The Power Broker—I: How Robert Moses Transformed New York

The power of most public officials is measured in years. The power of Robert Moses was measured in decades. It was formally handed to him on April 18, 1924, ten years after he had entered government. He held it for more than four decades thereafter—until the day in 1968 when he realized that he had either misunderstood Nelson Rockefeller or been cheated by him and, in either case, had lost the last of it—and it was a power so substantial that in the fields in which he chose to exercise it no mayor of New York City or governor of New York State seriously challenged it. He held this power during the administrations of six governors—Alfred E. Smith, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert H. Lehman, Thomas E. Dewey, and W. Averell Harriman as well as Rockefeller. He held it during the administrations of five mayors—Fiorello LaGuardia, William O’Dwyer, Vincent R. Impellitteri, Robert F. Wagner, Jr., and John V. Lindsay.

Any map of New York proves it. The very shoreline of the city was different before he came to power. He hammered bulkheads of steel deep into the muck beneath rivers and harbors and crammed into the space between bulkheads and shore masses of earth and stone, shale and cement that hardened into fifteen thousand acres of new land.

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