Of course, in 1974 when I wrote the book, the city was bankrupt and all, but the conditions that I describe - the suburban on Long Island. When you say, why has this maintenance been deferred for nearly three-quarters of a century, it really dates back to his genius in getting the money for his own projects. Moses, through this series - I mean, watching it, in one place you’re horrified because you see the results, in the other, you say, boy this is smart - he manages to get all that money allocated for highways: the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Verrazano Bridge, the second deck on the George Washington Bridge. There’s a chapter in there called “Point of No Return.” The state and the city were passing this huge bond issue, which was supposed to go primarily to renovate the subways, to maintain them - because maintenance had been stopped all during the war.

Low-income housing projects, he would build only in low-income areas.Īnd perhaps easiest for us to grasp right now, when Mayor O’Dwyer gave him complete power in the city over public works, I think, the year’s in my book, I think it’s 1949. When Robert Moses was doing his huge urban renewal projects, he was shipping people, the people he displaced to the Rockaways, because they were invisible there, and these bungalows have been used for that kind of housing for now, whatever it is, 55 or 60 years. I was wondering how you feel about this subtitle in retrospect, given how, sort of, prosperous and almost gilded New York City is now.Ĭaro’s response: Well, New York is prosperous, but New York is still … a very segregated city. Question: The subtitle of “The Power Broker” is “Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.” You published this book in the mid-1970s, in a particular time of misery and dysfunction. Perhaps lower crime rates and a few million more people could change Caro’s mind - Governor Cuomo, after all, is known to celebrate Moses for his reputation as a “master builder.” It’s a question worth asking: When Caro published The Power Broker, New York City was descending into fiscal crisis and “the fall of New York” made obvious sense. Andrew Cuomo holds up Robert Moses as the explicit model for his transportation policy.

Forty-five years after publishing The Power Broker, Robert Caro still blames Robert Moses for killing the city he loves.Īsked at a New York Times “TimesTalks” on Tuesday night whether he has had second thoughts about the book’s subtitle - “Robert Moses and the Fall of New York” - given the city’s economic resurgence, Caro was unequivocal: Robert Moses was very bad for New York.

The power broker book