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February 12, 2007
More Moses
AP via APP, Exhibits revisit Moses' NYC transformation
Nearly all the projects master builder Robert Moses championed between the 1930s and 1960s as head of the New York City's Parks Department and a public transit authority are still here. Moses brought Lincoln Center, Jones Beach and Riverside Park to New York, but also drew scorn for displacing thriving neighborhoods to create roads such as the Cross-Bronx Expressway.
Three connected exhibits opening this week revisit Moses' legacy, and its planners say the late urban planner should ultimately be remembered for building far more than he destroyed. ...
"Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York" opens in the middle of a building boom the city hasn't seen since Moses, who died in 1981. The World Trade Center site, Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and planned stadiums and subway lines are among the projects changing the landscape in every corner of the city.
Atlantic Yards Report, Author Caro: remember Moses's effect on people
Though he ostensibly had a few weeks to prepare a rebuttal to the book and exhibition, Robert Moses and the Modern City, Robert Caro, author of the scathing and seemingly definitive biography, The Power Broker (1974), chose not to fully counterattack yesterday.
Rather, in a lecture sponsored by the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY)--an event added only after he was excluded from the panel discussion ushering in the exhibits--Caro hewed mainly to what seemed to be his standard Moses presentation: the story of how he came to write the book (his increasing recognition of the unelected Moses's grip on power), his admiration for the young Moses's idealism (the creation of Jones Beach as a destination for urbanites), and the failure of his later vision (the displacement of at least 500,000 people for the creation of highways and housing).
Posted by lumi at February 12, 2007 9:08 AM