99% Invisible - The Power Broker Breakdown Breakdown

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

The Power Broker Breakdown may have concluded, but if you're just tuning in (or if you just want a quick refresher), this episode is a compilation of the summary portions of the The Power Broker Breakdown series.The Power Broker Breakdown Breakdown Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to ad-free new episodes and get exclusive access to bonus content.

This is a ridiculous special bonus episode of the 99% invisible breakdown of the power broker. I'm Roman Mars. A few months ago, Elliot had an idea. Roman, I just want to say you did an amazing job of condensing the last episode down really little. And I just want to say there should be a podcast called the 99% invisible power broker breakdown breakdown where it's just those sections

at the beginning, just the catch-up section. If you string those together, you could digest this whole book probably in like, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes when the series is over. So keep that in mind for the future for the Ultra-Bridge edition. Say you started the book, but you put it down for a while and you want to get back up to speed before you dive back in. Or you read the whole book, but you want a little refresher. For you, we present the 99% Invisible Power Broker Breakdown, Breakdown. It starts with a summary of the first five chapters way back in our second episode from February, 2024. So let's just start where we left off last time.

At the end of chapter five, it's November, it's 1918, Robert Moses is about to turn 30. His career in public service has almost ended at this point. Like, he's complete failure. All of his different programs he has proposed have failed. But then he gets a call from his former boss's wife, Belle Moskowitz. Let's get to our recap. We're going to sort of pick up where we left off at the end of Chapter 10. It's 1924 and the New York State Legislature has just passed a bill written by Robert Moses giving him enormous like hidden power to appropriate and govern land to the new State Council of

Parks that is run by Robert Moses. He wants to build a string of parks connected by parkways on Long Island with his biggest dream being Jones Beach, which he envisions as the greatest bathing beach in the world. And the part that we're going to be talking about today is the use of power, where we find out where he gets things done. So when we left off last episode in a stunning turnabout, young idealist reformer Robert Moses has turned around and embraced corruption and dirty dealings to get things done. And this is the freight train that has been coming at us from page one. The heel turn is taking place.

And as a result, in three years with the backing of Governor Al Smith, he massively expanded the amount of public park space in New York State. He turned Jones Beach into the world's greatest weekend spot and built expressways leading to all that stuff. And he has become this absolute hero to New Yorkers. He's seen as this man who stands up to the wealthy and he can get stuff done. He creates parks for the people, even though we've seen that he will totally get in bed with these powerful people to make his projects possible and he will ruin some small-time farmers. He does some dastardly stuff, but the public doesn't see that. They just see these beautiful parks he's made. And this public idea

of Robert Moses and the private reality of how Moses gets things done are really diverging at this point. And through this, and the reason why he's able to get all this stuff done is he has the support of Al Smith. And unfortunately, in 1928, Al Smith runs for and loses the presidency. He cannot run for president and run for governor

at the same time. So he goes to the presidency, he reaches for that brass ring. He does not reach that brass ring at all. And Robert Moses is left trying to do the things he's trying to do. But there's a new governor in office and this is the man who Caro promises will be one of Moses's most powerful enemies. He is known as the feather duster. So when we last left the Power Broker, the Depression is dawning, Robert Moses keeps

opening state park projects to great public acclaim. He's just a hero. Moses gets Governor Lehman and Mayor LaGuardia to give him total control over anything remotely park related in New York City and passes a new law where a state person and a city person can do all this stuff at once. He immediately refurbishes New York City's major parks. He's unveiled this massive plan for building expressways and bridges through and around the cities that people don't have to go through Manhattan to get to places on either side anymore.

And the Triborough Bridge Authority has begun to actually start building the Triborough Bridge, which will become the centerpiece and provide all the funding for his empire as well. But there's a little bit going on here where his pettiness is starting to seep out to people who are his staunchest allies. So he destroys the Central Park Casino just because it was Jimmy Walker's playground and he just, out of spite, he just wants to level it

instead of turning into something equally good or better, you know? And so, so that's where we are. So he's still like in that phase where he's getting a lot done. Most people are on his side, but that is about to take a turn right now with Chapter 21, The Candidate. When we last left the power broker, Robert Moses had run for governor. He had been such an unlikable, unpleasant candidate that he lost more than any major party candidate had ever lost before. And his reputation is tarnished. He's completely on his

ass. But President Roosevelt, a unlikely savior in an attempt to remove him for good, has an order issued stating that New York City will get no more WPA money until it fires anyone holding both a city and a state office. This was an order written just to expel Moses. Moses leaks this to the press. He's able to frame this as the federal government trying to push around the people of New York City, and it is just what Moses needed to get his halo affixed back over his head.

