All language subtitles for PBS.New.York.A.Documentary.Film.6of8.x264.AAC.MVGroup.Forum

the contemporary city is profoundly
menaced not by any outside danger but by

an evil shaping within itself this is

the evil of the machine because of the
confusion of its different functions

it's growing mechanization the
omnipresence and anarchy of the motorcar

the city is at the mercy of industrial

machines if it is to be saved its

structure must change and this
change is inevitable whether it

comes through insight or catastrophe the

city must be changed or it will perish

and our civilization with it sacred Gideon

all through the 20s giddy upward rise
New Yorkers had been pursuing another

kind of dream not only upward but out
into the expanse of green and blue that

as f scott Fitzgerald had seen alone was

limitless propelled by the rising
prosperity and restlessness of New

Yorkers and by the revolutionary
invention that since the turn of the

century had become the shining emblem
of both this fateful movement beyond the

boundaries of Greater New York would
alter forever the relation of the city

and the country and challenge all
previous assumptions about urban life

the car disaggregates the car unravels

tight closely knit interdependent urban
regions because it makes place less

relevant with a car there's a matter where
some places so this relatively static this

relatively rigid grid of streets and
buildings and railroad tracks has to

somehow respond to this thing which is
hungry and demanding forces changes on

the landscape so the car takes pride of
place among the variables that are going

to place demands on the city
the cars the whole story

in the decades to come as the city moved
through Depression World War and beyond

New York would become the arena of a
titanic contest between the automobile

and the pedestrian between
the highway and the city block

between the compact if often congested
urban neighborhood and the sprawling if

often anonymous commuter suburb

before it was over that contest would
Alba tear the city apart and force New

Yorkers to confront the most
elemental urban questions of all

what is a city what makes cities work

Why should there be cities at all

no city as complex as New York no city

that builds itself and rebuilds itself

so often and often so well as a Hoyt has

a magic moment New York is a
constellation of magic moments what is

astonishing about New York is how many
of the magic moments of the past have

managed to survive we have lost a lot
when we saved an awful lot what are the

magic moments of the 19th century the
optimism of the City Hall sophisticated

French inspired building what is another
optimism the Brooklyn Bridge it's still

there what a leap the Brooklyn Bridge was
what a leap commissioners plan was and

it's still intact pretty much what a
vision Central Park was and it's there

it's more beautiful now than it's been
perhaps since the time of Olmstead

add to that these incredible office
buildings that were built which

concluded with some kind of visible
symbol at the top so I don't think we

should think of New York is being a
closed book I mean New York could be

said to be like one of those incredible
things you see in a 4th of July

fireworks they're just gone boom boom
and it keeps going how we don't know how

many layers of that explosion will
happen before Arnold Peters out me of

course hope that it will never
peter out New York is that explosion

by the autumn of 1929 as the most
spectacular decade in the history of the

city came to a breathtaking close
New York seem to have arrived at the

varies enos of its dazzling career
in 300 years it had grown from a tiny

trading post on the far edge of the
known world to become the undisputed

cultural and economic capital of the
world gathering in money and people from

around the globe it had made itself
one of the wealthiest and most densely

populated places on earth its population
rising from fewer than 5,000 in 1776 to

nearly seven million a century and a
half later consecrated as no place on

earth to the power of Commerce and money
and unbidden to any outside force it had

made itself the supreme center of
American life then in one last glorious

decade from 1919 to 1929 finished
bringing into existence a ravishing

dream city on the island of Manhattan which
had become the most modern place on earth

one is stunned at the sight of these

upright masses buildings 50 stories high

straight lines everywhere affirming
the will to make room for millions

this is not an architecture for men
it is an architecture for human masses

one cannot understand it without first
having enjoyed the thrill of adding

enormous totals and of living in a

gigantic compact and brilliant world

in the end the fever pitch of the 1920s
acknowledging no limits and building

higher and higher could never have been
sustained as if like Icarus the city had

flown too close to the Sun and then
come tumbling back to earth again

in the years following the crash of 1929
as the greatest depression in American

history plunged the city and nation into
economic gloom two things would become

faithfully clear the city itself acting
on its own could no longer meet the

needs of its own people and unfettered
capitalism in New York in a century and

a half of relentless commercial growth
had been carried to its very limit in

the years to come as the greatest
domestic crisis of the 20th century

swept across the city and the nation
New Yorkers would be forced to reinvent

their city once again on a massive scale
moving as they did into uncharted waters

from which there would be no return

between 1929 and 1945 as immense new
forces were unleashed in New York

altering forever the relation of the
city in the country two of the most

remarkable New Yorkers of all time would
come to the fore Fiorello LaGuardia and

Robert Moses and attempt to create in
the darkest of times a bold new city of

the future it's strange to think how these two

powerful figures Fiorella Gordy
and Robert Moses interacted I mean

physically so different allegory of
celebrating difference loving the tumble

and the tide of the city Robert Moses
trying to bring order to it but in some

ways they were able to work together and
I think you can't help but look at New

York in the 1930s and marvel at the
things that were built during the Great

Depression the new parks and playgrounds
the swimming pools the roads the beaches

it was a time of achievement a greater
period of achievement than what we have

seen at the end of the 20th century
when we're so much more affluent in the

economy's booming new cities
have always replaced old

cities by periods but today it is
possible for the city of modern times

the happy city the radiant city to be born

Le Corbusier

we had immensely increased the range of
our dreams for ourselves in the 20s and

that was why the Great Depression was a
terrible psychological shock to people

it led to what amounted to enormous - a
clinical depression on the part of the

American people they could not believe
that we had stumbled and fallen

there had been downturns before boom
times that went bust followed by years

of hardship want and misery but there
had never been anything like the Great

Depression of the 1930s

on the eve of the crash fewer than two
million people were unemployed in the

United States less than two years later
the number had risen to more than eight

million and a year after that 213
million nearly a third of the nation's

workforce nowhere in the country
were the effects more visible or more

heartbreaking than in New York where
by 1931 the greatest economic engine on

earth had all but ground to a halt

what's fascinating is that the bottom
doesn't drop out suddenly the crash

leads to a slow toppling effect no they
they don't have a sense that the world

has transformed and that things have
changed very complete but slowly it

takes home obviously one of the first
things that gets hit is the financial

sector and then the ripple effect in
terms of business services spreads out

from that the manufacturing sector has
hit extremely hard and huge numbers of

people are either laid off in the
garment business or in fact their wages

are cut in half an industry after
industry from garment manufacturing to

construction I implode in some cases
really almost totally cease economic

activity and you have to remember this
is before unemployment insurance before

any systematic government will leaf a
system and yeah it's already past the

year when people could go back to the
land certainly in New York City very few

people had organic relationships with
you know land the consequences are as

they always are that money isn't coming
in people can't make the rent there are

massive evictions people begin to sort
of crop up in encampments in parks the

river's edge in old auto dumps around

town red lines begin to form December

24th 1931 every day one sees the

degrading misery of bread lines every
day one is told that this great industry

in that from railroads to
publishing is collapsing

the building slump spreads in New York
the most salient new structure the

Magnificent Empire state stands unlit
and can only pay its taxes by collecting

dollars from the sightseers it was sent
to its Erie for the stupendous view

stories of failing banks turned in
motorcars despairing suicides are Dindin

to one's ears Mary Agnes Hamilton

you turn a corner and here is a
surprising spectacle a line of men three

or sometimes four abreast a block long
and wedged together so tightly that no

passerby can break through those at the
head of this gray black human snake will

eat tonight those farther back probably

won't bruise flibben

1,600,000 people in New York after
City's population of six million nine

hundred thousand 1 million six hundred
thousand people were on relief roles

that's mothers fathers and children if
you look down and Riverside Park which

we were talking about that's
where the city dumped its garbage

and there were huge mounds of garbage at
96 and a hundred and twentieth history

and you would see scores hundreds of
women and children whenever the trucks

would come and dump the garbage children
and mothers would run to try and get

some kind of food out of there it
was terrible in New York City in the

country at least you can usually
find something to eat but they were

Hoovervilles in Central Park in fact my
sheep that raised on the Sheep Meadow

that had been donated by my great great
great grandfather named George Coghill

he'd given the Sheep to Central Park in
the 1860s and the herd had saved their

till the 1934 when they were moved
up state to the city's farm in the

Catskills because the city was
afraid that the people living in the

Hoovervilles would look upon the sheep as
lunch more than as a touch of the blue color

