the main, to ... Caro's magnificent biography". For example, Caro describes Moses's lack of sensitivity in the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway , and how he disfavored public transit . Much of Moses's reputation is attributable to Caro, whose book won both the Pulitzer Prize in Biography in 1975 and the Francis Parkman Prize (which is awarded by the Society of American Historians ), and

12054-496: The publication of The Passage of Power in 2012, Caro owned 14 Smith Coronas, which came down to 11 in 2019. One of these, the one used when writing The Power Broker , was placed on display in the New-York Historical Society's "Turn Every Page": Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive exhibition. Since production of these was discontinued, Caro uses his reserve to supply parts when these become defective. The typewriters are supplied to him from individuals who, upon knowing his use of

12177-456: The purported benefits of many of Moses's projects and further cast Moses as racist. In large part because of The Power Broker , Moses is today considered a controversial figure in the history of New York City as well as New York State. Moses was born in New Haven, Connecticut , on December 18, 1888, to parents of German Jewish descent, Isabella “Bella” (Cohen) and Emanuel Moses. He spent

12300-481: The record". While writing the books, Caro read the works of the novelist Leo Tolstoy and the historian Edward Gibbon , alternating between the two. "There's almost a view that if it's well written it can't be good history," he told Mark Rozzo of the Los Angeles Times in 2002. "In my view, it's not good history unless it is well written. History is a narrative. History is a story. If you're not telling

12423-614: The ruin of the South Bronx and the amusement parks of Coney Island , caused the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants Major League baseball teams to relocate to Los Angeles and San Francisco respectively, and precipitated the decline of public transport from disinvestment and neglect. His building of expressways also hindered the proposed expansion of the New York City Subway from

12546-423: The scale of works with the high cost and the slow speed of public works in the decades following his era. The peak of Moses's construction occurred during the economic duress of the Great Depression , and despite the era's woes, Moses's projects were completed in a timely fashion and have been reliable public works since then, which compares favorably to the delays that New York City officials have had in redeveloping

12669-497: The second day of the 2004 Democratic National Convention , emphasizing the importance of courage in American leaders. Caro spent the academic year of 1965–1966 as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University . During a class on urban planning and land use , the experience of watching Moses returned to him. They were talking one day about highways and where they got built ... and here were these mathematical formulas about traffic density and population density and so on, and all of

12792-409: The sound, amongst other problems. Caro believed that his work had influenced even the state's powerful governor Nelson Rockefeller to reconsider the idea, until he saw the state's Assembly vote overwhelmingly to pass a preliminary measure for the bridge. "That was one of the transformational moments of my life," Caro said years later. It led him to think about Moses for the first time. "I got in

12915-439: The subject, to undertake his biography; he "wanted to write about power". Caro retraced Johnson's life by temporarily moving to rural Texas and Washington, D.C., in order to better understand Johnson's upbringing and to interview anyone who had known Johnson. The work, entitled The Years of Lyndon Johnson , was originally intended as a trilogy, but is projected to encompass five volumes: In November 2011, Caro announced that

13038-576: The success of the event. Moses refused to accept BIE requirements, including a restriction against charging ground rents to exhibitors, and the BIE in turn instructed its member nations not to participate. The United States had already staged the sanctioned Century 21 Exposition in Seattle in 1962. According to the rules of the organization, no one nation could host more than one fair in a decade. The major European democracies, as well as Canada, Australia, and

13161-633: The time he left office, he had built 658 playgrounds in New York City alone, plus 416 miles (669 km) of parkways and 13 bridges. The proportion of public benefit corporations is greater in New York than in any other U.S. state , however, making them the prime mode of infrastructure building and maintenance in New York and accounting for 90% of the state's debt. Moses's life was most famously characterized in Robert Caro 's 1974 award-winning biography The Power Broker . The book highlighted his practice of starting projects certain to cost more than

13284-618: The water too cold. Nonetheless, no other source has corroborated the claim that heaters in any particular pool were deactivated or not included in the pool's design. In addition, Moses took a favorable view of the British Empire and a racism much broader than solely towards the African-American community, speaking of Empire as useful in stemming the "rise of the lesser breeds without the law". Some scholars have attempted to rehabilitate Moses's reputation by contrasting

13407-553: The whole book right down to the last line," by putting up an outline on a 22-foot corkboard before writing the first manuscript, as a way to prevent writer's block . He writes several successive drafts in longhand on discontinued "legal pads, white with narrow lines," which Caro has mass-ordered and keeps in East Hampton . Subsequently, Caro types his books on Smith Corona Electra 210 typewriters, which The New Republic called "a model practically synonymous with him". Upon

13530-421: The workings of state government. He created and led numerous semi-autonomous public authorities , through which he controlled millions of dollars in revenue and directly issued bonds to fund new ventures with little outside input or oversight. Moses's projects transformed the New York area and revolutionized the way cities in the U.S. were designed and built. As Long Island State Park Commissioner, Moses oversaw

