The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

In 1939, a proposed solution to the traffic problem in New York City was to build a highway and a tunnel in southern Manhattan. Moses refused La Guardia’s suggestion that the Triborough Bridge Authority help fund the project since he did not design it. Instead, Moses took over the rival Tunnel Authority, which made him even more powerful. Rather than a tunnel, he planned to build two bridges. Reformers objected to his plans to demolish Fort Clinton, a historic site on the southern tip of Manhattan that was now a popular aquarium. New York’s “reformer-aristocrats” (653), the wealthy liberals who wanted to preserve the city’s history, tried to stop Moses. They petitioned him in the courts, the press, and everywhere else to at least revise his plans, but he refused. People realized just how powerful and immune to constraints Moses had become, and he dismissed their complaints as “the same old tripe” (663) and proceeded as he planned.

The reformers and politicians who once saw Moses as an ally were “shocked” by his viciousness and arrogance. There was nothing the city could do to stop Moses from moving ahead with his project. At the final hour, President Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, publicly pushed back on the project, heralding her husband’s imminent involvement.