by 1931 tens of thousands of New Yorkers
had been evicted from their homes those

that could doubled up with family and
friends but thousands more unable to find any

housing at all sock bought shelter they
could find in one of the dismal shanty

towns that had begun to spring up along
the East River and the Hudson and in

Central Park called Hoovervilles
an ironic tribute to the president

wellhe we're here because we there's
no work to be found we came down to the

Hudson and seen up the lumber floating at the
river so we tired of building a Shack so we

built one so we are not a burden on the

community we have month after month as

the economic situation continued to
deteriorate calls for government action

grew louder in Harlem and in the Bronx
where one in three workers in the

garment industry had been laid off
thousands of protesters took to the

streets while across the city rent
strikes broke out along with political

demonstrations of every kind sometimes
escalating into pitched battles with the police

the devastation was so broad and
reached so high that had had just been a

manufacturing crisis so that unskilled
laborers were out of work I'm not

convinced that everyone would have
noticed but everyone saw in the

depression either someone they knew or
the likelihood that someone they knew

would end up there it seemed very
clearly out of people's own hands and I

think that did propel a kind of communal
commitment the temporary bureaucracies

of relief thrown up by the crisis
have all the character of a frail

Expeditionary Force sent into a war that
is expected to last only three months

and which has become instead a world war
their theory is still essentially that

of charitably helping bombs and
weaklings over the rough places rather

than masses cut down by a kind of

economic Massacre the New Republic

under Herbert Hoover federal authorities
had all been washed their hands of

responsibility for the growing number
of destitute Americans New York State

itself under governor Franklin Roosevelt
had been among the first to respond with

large-scale relief programs but little
of the money that passed through City

Hall reached the people for whom it had
been intended as to how many officials

pocketed most of the funds then made
sure most of the rest was distributed to

party regulars New York then was a city

utterly unable to meet the needs of
its people in almost every respect the

Tammany machine was totally corrupt
really shocking percentage of the Relief

dollars that came in to New York was
siphoned off by the Tammany machine in

1931 and 32 and 33 New York was a city
paralyzed and it seemed like a city

where there was basically no hope of it
ever meeting the news you might say the

twentieth century the automobile
age had arrived the city

was strangling on its traffic it
was unable to build a single line of

arterial highway it had an idea of
building what we now know is the Henry

Hudson bridge they've been talking about
it for thirty years it wasn't built the

Triborough bridge had been started
and stopped and there was no hope of

starting these things in any foreseeable

future for years rumors of official

malfeasance had swirled around City Hall
which by 1931 had been occupied for more

than half a decade by a dapper and
charmingly corrupt ex vaudeville

performer and Tammany man named James J
Walker under whose reign Tammany system

of patronage and spoils had spiraled
completely out of control well I'm sure

I would have liked him okay he must have
been a marvelous person to spend time

with and he was a dreadful mayor he both
who didn't show up until noon and it was

usually gone by 3:00 in the afternoon
and he was a songwriter he wrote yeah

well you love me in December as
you do in May still a famous song

I think he fitted his times very well
was he a good mayor no you awful Mario's

as crooked as a dog's hind leg Robert
Moses had the perfect expression for

Jimmy Walker hey F Beau Brummel AF
guttersnipe Moses watch Walker walk into

the office in the morning you know he
wore a single button suit perfect the

narrowest of cravat spats the highly
polished shoes Robert Moses would see

him come into the morning a pile of mail
on his desk and he'd say any checks in

there and if someone said no he'd sweep
them all off the desk his mayoralty of

the city of New York you know sort of
enshrine his ledge into something with

an overtone of fun but it wasn't fun
for the people of the city the city was

doing nothing to help its people in the
depths of the depression who was doing

remarkably the problem was that there
was no money coming from the state and

there was no money coming from the
federal government so he was left with

no recourse really but to borrow he
borrow any barn and he borrowed and in

fact in the end he basically had to
agree that the city would in fact make

tremendous cuts in public services
stopped these Public Works programs

layoff workers and the rest of it and
it was at this moment really that he ran

into even more serious trouble in the
investigations of Walker began that lead

to his downfall the beginning of the end
of Walker's reign came in the fall of

1930 when Governor Franklin Roosevelt
obliged to distance himself from Tammany

Hall as he prepared his run for the
presidency appointed a fiercely upright

reform-minded judge named Samuel Seabury to
investigate corruption in city government

and they begin to find it's not too hard
you know massive amounts of official

malfeasance and corruption particularly
in the police department in the judicial

system one of the nastiest thing is
that they're running of the spice

racketeering where not only did they
arrest prostitutes and then you know

accept payoffs to let them off but
increase things they'd be interested

resting women off the street respectable
middle-class women and you know what's

rifting to sort of expose them unless
they pay off it's really rampant running

amuck stuff and but Seabury does is he
begins to sort of go up the chain of

command getting closer and closer to Walker

in the spring of 1932 Walker himself was
called to testify on the morning of May

25th the immensely popular mayor pushed
his way through a throng of 5,000

admirers outside the County Courthouse
on Foley Square and strode confidently

into the courtroom informed of Walker's rousing
reception Seabury said simply they gave one to

boss tweed - you know Walker was so
charming that when Judge Samuel Seabury

was having his investigation he was
advised by his aides he's so charming

don't look him in the eye which on you
so when Seabury was cross-examining

Jimmy Walker understand he tried to
stand sideways so that Walker couldn't

catch his eye once on the witness stand
however there was little Walker could do

as Seabury marshaled evidence of the
nearly 1 million dollars the mayor had

pocketed in kickbacks moneys Walker
himself gamely tried to explain away as

beneficence 'as by the end of the summer
it was clear to almost everyone but

Walker had to go and he abdicates he
leaves office Seabury was not about to

actually bring formal charges he said I
got lots of circumstantial evidence but

I don't have that smoking gun but it was
Roosevelt behind the scenes that made

sure that Walker would in fact
now take as much delay to exit

franklin roosevelt governor of new york
gave him his choice of resigning or

being fired and he opted to resign to
be replaced by this nobody named bubu

o'brien who's famous for his first press
conference somebody asked him who the

new sewer commissioner was going to be and bubu
o'brien said i don't know they haven't told me yet

- though we'll find the same company in
the midst of criticism that comes from

an easy conscience and a knowledge
within yourself but no matter whether

misunderstood or none you did the best you could

on September 1st 1932 Jimmy Walker left
City Hall for the last time vote to run

again and clear his record then sailed
for Europe to join his mistress the

actress Betty Compton in Paris that

dazzling theatrical an essentially
absurd career has collapsed at last the

New York Herald Tribune the elimination
of mr. Walker as mayor of this city is a

distinct victory for higher standards of

public life Judge Samuel Seabury

you

more than anyone realized the demise
of Jimmy Walker and the devastating

depression that triggered it had set the
stage for one of the most far-reaching

political transformations in American history
before the year was out Franklin Delano

Roosevelt's deft handling of the Walker scandal
had helped propel him to the White House

not to win votes around
but to win in this protein

America people

in New York meanwhile with Tammany on the
retreat for the first time in 15 years

reformers saw their chance of finally
retaking City Hall pinning their hopes

on a brilliant young civil servant named
Robert Moses who under Al Smith had

built the first state park system in the
country and the first system of public

highways in the world the Reformed
forces realize after Walker

is out the Tammany is a wounded beast
and that there's a possibility for

actually winning power for reform
candidate the question is who's it going

to be the person that most of the
Reformers month is Robert Moses but

Samuel Seabury who is the cuspid role in the
investigation the kingmaker here won't hear of it

why because Moses an L Smith man and Al
Smith is a Tammany man and Seabury is

determined to keep Tammany out of City
Hall he wants Fiorello LaGuardia he was

in many ways the least likely of
candidates a short excitable 51 year old

ex congressman and failed mayoral
candidate widely thought to be finished

in politics having lost to Jimmy Walker
only four years before in one of the

biggest landslides in the city's history
actually the idea of LaGuardia horrifies

mostly performers this guy had been the
most radical congressman all through the

1920s and then when the depression came
he was railing furiously against Hoover

his own party administration for not in
fact helping the unemployed and he was

also attacking bankers you know those
bastards broke the people's back with

their usually let them die the people will
survive well you know the forces of reform

we're not exactly interested in this
kind of rabble rouser but Seabury was

adamant he's absolutely honest the judge
declared he's a man of great courage and

he can win why did Seabury want him

because in fact the guy was a scrapper
because the guy knew how to really go

out campaign a lot of the good
government types had never you know set

foot in the streets this guy could
debate you know a nitish to get the

Jewish vote and very important he had a
large disaffected Italian constituency

whom in fact had been kept out of access
to power and jobs by the Irish Tammany

machines he was in a way reflective of
New York City a one-person melting pot

mother's Jewish father's
Italian he's an Episcopalian

speaks different languages but a person
who's comfortable with the difference a

person who not only is comfortable with
it celebrates I think he's also the

first man to embody in his Styles a kind
of multiculturalism that really embraces

all New Yorkers that says the greatness
of the city is precisely in its energy

nity that this is its richness not in
its or Gus traditions not its great

wealth I think he was committed to
the mess that was New York it wasn't

neat it was combative and it was
energizing and it was complex and I

think he that's what he was trying to
get it was allowing people to thrive

when that kind of equal opportunity
community and to try to build that kind

of city on Election Day the largest
turnout in the city's history over 2

million voters propelled the fusion candidate
into City Hall by the narrowest of margins

at 12:05 a.m. on the morning of January
1st 1934 while the streets filled with

thousands of New Yorkers celebrating
the repeal of prohibition

LaGuardia took the oath of office in the
library of Samuel C burries townhouse on

