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Given all of his early 20th century intentions regarding the insignificance of the pedestrian, what would you say are the some of the lingering effects of Robert Moses' destruction.
We all know that he destroyed Tremont up in the Bronx, he wanted to plow under Washington Square Park and he's the reason that the south beaches are mostly desolate, weed-filled parking lots with no real estate or patrons.
But what else did he ruin in NYC?
Given all of his early 20th century intentions regarding the insignificance of the pedestrian, what would you say are the some of the lingering effects of Robert Moses' destruction.
We all know that he destroyed Tremont up in the Bronx, he wanted to plow under Washington Square Park and he's the reason that the south beaches are mostly desolate, weed-filled parking lots with no real estate or patrons.
But what else did he ruin in NYC?
You don't have a clue. The visionary was Jane Jacobs who led the fight against the cross midtown Highway Moses had planned for midtown and then lower Manhattan.
If Moses had his way Manhattan would have elevated highways running every which way. Which would have destroyed the cities communities and subsequent standing as the greates city in the U.S..
Luckily I think New York was saved from Moses's vision before he harmed the entire city. As you mentioned, much of the Bronx was effected as was parts of queens. But I don't think there has been much ill effects beyond the initial destruction of those affected neigborhoods.
Again praise to Jane Jacobs for her ideas AND action!
the parks that he designed paled in comparison to the destruction the construction of his roads created. For example, there used to be ONE Tremont, and it was a very nice neighborhood. Now look at it; the Cross-Bronx Xpress runs right through the middle of it!
That was her name! I was trying to think of it; Jane Jacobs. But she surely stopped the madman who would have made Manhattan one, huge 100-lane highway. At the beginning of the century, he and his colleagues thought people would never walk again and tried capitalizing on it as much as possible.
He didn't exactly help Sunset Park by putting the Gowanus right on top of 3rd Avenue and was responsible for the fact that unlike in Chicago there was no train to JFK down the middle of the Van Wyck until the air train thing went up a couple of years ago.
Moses, and most city planners of that era, were big proponents of the superblock concept you see in so much public housing (and non-public housing) from the 30's through the 60's. Jane Jacobs argued (rightly, I'd say) that, while the idea was to provide open spaces and avoid cramped conditions such as the LES in 1900, the new spaces were devoid of character, didn't have easily walkable scale, and were more dangerous as a result since there were not so many active "eyes on the street" due to a general lack of street life on the big lawns and such. To see a neighborhood totally destroyed and made ugly and boring by such thinking, you'd have to look at a place like the old West End in Boston, but there were areas that were affected by this mode of planning in NYC as well.
Given all of his early 20th century intentions regarding the insignificance of the pedestrian, what would you say are the some of the lingering effects of Robert Moses' destruction.
We all know that he destroyed Tremont up in the Bronx, he wanted to plow under Washington Square Park and he's the reason that the south beaches are mostly desolate, weed-filled parking lots with no real estate or patrons.
But what else did he ruin in NYC?
the concept of public housing
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"The man who sleeps on the floor, can never fall out of bed." -Martin Lawrence
I think to only look at the negative side is not totally fair. It's pretty easy to demonize someone and make them a villain, but people are complicated and aren't perfect. There's always a gray area. Love him or hate him, he did transform the city, and is a very influential figure in NYC history.
The thing with Moses was that he was given too much unchecked power. Anytime that happens the results are mostly negative.
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