And under Mayor LaGuardia, Moses perfects the system of providing physical achievements for politicians to run on while threatening to resign if he doesn't get his way. Although LaGuardia finds a way to take the piss out of him in this regard a little bit. Over the course of the last section, Moses is even more flagrant about ignoring orders and laws that get in his way, and he's even more ruthless about just destroying people who are trying to stop him from achieving his ends. But at the same time, he's beginning to get stretched pretty thin. He's doing all these jobs around the city.

Most of them are not as accomplished or as thoughtful as like Jones Beach, and it is very clear that he's underserving New York City's poor and non-white population. And we'll see more of that ruthlessness and neglect in this episode. Because what's clear that Caro is getting to at the end of the last section was that this is not a man in love with his mission, a man in love with Parks. He's become a man who's just in love with power. The love of power. The rest of the 99% Invisible Power Broker Breakdown Breakdown when we come back. We're back with more of the Power Broker Breakdown Breakdown. So on the last episode, Robert Moses was showing what an amazing visionary he was, but also

what a petty tyrant he could be. On one hand, he was brilliantly taken advantage of these like tax assessments and federal programs and archival research to complete the funding of this massive West Side Manhattan construction project, which is this amazing chapter and just like how he works down $109 million to something that the city can afford. On the other hand, he's destroying neighborhoods, these historic neighborhoods. He's destroying New York's last natural wilderness space without taking anyone else's need into account and harassing the club, the club, just because he can, because he thought that they were rude to him.

It's also becoming clear how much he is using race and class when it comes to his park projects. Like he's deliberately under-serving New York's poor people and people of color. And meanwhile, all these bridges and expressways that he's building that are meant to relieve New York's traffic problems are actually seeming to make traffic worse.

And this is becoming this thing that is constant. It's almost a universal truth when it comes to building bridges and more roads and more lanes. But he cannot see this. This is his only solution, no matter what the outcome actually proves itself to be. And then we've also learned in this horrible chapter,

a good chapter, but a very sad chapter of Robert Moses' relationship with his own family, the decades he spent undermining the career and the success of his own brother and his disdain and sort of completely ignoring his sister and just completely undermining the vitality and the life force of Mary, his wife. So on the last blockbuster episode of the power broke breakdown, we covered Robert Moses literally busting blocks. You're not wrong. Roman is busting blocks full of people.

Robert Moses had successfully gained control of every ingress and egress to the Island of Manhattan. Like if you are in a car and you're trying to get to Manhattan or trying to leave Manhattan and all future river crossings, you have to pay some toll to Robert Moses. He controls everything. Robert Carr took us through Robert Moses' like turning the public authority into this mutant form that allows him to just have this vast amount of wealth to just keep him going and keep him making new things without having to rely

on the fickle public or any politician's approval for anything. He controls so much of the money and Moses nearly succeeds in destroying Battery Park in downtown Manhattan with his plans to make it an on-ramp to this enormous bridge to Brooklyn, which the bridge eventually doesn't happen. But it takes the power of the president of the United States to stop him from doing this. But he takes this years-long revenge, like decade-long revenge of closing New York City's aquarium in place of Fort Clinton. And then he spends a decade trying to tear down the historic fort. Again, it just takes the federal government to stop him.

And finally, this last little bit of Moses turning into the thing he hates by lending his support to the Tammany candidate, William O'Dwyer. And in exchange for lending that support, O'Dwyer gives him the post of coordinator of all construction. He's been the enemy of Tammany for his entire life and now he's this eager ally. He lends his name to support and sort of clean up the image of the Tammany candidate. And we again visit a old, retired, unwell former politician in the form of Mayor LaGuardia, and he is talking about how much he regrets giving Moses all of this power.