East 63rd Street it was perfect timing

he was precisely the mayor that New
York City needed to get through the

Depression and the world war he was the
mayor of New York City during the most

difficult time ever to be mayor of New
York City when we talk about fiscal

problems in New York City we're talking
about ranges of unemployment that go

between four and eight percent he was
talking about 50% unemployment a city

that was totally devastated so he took
over New York City in 1933 probably at

the worst moment worst point in the history of
this city determined to change the course of city

government as no mayor before or since
he set right to work skipping up the

steps of City Hall on his first day in
office he shook his fist at the hundred

and twenty-two year old building roared
out in Italian a finito la ku Konya no

more free lunch then quickly showed he meant
every word he said in a matter of weeks

LaGuardia had begun to dismantle the
corrupt political machine that had run

New York for generations coming
thousands of positions traditionally

reserved for Tammany Hall
loyalists and putting in its place

a new system of scientific civil service

based on expertise and and in fact here

he was brilliantly effective he was
gonna be in office for twelve years and

during that time he systematically starved
Tammany of patronage and this is an

accrual moment because in fact it's
the destruction of the Democratic Party

machine that was one of his biggest
goals and those of his supporters and in

fact it was successful him and happening
he was not without his limitations

theatrical autocratic and violently
short-tempered he more than once had to

be physically restrained from striking
other city officials if you were any

Dumber he once screamed at a hapless
stenographer I'd make you a commissioner

but New Yorkers loved him anyway in part
because he threw himself into the job

with reckless abandon racing two fires
in a motorcycle sidecar accompanying the

police on official raids and once
conducting the city orchestra at

Carnegie Hall where he insisted on
receiving no special consideration from

the musicians just treat me like Toscanini
he said he was everywhere he was everywhere

and he was distinctive because he was
so animated and his qualities were that

he's got things done and that
he related he shared himself

and his soul and his heart and his
emotions as well as his ability he was

not afraid to be a human being as a
politician he was a person of the people

and I have always believed that if you
want to really represent people you

gotta act like a people they can't just
be something above that and I think

LaGuardia understood that it's hard to
say that LaGuardia has a single unified

vision for the city but he certainly got
a series of goals and probably first and

foremost are there ones that he that he
ran on one is war on crime he declares

extremely public war on racketeers and
gamblers in particular and he loves

going around and collecting slot
machines taking them out in the barge in

the harbor taking his axe you know
chopping them and throwing them

overboard they're rounding up guns and
he's very very conscious of media and

he's got the newsreels there he's got
the radio there he's a very public

symbolic you know acting out clearly
on the out of stage he races around in

police cars he appoints good tough
honest cops you know like Valentine the

people who had been shunted aside under your
Tammany regime right now running the show

but the man whom the newspapers called
the little flower had even higher

ambitions even as the city lay sunk in
the depths of the worst depression in

American history he dreamed of
transforming into the most progressive

and modern metropolis in the world
of rebuilding its tattered physical

infrastructure ruined by 15 years of
looting and neglect through a series of

massive public programs and Public Works
that would put tens of thousands of men

and women back to work and
rebuild the pride and self-respect

of the city and its people
I shall not rest he declared

until my native city is first not only
in population but also in wholesome

housing not only in commerce but also in
public health until it is not only out

of debt but abounding in happiness
but the fact is that when LaGuardia

takes power he is up against the
wall and he's got extremely limited

parameters the consortium of bankers who
had been loaning the city money are in

essence saying listen LaGuardia we're
gonna cut you off without a dime we're

gonna demand our money back unless you
take a series of measures and those

measures are basically cut public
services and concentrate on paying back

but you're the bank's now LaGuardia
actually does carry some of this out and

we tend to forget this they we're mass
layoffs of city workers and such not

that was part of him he was in fact a
business oriented performer and yet very

short order LaGuardia is in a position
to tell the bankers to take a hike and

not only does he not continue to shrivel
municipal government and public programs

but he presides over the greatest
expansion of government programs and

public services in the history of the
city the extraordinary revolution that

would make that possible would issue
from an unprecedented convergence of

local and national forces a unique
alliance of personalities and events and

represent in the end the greatest single
sea change in American government since

the early days of the Republic it
was called the New Deal and in many

ways it would mark the very zenith of
New York City's influence over American

life and the key to understanding
the Guardia and the successes of his

administration and for that matter the
role of Robert Moses is to understand

the New Deal for me the most fascinating
thing about the New Deal is that it is

in large measure constructed in New York
City that when Franklin Roosevelt goes

to Washington he is not going alone
he is going with a set of ideas and

experiences which he is gleaned by
working in New York City and New York

State politics for the previous decades
and he is going with a platoon of New

Yorkers from various of aspects of New
York life also have got programs who

have got ideas which had been tested and
worked out on the streets of New York

City in essence I would argue that what
happens in 32 or 33 is that New York

invades Washington New York boards
and seizes Washington but instead of

treating it as a conquered country what
they do is say Washington has got to do

what New York City has been doing for
all these years and do it on a colossal

new scale but the resources the owned
in the federal state can command it must

intervene in the workings of the economy
must not in fact just sit back and be

laissez-faire in its attitude it must
seize the moment and operate on a very

different set of parameters
than the previous administration

when you look at the New Deal there are
a lot of people from around the country

who are players but who's sitting at OSA
veltz right hand it's Harry Hopkins who

comes up through the Social Work and the
welfare bureaucracy in New York City and

is the guy who is sitting there and
you know starts signing a zillions of

dollars worth of checks on his left hand
is Eleanor who is in fact plugged into

the settlement house movement and a
whole network of labor reformers there's

Francis Perkins who's going to be his
Secretary of Labor she was back in the

triangle fire days she's in fact
continuing and applying lessons that

were learned in that period on national
level the list just goes on all along

there's this squadron of New Yorkers who
are installed in high places and begin

to promote New York City of programs the

seismic changes wrought by the New Deal
would reverberate for the rest of the

century as billions of dollars in
federal aid were soon pouring out of

Washington affecting every aspect of American
life there were funds for unemployment relief

for long-term initiatives in Health and
Social Security for public housing and

labor reform and most surprisingly
of all in the darkest hour of the

depression for the kind of large-scale
public works that Fiorello LaGuardia had

made the centerpiece of his
vision of a transformed metropolis

for better or worse it completely
transformed the way people view

government and government's role in
people's lives before the New Deal it

didn't occur to most people that
government had any obligation to its

citizenry beyond the basics of military
support and security and things like

that but the idea that government had a
responsibility to intervene economically

to provide employment when necessary to
keep people from starving even this was

simply not understood as social security
something that's now sacrosanct and in

many ways was a novel idea that the
people should actually enjoy security

and that government was obliged to
provide it it changes the nature of the

relationship between citizens and government

and yet the tremendous irony is is that
on the short term the New Deal programs

are going to be the salvation of New
York City because Washington comes out

of this enormous they strengthen New
York which had been the unofficial

capital and the financial capital and
the cultural capital and the marketing

capital has now got a rival in a major
league way that it had never had before

and something that you know it's not the
center of the country it's just another

city on a very hard pressed city and
it's dependent upon federal transfer and

Washington is going to apply the same
New Deal tactics and strategies out west

where they're going to build huge
public works projects you know dams

electrification systems water supply
which is very largely going to be

drawing upon money garnered from the
Northeast in New York in particular to

develop what's going to emerge a
little bit down the road as a Sun Belt

competitor to New York City's economic
primacy and can do the same thing in the

south the New Deal courtesy very largely
of New Yorkers is in fact going to

equalize the relations between the
regions but it is going to transform

forevermore New York City's Central T
that was characteristic of it up till

that period

the full effects of that epic
transformation would not be felt for

decades to come in the meantime no mayor
in the country saw more clearly the

potential of the New Deal than Fiorello
LaGuardia pioneering the use of the

airplane in government the indefatigable
mayor would like to be addressed by his

old Army Air Corps rank of Major was
soon flying down to Washington early in

the morning returning to New York by
late afternoon with the promise of new

federal aid in hand thanks to his
immense personal charm his reputation

Foreign Corrupt ability and his close
personal ties to Franklin Roosevelt

our mayor is the most appealing man I
know he comes to Washington and tells me

a sad story the tears run down my cheeks
and the tears run down his cheeks and

the first thing I know is wangled
another fifty million dollars out of me

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Fiorello
LaGuardia is you know like this with