13653-535: Was active in the settlement movement , with her own love of building. Robert Moses and his brother Paul attended several schools for their elementary and secondary education , the Dwight School and the Mohegan Lake School , a military academy near Peekskill . After graduating from Yale College (B.A., 1909) and Wadham College , Oxford (B.A., Jurisprudence, 1911; M.A., 1913), and earning

13776-483: Was also given powers over public housing that had eluded him under LaGuardia. When O'Dwyer was forced to resign in disgrace and was succeeded by Vincent R. Impellitteri , Moses was able to assume even greater behind-the-scenes control over infrastructure projects. One of Moses's first steps after Impellitteri took office was halting the creation of a citywide Comprehensive Zoning Plan underway since 1938 that would have curtailed his nearly unlimited power to build within

13899-479: Was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York metropolitan area during the early to mid-20th century. Moses is regarded as one of the most powerful and influential people in the history of New York City and New York State . The grand scale of his infrastructure projects and his philosophy of urban development influenced a generation of engineers, architects, and urban planners across

14022-519: Was done to make it more difficult for future legislatures to allow access for commercial vehicles. Woolgar and Cooper refer to the claim about bridges as an "urban legend". Moses vocally opposed allowing Black war veterans to move into Stuyvesant Town , a Manhattan residential development complex created to house World War II veterans. In response to the biography, Moses defended his forced displacement of poor and minority communities as an inevitable part of urban revitalization: "I raise my stein to

14145-543: Was in apparent retaliation, based on specious claims that the proposed tunnel would undermine Castle Clinton's foundation. He also attempted to raze Castle Clinton itself, the historic fort surviving only after being transferred to the federal government. Moses now had no other option for a trans-river crossing than to build a tunnel. He commissioned the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel (now officially the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel ),

14268-597: Was named one of the 100 greatest non-fiction books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library . Upon its publication, Moses denounced the biography in a 23-page statement, to which Caro replied to defend his work's integrity. Caro's depiction of Moses's life gives him full credit for his early achievements, showing, for example, how he conceived and created Jones Beach and the New York State Park system, but also shows how Moses's desire for power came to be more important to him than his earlier dreams. Moses

14391-819: Was of Jewish origin and raised in a secularist manner inspired by the Ethical Culture movement of the late 19th century. He was a convert to Christianity and was interred in a crypt in an outdoor community mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City following services at St. Peter's by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Bay Shore, New York . Various locations and roadways in New York State bear Moses's name. These include two state parks, Robert Moses State Park – Thousand Islands in Massena, New York and Robert Moses State Park – Long Island ,

14514-412: Was said to have blocked Paul, an engineer, from being hired for any public service jobs including major infrastructure projects that Moses himself had spearheaded. Paul, whom Caro interviewed shortly before the former's death, claimed Robert had exerted undue influence on their mother to change her will in Robert's favor shortly before her death. Caro notes that Paul was on bad terms with their mother over

14637-514: Was that of Parks Commissioner of New York City, a role he served from January 18, 1934, to May 23, 1960. The many offices and professional titles that Moses held gave him unusually broad power to shape urban development in the New York metropolitan region. These include, according to the New York Preservation Archive Project: During the 1920s, Moses sparred with Franklin D. Roosevelt , then head of

14760-429: Was the first fully divided limited access highway in the world. Moses was a highly influential figure in the initiation of many of the reforms that restructured New York state's government during the 1920s. A 'Reconstruction Commission' headed by Moses produced a highly influential report that provided recommendations that would largely be adopted, including the consolidation of 187 existing agencies under 18 departments,

14883-594: Was the recipient of the 2011 BIO Award given each year by members of Biographers International "to a colleague who had made a major contribution in the advancement of the art and craft of real life depiction". After graduation from Princeton, Caro married Ina Joan Sloshberg , who was then still a student at Connecticut College . The Caros have a son, Chase Arthur, and three grandchildren, who live in White Plains . Caro has described his wife as "the whole team" on all five of his books. She sold their house and took

15006-470: Was unconstitutional to impair existing contractual obligations, as the bondholders had the right of approval over such actions. The largest holder of TBTA bonds, and thus agent for all the others, was the Chase Manhattan Bank , headed then by David Rockefeller , the governor's brother. No suit was filed. Moses could have directed TBTA to go to court against the action, but having been promised

15129-514: Was willing to pay — was rejected by both pro- and anti-Moses officials, newspapers, and the public, as an unacceptable government subsidy of a private business enterprise. Moses envisioned New York's newest stadium being built in Queens' Flushing Meadows on the former (and as it turned out, future) site of the World's Fair , where it would eventually host all three of the city's major league teams of

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