What LaGuardia is really nervous about is that now nobody could keep Moses in check. He thought he was the last bulwark stopping Moses from running roughshod all over the city of New York. So on the last episode of the 99% invisible breakdown of the power broker, we covered chapters 33 and 34, which detailed the ways in which Robert Moses spent the 1940s and 50s becoming the center of political corruption and honest graft in New York City construction world and his lust for power that has transformed them into this kind of political machine boss that he used to despise when

he was a young reformer. And then, Caro does this delightful chapter on the three mayors that followed LaGuardia, which did not warrant their own chapters. It's hard to imagine a version of the book where Mayor M.B. gets a full chapter to himself as much as I love that section so much. So it's just a series of mayors that he dominated during this period of time. So on the last episode of the 99% visible breakdown of the power broker, Robert Caro took us on a lavish, luxurious trip to Jones Beach so we could see what it was like to

be wined and dined by Robert Moses. And then we watched him ram one mile of expressway through a Bronx neighborhood needlessly destroying it and bringing misery to the many lives Of its occupants in the process. It was a real roller coaster of an episode It was a real here's the good news here's the bad news about Robert Moses Truly and today we'll be covering chapters 39 through 41, that's pages 895 through 983 in my copy of the book. At this point in the story, Robert Moses is at the height of his power and control, but that doesn't mean it's always going to be that way. We're going to be finishing part six, the lust for power and beginning to move into part seven, the loss of power. We have arrived.

into part seven, the loss of power. We have arrived. So last time on the 99% visible breakdown of the power broker, Robert Carroll went into incredible detail about how Robert Moses refused to include mass transit as part of his transportation plans and it doomed New York to a future choked with cars and traffic

and really explicit detail about how awful different railroads were. It was very vivid. But we also saw how an assortment of activists were starting to recognize the serious issues with how Moses was running his slum clearance programs and the public housing construction projects. So that was a little bit of a glimmer. There were rumors, rumors of rumors. So on the last Power Broker breakdown, we learned that Robert Moses tried to put a parking lot in the Tavern in the Green, on the Tavern in the Green,

in the Tavern on the Green, I'm not sure, one of those. Choose your own preposition. And ran against some moms who did not want it there. And it was kind of his first big New York newspaper defeat, which was a big deal, even though the crime itself was probably not as big a deal. And it sort of tarnished Moses' reputation for infallibility and incorruptibility. The New York papers finally got off their doves and started reporting on corruption in Moses' public housing projects.

One of Moses' aides, The Mustache, tries to pick a fight or does pick a fight with Joe Papp over allowing free Shakespeare in the park. This is another one of these just terrible fumbles that damages Moses' reputation as the champion of the people. The news media discovers some fairly sort of small ball scandals that are kind of unfair to Moses, as Caro sort of freely admits. But they do actually kind of stick to him for the first time. And it encourages him to drop housing as one of the things he covers

and resign his city jobs in order to become president of the 1964 World's Fair. And then, after he's lost those city jobs, or resigned from those city jobs, the new governor, Nelson Rockefeller, calls Moses' bluff. They have a little bit of a fight. Moses decides to pull his old trick, threatens to resign from all of his state appointments, and Rockefeller calls his bluff, and he accepts the resignation for his state jobs. And this is enormous self-own. That would be the true beginning of the end of Moses.

And in the last section of the Power Broker Breakdown, Governor Nelson Rockefeller's plans to create a new Transp Authority leaves Robert Moses in the dust. And after 44 years, Robert Moses is out of a job. He still dreams of big plans, like the Fire Island Highway and new housing projects, but instead

he finds himself waving his pencil around in front of Robert Caro and giving speeches at various small events. Always asking, why weren't they grateful? The Power Broker Breakdown Breakdown was produced by Isabel Angel, edited by Comiti. Music by Swan Real. This episode was mixed by Martine Gonzalez. Original Power Broker episodes mixed by Dara Hirsch. Make sure you get your Power Broker Breakdown merch. There's a Robert Moses band t-shirt with all the dates of the episodes

and the chapters on the back, so you never forget how much you read in 2024. We've got a great sturdy tote bag that our producer Isabel has been carrying her puppy around in. And don't worry, we are working on restocking those challenge coins. So keep an eye on the website. That's 99pi.org slash store. 99% Invisible's executive producer is Cathy Tu.

Our senior editor is Delaney Hall. Kurt Kolstad is the digital director. The rest of the team includes Chris Berrupe, Jason DeLeon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Gabriella Gladney, Jacob Medina Gleason, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Leigh, Kelly Prime, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stephen Lawrence. The art for this series was created by Aaron Nestor. We are part of the Stitcher and SiriusXM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north

in the Pandora building in beautiful Uptown, Oakland, California. You can find me on Blue Sky and Discord. You will link to the Discord site at 99pi.org.