Robert Moses (New York, Rye, York: new construction, to live in, beach)

[scatman]

Originally Posted by holden125

He wouldn't even let the Dodgers build a stadium near the LIRR terminal in Brooklyn with their own funds, and they wound up in LA as a result.

The smoking gun!

Everybody likes to blame The O'Malley for this. Moses rejected Atlantic and Flatbush because it wasn't fully accessible via car. So his alternative was to put the ballpark in Flushing. Atlantic Yards stood vacant for years due to this decision.

[jcladue]

I didn't know that. Is that what pushed the Dodgers out? Ebbets Field was in a pretty crappy location. Flatbush is still pretty bad, not to mention inconvenient.

[jcladue]

Look what I found on Wikipedia;

Club owner Walter O'Malley announced plans for a privately-owned domed stadium for his Dodgers at the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, where a large market was being torn down, but New York City Building Commissioner Robert Moses wanted the city to build a stadium located in Flushing Meadows, NY, located in the borough of Queens, NY (the site of the current Shea Stadium). O'Malley refused to consider Moses' position, and Moses refused O'Malley's. As a result, O'Malley began to flirt publicly with Los Angeles, California, using a relocation threat as political leverage to win favor with his desired Brooklyn stadium. Ultimately, O'Malley and Moses could never come to agreement on a new location for the Dodgers, and the club moved west to Los Angeles. During the last two years in Brooklyn, the Dodgers played several games each year in Jersey City, New Jersey's Roosevelt Stadium, as part of O'Malley's additional tactics to force a new stadium to be built.

[Moth]

The ultimate irony of Robert Moses is that he himself never learned to drive. It boggles my mind that the the guy who midwifed miles of superhighway could not drive a car.

As for the CBE, I have argued it effects here before. I cannot fathom dynamiting through miles of granite, digging a wide trench, and putting an ugly highway in it without it aversely affecting the surrounding area. It was not the only factor in the demise of the Bronx, but it was one of them.

[holden125]

Originally Posted by Moth

The ultimate irony of Robert Moses is that he himself never learned to drive. It boggles my mind that the the guy who midwifed miles of superhighway could not drive a car.

As for the CBE, I have argued it effects here before. I cannot fathom dynamiting through miles of granite, digging a wide trench, and putting an ugly highway in it without it aversely affecting the surrounding area. It was not the only factor in the demise of the Bronx, but it was one of them.

It has been suggested that it was because Moses never learned to drive that he kept pushing through the highways. Everyone else knew how bad traffic was getting but he was oblivious, working away in the backseat while someone else drove.

One story from the Power Broker that was interesting related to when Moses was, back in the 20's, trying to learn to drive. At the time he was having a lot of trouble getting the part of Jones Beach that's in Suffolk Co. built as the towns were resisting it tooth and nail. The area was largely WASP farmers and fisherman who didn't like the idea of all the new Catholic and Jewish immigrants in NYC coming out for a day at the beach. For that reason Suffolk Co. was a big Klan place in the 20's.

Moses was practicing driving in some guy's big driveway on Long Island and the guy told him one day that he had a solution. Back in about 1848, the state legislature had debated two bills, one giving the land underneath the bay to the towns in Nassau Co. in which they were located, the other doing the same for Suffolk Co. It was the end of the session, a blizzard in Albany, and everyone wanted to get home for Christmas. So they voted on the Nassau bill and left, never passing the Suffolk bill. The town of Islip had therefore been charging fishermen a big tax to use the bay, but the town had no claim to the bay--it was still state water, not town water. Moses took this to the town leaders and said the towns could have the land under the bay if they'd give up the land out on the barrier beach for Jones Beach. They were afraid of mutiny if they had to admit they had never had a right to charge the fishing tax, so they signed off and the plans went ahead for the state park. Of course they were voted out anyway because of that change of heart, but by then Jones Beach was a done deal.

****

Although I generally agree it's not a great thing for a neighborhood to have a concrete trench dug through it, they built the highway down 7th Avenue in Bay Ridge and demolished over 2,000 single family homes but the neighborhood came through unscathed. There was actually a lawsuit that the state's highest court threw out about 1959 that tried to force the state to put all the bridge traffic onto the Belt heading toward Manhattan instead of building the stretch of the BQE along 7th Ave, but they said it was not technically feasible.

[Moth]

Bay Ridge has more private homes and that particular highway is more palatable than the CBE, which, if they ever choose to do another, would make a great backdrop to a Mad Max film. The Bronx is denser than Bay Ridge and thus the repercussions had no buffer.

I read the Power Broker years ago. Great book.

[mead]

I know that everyone likes to hate Moses, but on the whole I think he had a mixed record. My biggest complaint about Moses and most of the planners during that time period was the concept of public housing/apartments in a park. They built huge oversized, single use, neighborhoods, and then threw lots of poor people into the mix. This massive creation of public housing from the 1930s to the 1960s was the largest contributor to the decline of neighborhoods in the city. We are still reeling from the effects of public housing to this very day.

Obviously I think the idea of running a highway thru lower Manhattan is a bad idea, however in my opinion some of his highways were needed. As an aside not all highways in urban areas are that bad. Tokyo is probably the only place I've seen where they've got it right. In some areas of Tokyo they have managed to blend elevated highways into neighborhoods by putting in a facade and 2 storeys of shops and offices under the highway. As a result it is not so obvious that there is a highway in the area.

I think the city right now has all of the highways that it can handle or that it needs. We really need to focus on increasing public transportation in some areas at this point. The 2nd ave subway is obviously the biggest project that needs to be taken care of right now. Bus Rapid Transit is probably a good idea, but I've always been a big fan of rail.

[circa62]

Originally Posted by mead

I know that everyone likes to hate Moses, but on the whole I think he had a mixed record. My biggest complaint about Moses and most of the planners during that time period was the concept of public housing/apartments in a park. They built huge oversized, single use, neighborhoods, and then threw lots of poor people into the mix. This massive creation of public housing from the 1930s to the 1960s was the largest contributor to the decline of neighborhoods in the city. We are still reeling from the effects of public housing to this very day.

I would agree, it does seem that an infestation of crime and destruction emanates from planting these Moses massive public housing buildings that had no sense of neighborhood but had a total negative impact to the point that once they were built, the surrounding area's residents fled. The Cross Bronx and other highways had to be built somewhere and no matter where you put it, there would of been a negative impact. In general, the Cross Bronx did preserve the Grand Concourse, Southern Blvd and some other important major roads by going under them whereas some of the other areas were poorly developed. Fortunately they curbed his road building efforts but unfortunately they allowed his public housing vision to be built.

[SeventhFloor]

Originally Posted by jcladue

Correct-I was not referring to any of the Nassau County beach front, just some of BK and most of Queens. It's like a ghost town down there, with the occasional lone soul. What's the name of that area with the grid streets, that is right on the waterfront. It's right by Far Rockaway. I want to say Ridge....something. There's literally NOTHING but sand dunes, parking lots and street signs.

i have absolutely no idea where you're talking about....go to google maps, and find this place you're talking about, and please tell me the name of it.

[jcladue]

haha-It's called Edgemere, NY on the Rockaway Peninsula.

edgemere