If You Seek His Monument, Drive Around

There was a time when Robert Moses must have been the most admired man in New York. Like all powerful men, he had enemies. But that he attacked them with such boundless contempt, with no evident regard for their social or political standing, was a clear measure of the respect he commanded. In 1934, as the Republican nominee for governor, his cruel denunciation of the inoffensive Herbert Lehman cost him the support of some of his most influential backers and ended in a Lehman landslide, the biggest landslide until this year in the history of New York gubernatorial races. Yet Moses returned to his duties as the master builder of the state. To mayors, governors, borough presidents, and trade unionists, Moses was the indispensable man. His methods Featured Alternate, Psychology Today Book Club. $7.95 cloth, $3.95 paper at booksellers might be rough, but he got the job finished, usually ahead of schedule. “Nothing I have ever done,” Moses liked to quip at banquets, “has ever been tainted with legality.”

Educated at Yale and Oxford, Moses in 1919 headed the New York Reconstruction Commission which designed the present government of the state. In the 1920s and ’30s he applied his inexhaustible energy and talents to park, highway, and bridge construction. During 44 years in power—he once held 12 state, regional, and city offices— Moses changed the face of New York. His works are everywhere. He is the Christopher Wren of the auto age: if you seek his monument, drive around.

JC

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Jack Chatfield

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There was a time when Robert Moses must have been the most admired man in New York. Like all powerful men, he had enemies. But that he attacked them with such boundless contempt, with no evident regard for their social or political standing, was a clear measure of the respect he commanded. In 1934, as the Republican nominee for governor, his cruel denunciation of the inoffensive Herbert Lehman cost him the support of some of his most influential backers and ended in a Lehman landslide, the biggest landslide until this year in the history of New York gubernatorial races. Yet Moses returned to his duties as the master builder of the state. To mayors, governors, borough presidents, and trade unionists, Moses was the indispensable man. His methods Featured Alternate, Psychology Today Book Club. $7.95 cloth, $3.95 paper at booksellers might be rough, but he got the job finished, usually ahead of schedule. “Nothing I have ever done,” Moses liked to quip at banquets, “has ever been tainted with legality.”

Educated at Yale and Oxford, Moses in 1919 headed the New York Reconstruction Commission which designed the present government of the state. In the 1920s and ’30s he applied his inexhaustible energy and talents to park, highway, and bridge construction. During 44 years in power—he once held 12 state, regional, and city offices— Moses changed the face of New York. His works are everywhere. He is the Christopher Wren of the auto age: if you seek his monument, drive around.