Franklin Roosevelt that's the critical
connection and money billions of dollars

flow into a vast series Public Works
programs that build things that are

socially useful they build highways they
build airports that bill hospitals they

build schools they build colleges they
build you know health centers a vast

panoply of expansion of things before it
was over the unlikely alliance between

the patrician president and the
diminutive populist mayor from one man

called a lowercase Franklin Roosevelt
would turn New York into a showcase for

the New Deal in the darkest hours of the
depression Fiorello LaGuardia would have the

resources he would need to turn New
York into what he called a gigantic

Laboratory of Civic reconstruction all
he needed was someone who knew how to

use them and within days of his
inauguration on January 1st 1934 he had

turned to a man already universally known in
New York as the man who could get things done

his name was Robert Moses the greatest
builder of Public Works the city would

ever see and long after he had left
the public stage people would still be

debating the meaning and consequences
of his extraordinary career

Robert Moses was the single most
important figure to emerge in New York

City in the 20th century he was a unique
figure not only is there no counterpart

in New York City to Robert Moses neither
is there any counterpart to Robert Moses

and Chicago or Los Angeles or Houston
one person single handling over a period

of almost half a century reshaped such
great metropolis in a democracy you

think of power in four-year terms or
eight years of 12 years spans Robert

Moses held power for almost half a
century and with this power he shaped

New York not for a term were not for a
decade and not for a generation but for

almost half a century and you talk about
New York in the 20th century the story

of New York is inseparable from the
story of Robert Moses to an astonishing

extent they are one in the same but
Margaret Moses did that had to be done

was to adapt really a 19th century
City for 20th century circumstances

he was swimming with the tide of history
the American people had essentially

voted with their pocketbooks and with
their minds in favor of a more spread-out

environment one that was based really on
automobile transportation Robert Moses

took that idea and ran with it like
no one else in American history

of course there are great historical
forces which make things the way they

are and to an extent every individual
is subject to them but there are some

individuals who ride the crest of the
social forces and turn them in their

direction Moses was that kind of a person because

of his personality the scope of
his vision his energy and he had an

intensity of purpose I mean a savage
will that he's going to get this done

you know he's saying then I hit him with
a meat axe and the meat axe could be

anything he had to do to get his and
accomplished he certainly did some

terrible things and tried to do some
terrible things that he fortunately did

not get away with and I think the key
to understanding Robert Moses is that he

didn't care about people he passionately
cared about automobiles and moving them

Sophocles and one must wait until the
evening to see how splendid the day has

been when you look at what Moses wrought
you say these are some of the greatest

creations of man and what did they create

what kind of a city did he leave behind

he'd begun his career one man later said
as the very flower of New York's reform

movement the fiercely driven second
son of wealthy German Jews fired by the

ideals of the progressive age and the
dream of public service coming-of-age as

the era of horse and rail gave way to
the era of the motorcar from beginning

to end the story of his life would be
bound up with the automobile and its

fateful impact on the life of American cities
at the turn of the century but it first

appeared to be a harmless little toy
began puttering around on the streets of

the city and it wasn't a harmless
little toy it was in fact the agent of

dissolution which was about over
the next 20-30 years to unravel to

de-centralized this tremendous the
integrated rail based system that had

been constructed nobody took it
seriously at first because in fact it

was a toy and it was a rich man's toy no
great surprise these early machines were

expensive and you had ever chauffeured
and they were very fragile so they

needed an indoor garage so it's not a
surprise that of the around 1900 the

8,000 cars that existed in the u.s. the
clear majority of them were owned in New

York City and they were owned in
engrossed Los John Jacob Astor had 32

one summer day in 1901 two-year-old
Louis Camille was playing out in Lower

East Side streets son of Italian
immigrants and it was run over by an

automobile driven by a chauffeur who was
taking to Wall Street businessman down

to their office a huge crowd formed up and nearly
in fact lynched all of the occupants of the car

this is the first critical clash
the streets were playgrounds for the

working-class poor and the car is making
a competing claim for rights of access

to this place and it makes it with brute force

Henry Ford changes the equation
by mass-producing autos

he's turning out that Model T flippers
are dropping in price they would in

Access range now a much larger middle
class they're no longer exclusive bid

toys for the bridge the number of car
ownership begins to soar throughout the

country but in New York City in
particular they triple between 1915 and

1920 but it's nothing compared to what
happens in the 20s the 20s in fact is

when the automobile explodes it's not
just the spectacular presence of these

things in terms of the sheer number of
people who are now driving them it is

the way the cities begin to be remade to suit
the needs and convenience of automobile errs

convinced of the future of American life
lay with the automobile Robert Moses was

among the first to sense that cities
themselves would have to be dramatically

rebuilt to accommodate the reality of the
motorcar appointed by Governor L Smith in the

boom years of the 1920s to reorganize
New York state government he soon began

to conceive of a revolutionary project of
his own a sweeping network of limited access

roadways the first of their kind in the
world leading out to a vast system of

public parks and beaches that would
open the hinterlands of Long Island to

millions of New Yorkers starved for open
spaces and begin to fulfill the promise

of the automotive age nothing
on a scale like this had ever

been conceived if he wanted people to
drive to beauty to a park through a park

he called them Ribbon Park and every
aspect of them was going to be beautiful

on April 18th 1924 Smith put Moses in
charge of what was now officially called

the Long Island State Park Commission
after decades of dreaming he would

finally get a chance to build and build
he did with a single-minded Drive and

ferocity that stunned everyone who came
in contact with him riding roughshod

over long entrenched interests bullying
private landowners and millionaires and

when necessary swaying local political
bosses by offering inside information on

the layout of his proposed roadways
could say that the city was part of a

larger continuity that it was part
of a slow and Cora's became a central

metaphor for him in the flow of traffic
as opening up a new possibility for

cities maybe you could see him saying
that cities and citizens or them didn't

have to be stuck that he would have seen
the block the street the neighborhood as

obstacles and he felt that now you can
overcome these obstacles you can get

into the flow and you know he he built
the flow he created the flow and he had

great skill at putting this across to
the public wouldn't you like to go with

the flow wouldn't you like to flow
isn't it better than just hanging out

it took Moses six or seven years of
fighting without Smith behind him to

hack out that Park and Parkway system
for Long Island but when he did it when

Jones Beach opened in 1929 the whole
world came to praise it no one had ever

seen anything like it and who came the
young urban builders the people who

wanted to build roads who wanted to
build Park Boys who wanted to build

State Park they came to Robert Moses to
learn how to do it so he was not only

America's greatest road builder but he was
the man who taught the other illa billah'

by 1929 Robert Moses had helped set
in motion one of the most fateful

transformations the city and its
surroundings would ever undergo opening

the region beyond the city's borders
to the reality of the automobile

now as the private energies of the 1920s
gave way to the public crisis of the

1930s he would finally get a chance
to transform the city itself which for

better or for worse would never be the

same again up through the depression the

fell government has almost no
involvement in funding urban functions

they just didn't pay for things that
happened in cities but the New Deal

changes all that and they begin a whole
new phase in American history in which

the federal government funds local
enterprises because one main reason for

doing this is to get the economy
going get cash flowing the Roosevelt

administration is very eager for things
that can start quickly and one of the

geniuses of Robert Moses is that he
understood that opportunities would

arise and he had plans in his back
pocket sometimes just in the back of his

head but sometimes more than that they
can be pulled out of the drawer and put

in place extremely quickly from
the day he took office as New York

City Parks Commissioner on January
19 1934 Robert Moses would become the

epicenter of a whirlwind of public
building reaching out to every corner of

the city he had accepted the job only
on certain conditions that he be given

absolute control over every Park in the
city that he retained the state post Al

Smith had given him and that he be
granted still larger powers as head of

the moribund Triborough bridge authority
an immense public works project that had

