Robert Caro's Response
But throughout the next hour, Mr. Caro kept making subtle suggestions about how that exhibit, "Robert Moses and the Making of the Modern City," came up short.
While the exhibit emphasizes the impact Moses had on "the built environment" without regard for his methods, Mr. Caro argued, "The way that Robert Moses left his mark on New York has to do with the way he treated the people of the city"--in particular how he diverted money from health clinics to his construction projects.
And to those who had found Mr. Caro's subtitle (Robert Moses and the Fall of New York) to be incongruous with the city's renaissance, he replied, "I meant that the city had fallen, not that it was fallen forever."
And for those who feel the ends justify Moses' means, Mr. Caro said:
For several years now I am constantly being approached at parties by large gentlemen, usually of the real estate persuasion, but sometimes from government--they come up to me and say to me, 'Don't you think it's time for a new Robert Moses?' And because I don't want to argue with people at cocktail parties, I say to these people, 'No!' Which happily cuts the conversation short.
The overflow crowd jumped to its feet to give the guy a standing ovation.
- Matthew Schuerman
great talk but the cocktail part line got a hearty laugh from the crowd not a rousing ovation as described here
The ovation (and it was rousing, to be sure) came at the very end of the talk, just to clarify.
failure to mention how Moses bypassed objections to his projects by the very ingenious creation of multi- state
"Authorities" that enabled his projects to ignore building
and zoning requirements and run roughshod over any opposition
is a major defect in this article. We will never know if the collapse of the twin towers was helped by the abilities of the "Authority" to ignore & evade building codes.While Caro is meticulous in describing labor and banking abuses by the authorities, little has been done to curb the abuses he describes. Moses was able to succeed in part because his actions were only designed to feed his ego. FDR & Laguardia
both feared him.The monies he diverted from mass transit
system improvement are now being felt with the increase
in oil prices. He was the smartest worm , in the world center for schemers, the big apple