languished so long people had started
calling it the bridge to nowhere eager

to begin rebuilding the battered City
LaGuardia agreed and in the end Moses

himself drafted the special legislation
creating his new position then within

hours of taking office swiftly fired all
the old borough commissioners and their

staff and set to work the parks were in
complete disrepair the Central Park Zoo

Tammany of course had let it go
completely without repair so the cages

were so rotten that they were afraid
that the lines and tigers might break

out but instead of repairing the cages
they hired time any men to sit at the

entrances of the zoo with shotguns to
shoot the animals in case there was a

fire or the cages broke armed
with New Deal funds Moses exploded

into action turning first to the city's
dilapidated parks within days he had

sent for the crack team of men he had
used on Long Island then hired more than

600 unemployed architects and engineers
along with a team of hard driving Irish

foremen who quickly whipped an army of
newly recruited relief workers into a

disciplined construction force 80,000
strong all through the winter of 1934 triple

shifts of workers labored round-the-clock to
meet the master-builders punishing timetable by

the first warm weekend in May Moses workforce had
completely transformed every public park and green

space in the city more than 1700
renovation projects in all including

Central Park itself where before the
year was up a magnificent new zoo had

arisen on the crumbling ruins of the old

there is completed one of these work

projects

as signs of life began to stir in the
city for the first time in half a decade

hope began to rise in the hearts of New
Yorkers and it was only the beginning

in little more than half a decade boldly
stretching the definition of parks to

include limited access parkways and
resting money from any source he could

Robert Moses would begin to construct
the first urban highway system in the

world connected to a breathtaking
network of tunnels viaducts causeways

and bridges that were begin to adapt
the old city grid to the reality of the

automobile and knit the entire region
into a single coherent whole the 30s of

course is all about concrete really it's
the 30s that finishes off mass transit

as a possible contender for future
transport based operations in the city

you know what the auto industry was able
to do was to get public money pouring

into constructing the infrastructure
that they wanted then with WPA money in

fact they've rip up miles and miles of
streetcars in city after city around the

country run them into the ground shut
them down it is true that LaGuardia does

maintain the subway system he picks up
the bankrupt IRT he does push for new

lines but above-ground LaGuardia is a
car man LaGuardia believes that this is

modern this is cutting-edge this is the wave of
the future so what Moses is doing is the executor

of this program the federal government
New Deal money just cascades into the

city and very much the Olmstead tradition he's
going to build a series of connecting highways

before the decade was out a great
circumferential Parkway had begun to

sweep around Brooklyn from the East
River to the Atlantic a ravishing bridge

had left over the Harlem River
connecting Manhattan and the Bronx and

the revolutionary Westside
Improvement a gorgeously landscaped

six and a half mile long urban symphony
park park and Park Parkway had begun to

sweep majestically down the west side
of Manhattan along the Hudson River

covering over the old New York Central
tracks and transforming Riverside Park

from an urban wasteland into a piece
of urban poetry the seductively curving

drive gave motorists an experience of
the city they had never had before the

ravishing towers of midtown Manhattan
looming above the lush green nests of

the park in a shimmering landscape that
as in a movie or a dream was constantly

shifting constantly changing and always
in motion no one has ever been able to

know how much money Robert Moses spent
on the West Side improvement I finally

concluded that the amount that he spent
was at least 180 million dollars but it

was almost certainly well over 200
million dollars a quarter of a billion

dollars on a public work in 1930s
America and you know the chorus of

praise for this highway was just
fantastic and one editorial said the

railroad tracks are covered at last

and yet in scale and audacity even the
west side improvement paled before that

of another giant public work the
Triborough bridge an epic complex of

roadways and bridges that lay it's
a very heart of Robert Moses new

transportation system and there it is
very clear what we mean by Robert Moses

as the shaper of New York the glaciers
that had rumbled down from Hudson Bay

eons before had torn Long Island which
carries of course Brooklyn and Queens

loose from the mainland of the United
States Robert Moses stitched it back

together again with the Triborough
bridge if you look in New York from the

air you see an incredible fact that
three great boroughs of the city

Manhattan the Bronx and queens rush
together the streets appear to be

rushing together and all of a sudden at
the point that they're rushing together

they're held apart by these narrow
bands of water in the middle of which is

Randall's in Ward's Island by building
Triborough and uniting these three

boroughs he was uniting the city he was
repairing single-handedly what nature

had done despite its name Triborough was not

really a bridge at all but three giant
bridges in one a rendezvous of bridges

one man later said together with 13,500
feet of elevated viaduct and 14 miles of

roadway a traffic machine another
man said the largest ever built

mighty Triborough this is just one part
of it it's the largest vertical lift

bridge in the world which means that
that center span you're looking at has

to rise 80 feet in the air vertically
between the two towers every time a

large ship passes if you were standing
here in 1934 and 35 when they were

putting in the girders for this span
each girder was as big as a 10 room

ranch house and it was so big that one
barge where two barges couldn't carry it

four or five barges would be lashed
together and they'd come up this river

pushed by a whole Covey of tug loads
until they got it into position

remember this was in the middle of the
depression there was so much concrete in

this bridge that they had a reopen
cement factories from named to

Mississippi to make the wood for the
forms to hold the concrete a whole

forest had to be cut down in Oregon
five thousand men at the time

were working on these islands on the
bridge and of course the five thousand

men we're only putting into place the
materials that have been created to

steel etc by many times five thousand men
31 million man-hours of work went into

the Triborough bridge in a hundred and
thirty four cities in 20 states in the

middle of the depression this one
project really galvanized things across

the United States the Triborough bridge
with its Art Deco detailing with its

cloverleaf arrangements of ramps
connecting not only the three Burroughs

but the parks which he reclaimed on
the islands below is an unbelievably

complicated and beautiful piece of
engineering it's highway building lifted

to the art of sculpture in motion it's
fantastic under his direction we got

some of the greatest public
works the world has ever seen

the massive structure was finally opened
on July 11th 1936 in an awe-inspiring

ceremony broadcast by radio across the
entire nation it was one government

official said simply one of the greatest
accomplishments of men President

Roosevelt himself gave the keynote
address but it was Robert Moses who was

the undisputed hero of the day we are
definitely in an era of building the

best kind of building the building of
great public projects for the benefit of

the public and with the object of
building human happiness Franklin Delano

Roosevelt

year after year as one immense public
works project after another rose in New

York City the frenzy of construction
became a heart-stopping symbol of civic

rebirth and renewal holding out the
promise one man later said of a glorious

future just over the horizon not merely for the
privileged few but for the people as a whole

Robert Moses himself was certain he held
the keys to the city's future there are

people who like things as they are he
declared I can't hold out any hope to

them they have to keep moving further
away this is a great big state and there

are also other states let them go to the

Rockies well he's absolutely the right
man at the right moment and there's no

question about it he has his own vision
for what New York could be in what

cities can be and suddenly he has an
opportunity to put that into practice

he's got manpower through the WPA
he's got money he's got a city that is

devastated and needs an infrastructure
and he's tremendously creative and smart

and gifted and he really has a vision
that he really tries to implement

sometimes that came at the expense of
other things sometimes it came with a

vision that we no longer have he built
highways right on the river because in

his day you drove for recreation and
that's what you saw now we have highways

blocking our views of the river but at
the time it was a vision about how to

integrate the landscape and make it work
for human beings that transformed the

city and people's lives in it in
retrospect however the opening of the

Triborough bridge would seem to some
to mark a fateful turning point in the

culture of the automobile in New York
and in the career of Robert Moses in

ways New Yorkers themselves did not
fully comprehend at the time and with

consequences that would not be fully felt for
decades Robert Moses is the paradox of urban

history in the 20th century every city
in the United States wanted a Robert

Moses every city wanted a Bob Moses
building bigger roads faster expressways

and more of them and Moses was
extraordinarily good and actually

shaping the physical city and getting
things done I think the damage that

Moses did is actually very real so that
the other side of the coin is Bob Moses

is actually an embodiment of the fact
that in the 20th century we put the

physical prominence of the city before its people

we actually fetish the urban form and
forgot the human beings who lived there

less than five weeks after the opening
of the Triborough bridge built to

decrease congestion in the city New
Yorkers got a glimpse of the future the

automobile was beginning to usher in
when on August 17th 1936 the biggest

traffic jam in the history of the
metropolitan region brought cars on the

Long Island parkways to a standstill
you know the lesson of New York if you

look at most of this career when a turns
door he refused to take into account the

effects when we call today traffic
generation of his facilities the fact

that by building a road by building a
bridge by building a tunnel you are in

itself increasing traffic so whatever
benefit you are expecting to get is

going to be immediately reduced for
example when he said the Triborough

bridge will solve the traffic problem
on the East River bridges the Queensboro

etc he opened the Triborough bridge
the traffic was far heavier than he

predicted Triborough was crowded and so
is the Queensboro Bridge so he said I'll

solve that by building the Bronx white
stone bridge for a while at work in two

years the Queensboro is as full as that
had never been and more Triborough is

more full than ever before and the Bronx
white stone bridge was full she saw

build the Throgs Neck bridge you know
if Moses had had his way he would have

built bridges the length of Long Island
Sound not only polluting the sound

changing the flow of the water and water
but with each bridge he just would have

generated more traffic in the
1960s or so some of Moses as

critics understood that when you build
highways you create more congestion and

more pressure for highways Moses
understood this much earlier I mean when

he was trying to get money for highways
he would say it's to relieve congestion

but he knew that in fact it would create
more congestion in the need for further

Airways and hence would have to move
the flow would have to move the map to

create more flow and make it flow
further on and further out in that sense

the what's you started the highway
machine it was self-perpetuating you

could stop even more troubling than the
immense traffic jams his public works

were generated though far less apparent
to the naked eye was the power Moses was

accumulating in the process of building
through the instrument of the new public

authorities you know we are to it in
political science classes that in a

democracy power comes from being
elected it's the will of the people

Robert Moses realized that he was never
going to get power through that normal

democratic process he had to figure out
a different way to get it and he did it

by creating what is really a fourth
branch of government and one not

responsible to the will of the people insulated
from the will of the people the public authority

empowered to sell bonds to create great
public works public authorities like

Triborough were meant to go out of business
once the tolls they charged had paid for

the structures they created but Robert
Moses had no intention of ever closing

his authorities down rewriting the
legislation under which authorities were

charted he made sure that the millions
of dollars in nickels and dimes that

streamed in every year remained a
continuous flow of revenue upon which he

could borrow still more for future
projects a bedrock of power that would

place him beyond reach of the mayor the
governor or the people themselves in perpetuity

the centerpiece of all his power
was what he called Schreiber on lady

Triborough and that's where the
headquarters were on Randall's Island in

a little building underneath that toll
plaza every driver who crossed this

Arthur across this bridge had to pay a
toll and coin and of course almost none

of the millions of motorists who pass
over at ner idea that the headquarters

were dining now the money that came in
through the tolls was spent at his sole

discretion he didn't have to do as
mayor's do go to a board of estimate of

course submit his will to the voters
he could spend authorities money as he

wanted to spend on his money so he
created a system in which the voice of

the people hardly mattered little and
I think he was able to do an import

because he was making so many people
rich and they were there for him and he

didn't have to pick up the phone so
construction companies bond underwriters

you know insurance men on every level
lawyers I mean they were just phalanx as

in Fair Lance's of people and you know
in the wheels within wheels we still

don't really understand as the depression wore on
Robert Moses would create more than a dozen public

authorities integrating them into an
immense self-perpetuating machine for

building Public Works a system
increasingly remote from the public in

whose name they had been created and
irony not lost on some of Moses closest

admirers Frances Perkins who is
Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor

could it very well she was reacting to
Moses having a tantrum about the people

in Jones Beach that they threw litter on
the beach and didn't clean up Moses said

I'll get them I'll fix them and Perkins
said he loves the public but he hates

people and I think that probably
describes a lot of other public

officials too including many who've done
wonderful things but I think was Moses

the hatred of people
eventually began to trip him up

by 1936 tensions had begun to rise
between the city's highest elected

official and the hard-driving bureaucrat
who was his parks commissioner though

they worked well together and shared
many of the same goals it was becoming

increasingly obvious that Fiorello
LaGuardia and Robert Moses embodied

radically different values and attitudes
towards the city and its people one of

the things about LaGuardia is that he
really he appreciated ethnicity he was

hip to ethnic neighborhoods he was
always going up to neighborhoods going

into all the stores talking to people in
their various languages and you know he

would go and talk to Ukrainians and
Ukrainian you know and they would love

him for life and and you know who knows
how many words he knew in Ukranian but

he could do that and he loved doing that
you know and he loved being sort of on

the ground he loved being on the street
Moses on the other hand went out of his

way to highlight his distance from those
people his contempt for them and his

sense that he was dedicated to a larger
system to see New York as part of a

flowchart now as part of a flow that
went our all through the country in

which streets neighborhoods sense of
place ethnic loyalties meant nothing the

only thing that really mattered was the
flow infuriated by his inability to rain

Robert Moses in Fiorello LaGuardia raged
constantly behind his back complaining

that no law no regulation no budget
stops Robert Moses from his appointed

task Moses for his part who routinely
referred to the mayor as that little

organ grinder and that son-of-a-bitch
chafed at the necessity

of having to ask for money every time
he wanted to build the some degree

LaGuardia did control Moses and you see
it in-house because Moses wanted to take

over public housing Moses tried to steal
the housing money and Housing Authority

from LaGuardia by mobilizing the
real-estate forces of the city behind

him but LaGuardia stops him he was in
his own way just as tough as Robert

Moses and what he basically did is as
Moses is making this radio speech the

mobilize public support over the
municipal radio station LaGuardia

actually has the engineers cut the
station off the air so LaGuardia kept

Moses out of housing in the end however
even LaGuardia himself failed to grasp

the sheer scale of the forces overtaking
New York during the New Deal or how much

the future of the city lay not with
the street and the block and the

neighborhoods he loved but with the car and
the highway and with men like Robert Moses

by the mid-1930s Fiorello LaGuardia and
Robert Moses had succeeded in turning

New York into the gigantic Laboratory
of Civic reconstruction LaGuardia had

dreamed of but all the new building
could not disguise the fact that across

the city terrible suffering and hardship
remained nowhere was the suffering worse

than on the densely crowded streets and
avenues of Hartman we're little more

than a year after LaGuardia took office
three decades of relative racial calm in

New York came to a tragic violent end

what happens to a dream deferred does it

dry up like A Raisin in the Sun or

fester like a sore and then run

does it stink like rotten meat or crust

and sugar over like a syrupy sweet maybe

it just sags like a heavy load or does it explode

Langston Hughes more than anywhere else

in the city Harlem the proud black
capital that had arisen so spectacularly

only two decades before had been all
but devastated by the Depression the

Renaissance of the 1920s had been a
cultural triumph not an economic one and

long before the crash itself the
district's fragile prosperity had begun

to disintegrate it became Islam it had
been a ghetto before it becomes a real

slum then afterwards after
the Depression rents evictions

unemployment tuberculosis all the
indicia of decay and dysfunction

accelerate so that Harlem becomes a
place in which the opportunities that

had brought it into being really become
almost exceptional I think the major

difference is that in the 1920s harlem
really did believe in mobility and most

people believe that concepts of american
mobility applied to Harlem you had a

population of people who were already
depending upon rather menial jobs to

sustain themselves the hope was that
with regular employment and with it with

the other opportunities that cities
provided education better housing better

living conditions better health care
there would be mobility by the 1930s all

of that gets challenged first of all
that category that was referred to as

Negro jobs disappears because white
New Yorkers desperate for work begin to

demand positions that they formerly refused
to take it's a truism but it's true that the

Depression was far worse in Harlem than
anywhere else the levels of unemployment

are simply spectacular and remember
there had already been discrimination

even in good times I mean the hospitals
would not hire blacks the drugstores

would not hire blacks the insurance
companies even though they wrote you

know thousands of policies low-cost
policies to Harlem residents they

wouldn't hire blacks and even when the
depression starts and there are relief

programs in place the WPA discriminates as well

in the 1930s Robert Moses built 255 new

playgrounds in New York City he built
two in areas at black children could use

you know white children were given
sliding boards and swings and beautiful

little wading pools in the playground
black children who could still play with

your broomsticks in the streets if they
wanted to play baseball it still had a

splash through the fire hydrants people
know if a city cares for them or not a

playground is a lot more than a
playground a little vest pocket park is

a little a lot more than a little bit
of green it's a sign that the city cares

that it's willing to devote something to
your neighborhood what did the mothers

of Harlem think of the policies of the
state when there was no place for their

children to fight

even more insidious for the city's black
population in the end with a federal

mortgage and loan programs promulgated
by the New Deal which to revive the

moribund housing market in the outer
boroughs set in motion a fateful process

that in the next two decades would
systematically segregate neighborhood

after neighborhood in New York by race
african-american ghettoization really

begins in the third decade of the
20th century it begins in the 1930s

it begins with New Deal policy it begins
with the federal government in the state

government colluding with banks and
insurance companies to solve New Deal

problems by building building building
building building we're building housing

up the periphery of the city at an
incredible pace and in order to create a

market for that housing you've got
to force white working-class and

middle-class families to move and in
order to get them out there what we do

is actually make it irrational to stay
inside the city during the early years

of the New Deal the federal government
established the homeowners Loan

Corporation and the homeowners Loan
Corporation actually went out in

Brooklyn and they began mapping out the
borough into sixty six neighborhoods

going block by block and finding every
black Latino Irish Jewish Italian polish

family that was there and assigning
ratings to each neighborhood based on

the racial and ethnic makeup then they
distributed the maps to banks and held

the banks to a certain standard when
loaning money for homes and rental the

consequences of having your ratings
go down is of course that your housing

property goes down so for instance white
Brooklynites living in the old sections

of North Brooklyn all of a sudden find
out that their housing is less valuable

not because they've done anything and
not because their neighborhood has

changed but because banks won't lend
anyone money to move there unless those

people are black after the homeowners
Loan Corporation begins segregating on

the federal level and working with local
banks in Brooklyn Manhattan and the

Bronx and queens the state
gets involved in redlining

they've also mapped out in Brooklyn they
go block by block and this time they

look for only black and Latino persons
and a single black person living on a

block is enough to redline a block the effect will
be in fact to do extraordinary damage to black

communities throughout New York all
of a sudden black communities that

had been scattered throughout New
York City which had long traditions in

certain neighborhoods in the southern
part of New York throughout Brooklyn and

Queens and even on Staten Island were
being physically segregated heated up

when the homeowners Loan Corporation
finishes its work in the 1940s it has

dramatically altered the makeup of
Brooklyn in 1930 when the depression

starts black Brooklyn Heights are
actually the least segregated grouped

physically in the borough by 1950
they're the most segregated group the

segregation is all in central Brooklyn
in the bedford-stuyvesant district and

that will become the largest black
ghetto in the United States by the end

of the 1960s in the 1930s Harlem goes
from being an ethnic community with

quite a bit of mobility and optimism to
a racial swamp with very little optimism

very little hope the federal government
had armed banks and insurance companies

and real estate dealers with the public
authority to keep black people inside

that physical space and to force new
black migrants to the city inside

similar physical spaces so that as
harlem expands in the 1930s and 1940s as

bedford stuyvesant expands in the 40s
and 50s what remains true about them is

black communities no longer control
their own destiny by the 50s and 60s

they're being forced and physically
quarantined inside the city at a time

when white Americans are peculiarly mobile
bias thira black ghetto in every city in

the United States the answer is public
policy the way we read map cities

racially in order to solve economic

crises year after year the walls of

racial segregation and discrimination
closed in around the city's

african-american population to some the
most infuriating bigotry of all was to

be found in the heart of Harlem itself
were almost none of the dozens of white

owned shops and businesses that lined
125th Street the commercial spine of the

district was willing to hire African
Americans in any capacity in church

groups and labor groups and socialist
groups and black nationalist groups in

the Communist Party among others begin
to set up against on 125th Street in

other places they march in front of
these stores and say don't buy where you

can't work and in fact this heartens the
community there are some successes some

job openings are created but then the
forces of the law being but they are the

store owners get an injunction passed in 34 and
this kind of picketing behavior isn't that bad

so having gotten themselves together
having come up with a communal

collective voice to attempt to redress
long-standing racial / economic

grievances suddenly that voice is cut off
and it's in that context that Harlem explodes

in the winter of nineteen thirty five
years of rising misery frustration and

resentment erupted into violence on the
streets of Harlem around 3:30 on the

afternoon of March 19th a 16 year old
Puerto Rican boy named lino Rivera was

caught stealing a penknife from
an SH crest store on a hundred and

twenty-fifth Street a scuffle ensued and
as a crowd of curious onlookers gathered

on the sidewalk outside the shop owner called the
police urging the patrolman when he arrived to

avoid further trouble and let the boy go
they actually let Rivera go out of back

door and they didn't bother informing
anybody and rumors now shot through the

street that he'd been killed and then in
fact crowds began to form by the evening

people are arriving with placards and
pickets and eventually somebody hurls

rock through the plate-glass window and
Harlem explodes and people pour out of

the tenements into the streets and they
not only attack and loot this particular

store but up and down 125th Street
and other areas except for stores that

hastily tech up placards in their front
window black-owned business you know or

if it's a white store we hire black
people and in fact they were relatively

speaking spared there are also tangles
with the police they have to understand

it submerge the entirely white
police force it is seen as an Army of

Occupation sitting on the discontent that's been
building all through the night and on into the

next day the riot went on by the
time order was restored a hundred and

twenty-five people had been arrested
over a hundred had been injured and

three killed all of them black is the
first black explosion up till this point

when you talk race riots you're talking
about whites pouring into a black

neighborhood stomping on black people
the draft riots of 1863 nobody for 20

years has been dreaming of invading
black Harlem it's a huge stronghold but

now you've got a whole new phenomenon I
think one of the major things that the

riot does is it actually forces us to
seriously look at the condition of black

Americans in major cities New York
become sort of a harbinger of what's

going to happen other places and you've
got to take New York City seriously

especially Harlem it's sitting right
in Manhattan it's in the cultural and

economic capital of the United States
and what happens there is actually more

important than what happens other places
it does get attention it does force the

administration to seriously look at the
plight of black Americans but still the

response is actually rather weak
the repercussions of the riots would

continue for months and years to come
at the insistence of black leaders

LaGuardia appointed a special commission
to examine the social and economic

conditions in Harlem whose report
painted a bleak portrait of the city's

racial divisions and inequalities but
like most white politicians of his

day the mayor from the black owned
Amsterdam news had praised in 1931 as

one of the most fearless friends the
Negro has ever had in or out of Congress

was still not prepared to put racial
equality at the center of his reform

agenda speaking before a group of church
leaders he had he said no illusion about

the difficulties facing your people in New
York but reconciling the disparities caused

by American racism he said was
a task beyond his abilities

I think look water is a difficult person
to describe especially his stance on

race he endeared himself to many
african-americans by standing up for

people by standing up for a black
congressman Oxford to priests and other

folks who had been tossed out of
Congress by demanding in fact that

they'd be given equal treatment on
the other hand when it came to real

substantive changes that would affect
African Americans in a positive way

LaGuardia tended to in fact do what most
mayors of New York City have done and

that is side with separate and less
equal because the ethnic algebra of the

city allows you to over serve some
people and under serve others and it's a

very good formula for getting elected
a question of what will happen to the

Negro in New York is overlaid with
shadows of tragic premonition the first

race riot in New York was in 1712 the

most recent was in 1935 the last has not

yet come

Fortune magazine bit by bit the New York

of 1920 has rearranged and expanded
itself new highway suite beneath its

bold escarpment new housing and new
playgrounds have been carved from its

native Rock giant new bridges soar
above its two rivers and new tubes have

burrowed beneath the waters for perhaps
the first time in its ruthless headlong

history some new impulse something apart
from Commerce has been acting on the

town some sense of community design and
purpose has tempered the obsession with

buying and selling out of the
old demonic energy has come a

new ambition to build the city more fit

for human use an aspiration clear a

price on November 2nd 1937 Fiorello

LaGuardia pulled off the simple feat
that had eluded every reformed mayor

before him he was reelected the largest
majority in the city's history swept him

back into office along with a host
of reform candidates including the

President of every borough except the Bronx
LaGuardia himself took the landslide as

a ringing endorsement of his policies
and a mandate to lead New York into a

still brighter future we're going to
make the city a real heaven he said

but when it was passed down to me by
my mother my father by people in the

neighborhood was his absolute Zuber and

optimism we're gonna get through this
there's a depression to hell with it

will go the mob has everything fixed
the hell will they'll throw their slot

machines in the river you know like this
the hell with it let's go do it anyway

it's the depression you can't build an airport
this is New York you got to have an airport

in 1934 LaGuardia takes a flight from
Chicago to New York says on his ticket

and as usual the airplane lands in
Newark Airport and he refuses to get out

my ticket says New York this is not
New York this is New Jersey and after

everybody else gets off the airplane
takes off with only LaGuardia in it and

lands at Floyd Bennett Field and from
the first day that he's mayor he is

pushing for the construction what is
going to be LaGuardia Airport and again

it is the New Deal money that makes as
possible the biggest program that the

WPA undertook anywhere in the country
was the construction of LaGuardia

Airport and he is out there every day
is you know hands-on he is watching the

construction of this thing because he
understands that this is the next link

you know that the city has always
thrived on linkages on connectivity

there has been the blackball line you
know connection the Erie Canal line

connection and Atlantic cable connection
and the steamboat the steamer connection

this is the 20th century's great linkage

to be made and he sees it but for all
the accomplishments of laguardia's first

term no one was more aware than
LaGuardia himself how much remained to

be done and five years into his tenure
in City Hall he continued to drive

himself but a pace that amazed and
increasingly worried his closest

associates of them all none was
closer than Charles C Burlingham

a legendary 81 year old lawyer and civic
reformer widely known as New York's

first citizen the distinguished
barrister was as proud as anyone in the

city of the Progress LaGuardia had made
in turning New York into what the mayor

himself called the world's greatest
experiment in social and political democracy

but he had come to fear for the health
and well-being of the driven little

mayor who had come to identify himself so
completely with the people of New York City

you're a very tired man and must get some
rest Burlingham wrote in a confidential

letter to the mayor when I Drive through
the vast reaches of the Bronx and see

the swarming myriads I say to myself can
it be that one man is responsible for

the welfare of these people the world is

in chaos struggling to master its own
inventions we are in danger of being

annihilated by forces which we ourselves

set up the world calls for an answer
to this problem of mastering our own

inventions and we propose in 1939 to

contribute to that answer Michael
hare Secretary of the World's

Fair by the spring of 1939 excitement was

building all across New York for nearly
three years an army of men working under

Robert Moses had been laboring to
transform a 1200 acre ash far out on the

northern edge of Queens into the site of
one of the most breathlessly anticipated

collective enterprises of the decade a
hymn to progress forged in the searing

crucible of the Great Depression the
monumental fare would when complete

project the image of a bold new city of
tomorrow but in 1939 seemed just around

the corner the 1939 World's Fair was a

special moment in time on the one
hand it was a culmination of almost

everything that had transformed in New
York in a century and a quarter since

the opening of the Erie Canal a creation
of this incredible world metropolis it

was a technological breakthrough
the opportunities for the future the

automobile what will the future look
like it was a wonderful General Motors

exhibit for example all these kind of
gleaming aluminum buildings Robert Moses

of course was at the center of this it
was a gigantic World's Fair bigger I

think than any World's Fair that ever
taken place up into that point in terms

of numbers of people coming through
the turnstiles incredible event

an exhilarating sense of wonder and a
kind of serene ambivalence presided over

the New York World's Fair which from the
day it opened on April 30th 1939 touched

a deep chord in the consciousness of
the American people and proved to be an

enormous success day after day week
after week the immense crowd streamed

through the sleek Art Deco gates and on
into the shimmering dreamlike interior

of the fair drifting through scores of
international exhibits and dozens of

corporate pavilions bristling with
consumer products and modern devices of

all kinds the promised a streamlined
chrome-plated future where machines of

all kinds delivered ordinary people from
the drudgery of housework and physical labor

I think the fair itself has a sublime
quality to it because it's the end of

American innocence not just New York
innocence somehow it's the last time

maybe the 50s was an afterglow but I
think it's the last time we believed we

could save the Republic with a
dishwasher but that vacuuming would

somehow transfer all American life if we
only had a dishwasher if we only had a

vacuum cleaner our family life would be
happy we would be healthy if we had a

car it's the last time we really
believed that the car was liberating

because by the end of the Second World War
the car was nothing but a traffic nightmare

whereas in the 30s who dreamed of having
a car to be able to go out on one of

those Robert Moses parkways out to Jones

Beach or someplace like that in the end

the futuristic city within a city
that was the World's Fair was itself a

celebration of the great city shimmering
on the horizon and yet in many ways in

eerie repudiation of everything had
stood for at the very center of the fair

stood the ravishing pure white trial on
and Paris fear the last and most sublime

of New York's great Art Deco icons
every day huge crowds thronged into the

sphere to gaze in wonder at the immense
diorama that had been constructed inside

called democracy tea a radiant vision of
the city of tomorrow wiped clean of the

complexity congestion and disorder of
New York but the largest crowds by far

gathered for the General Motors exhibit
called Futurama where once inside

visitors in moving chairs circled a 36
thousand square foot model showing the

United States as the designers
envisioned it 25 years hence in the Year

1960 they would never forget what they
saw there and what you see there you

were sitting your little cushion
two-seater sofas and you roll along it's

the early pre Disney enterprise and you
go over a scale map of the United States

and what do you see what is the vision
of tomorrow the vision of tomorrow is

highways and huge central cities with
soaring skyscrapers and little small

satellite cities and such General Motors
is in fact as the New York Times said

selling us the world of tomorrow and the
world of tomorrow means that the public

has to foot the bill to develop the
infrastructure which will make in fact

the triumph of the automobile possible
at the very center of the park General

Motors had created an eerie blueprint
for New York's destruction and its

replacement by a different kind of world
entirely gone were the crowded streets and

neighborhoods and to a large extent the
streets themselves in their place in an

inner city eerily empty of human beings
rose tall towers widely separated by

broad swaths of green and bisected by
highways 14 lanes wide those highways

carried people out of the city and into
an American landscape where people lived

mostly in single-family houses
accessible only by car a landscape built

not around the needs of people but
around the needs of automobiles this is

not a vague dream of a life that might
be lived in the far future but one that

could be lived tomorrow morning if we
willed it so the relation between these

units of stone and steel highway and
green is a symbol of the new life of

tomorrow that life will be based on a
contribution of all elements to a new

and living democracy

Robert corn but they don't took place

against the backdrop of the darkness
that was coming over the world 1939

summer of 1939 so the world war two had
really not started there was an ominous

feeling around the world Hitler of
course his soldiers were marching

Luftwaffe was regarded as this new
threatening thing there was an uneasy

about things and so I find what's
fascinating about that World's Fairs on

the one hand all the promise of the
future the celebration of the past and

how far we have come we're coming out of
the depression we're creating this new

wonderful space we're celebrating in a
sense the achievements of the world new

offices cloud that we can see in
retrospect but they could see and feel

almost that themselves at the time which
makes it just such a poignant moment in time

more than 30 million people passed
through the gates of the New York

World's Fair in the last perfect summer of 1939

before the first season of the fair
was out however ominous news came from

abroad on September 1st 1939 word
reached New York that Hitler had invaded

Poland within days England and France
had declared war on Germany and the

battle for Europe had begun the fair
itself wood lumber along uncertain route

for a few more months before closing
in the fall of 1940 with barely enough

money left over to demolish the exhibits

and clear the land in the end the 4000

tons of structural steel that had gone
into the trial on and Paris fear would

be donated to the United States military
and used to make instruments of war

America itself was still at peace but
it was hard to block out thought one

man said of what might really be in

store for the World of Tomorrow for 18

more months the United States stayed out of the
fighting but the storm clouds were drawing near

in New York Robert Moses and Fiorello
LaGuardia raced to complete as many

public works projects as they could before
federal resources were diverted to the war effort

then in the dwindling days of 1941 Japan
attacked Pearl Harbor and the city and

country mobilized for war with civilian needs
indefinitely deferred the New York Housing

Authority's blueprints were rolled up
and stored away the unfinished steel and

concrete tubes of the Brooklyn Battery
Tunnel would sit empty beneath the

harbor sealed and forgotten
for the duration of the war

in the strange eventful and eerily
suspended years to come time itself

often seemed to stand still in New York
while beneath it the forces of change

ran faster than ever before

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