Product Description

A fresh look at the greatest builder in the history of New York City and one of its most controversial figures. “We are rebuilding New York, not dispersing and abandoning it”: Robert Moses saw himself on a rescue mission to save the city from obsolescence, decentralization, and decline. His vast building program aimed to modernize urban infrastructure, expand the public realm with extensive recreational facilities, remove blight, and make the city more livable for the middle class. This book offers a fresh look at the physical transformation of New York during Moses’s nearly forty-year reign over city building from 1934 to 1968.

It is hard to imagine that anyone will ever have the same impact on New York as did Robert Moses. In his various roles in city and state government, he reshaped the fabric of the city, and his legacy continues to touch the lives of all New Yorkers. Revered for most of his life, he is now one of the most controversial figures in the city’s history. Robert Moses and the Modern City is the first major publication devoted to him since Robert Caro’s damning 1974 biography, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.

In these pages eight short essays by leading scholars of urban history provide a revised perspective; stunning new photographs offer the first visual record of Moses’s far-reaching building program as it stands today; and a comprehensive catalog of his works is illustrated with a wealth of archival records: photographs of buildings, neighborhoods, and landscapes, of parks, pools, and playgrounds, of demolished neighborhoods and replacement housing and urban renewal projects, of bridges and highways; renderings of rejected designs and controversial projects that were defeated; and views of spectacular models that have not been seen since Moses made them for promotional purposes.

Robert Moses and the Modern City captures research undertaken in the last three decades and will stimulate a new round of debate.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #152757 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
Essential reading for urban planners, and a refutation of Robert Caro's great 1975 book, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.

(Florida InsideOut )

Essential reading for urban planners, and a refutation of Robert Caro's great 1975 book, The Power Broker. -- Florida InsideOut

Excellent. -- Wall Street Journal

Fascinating detail and images that chronicle the wide-ranging projects for which Moses was responsible. -- Urban Design

This excellent book...corrects the record on Robert Moses, not uncritically, and with a scholarly attention to covering all his work. -- The New Republic

Those who care about urban life and its American history will find [this] an essential source of information and pleasure. -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

[A] wonderfully insightful new book.

(The New York Times, The City Weekly Desk )

[E]xcellent book of essays.

(Wall Street Journal )

[E]xcellent.

(Howard Kissel - New York Daily News )

[S]mart, insightful essays offering new perspectives on Moses's legendarily ambitious aims and the politics of city building.

(Bpd: Blueprint Directory )

[W]atershed reexamination.

(Library Journal )

About the Author
Hilary Ballon is an architectural historian and professor at Columbia University. She is the curator of “Robert Moses and the Modern City,” the 2007 exhibition concurrently at the Queens Museum of Art, the Museum of the City of New York, and the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery of Columbia University. She is the editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Her previous books include New York’s Pennsylvania Stations; The Paris of Henri IV: Architecture and Urbanism, which won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award for the Most Distinguished Scholarship in the History of Architecture; and Louis Le Vau: Mazarin’s Collège, Colbert’s Revenge, which received a medal from the Académie Française.

Kenneth T. Jackson is the Jacques Barzun Professor of History at Columbia University and a former president of the Urban History Association, the Society of American Historians, the Organization of American Historians, and the New-York Historical Society. His many books include Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States; The Encyclopedia of New York City; Empire City: New York Through the Centuries; and The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930. In addition to the Francis Parkman and Bancroft Prizes and four honorary degrees, he is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2001 he served as New York State Scholar of the Year. His famous all-night bicycle ride through the city has been an annual event at Columbia since 1975.

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Customer Reviews

A modern take on the metropolis that Moses crafted
The Power Broker (another prominent work on Moses) is a product of the 1970s pessimism concerning the death of the city, saying that Moses helped bring about the downfall experienced in 1974 when the book was published. In Ballon's book, we have the experience that 30 years of hindsight provides, and the tone is radically different Ballon and other essayists provide a more modern insight to Moses and his achievements. Do not be fooled, this is not a coffee table book, but almost a text book for urban planners on the practices employed by Moses. The book was inspired by the museum exhibits going on currently in New York City concerning Moses and his works, and is an excellent supplement to them. If you are interested in NYC, public works, or Urban History- this is a must buy, and will become more important as time wears on.
I also recommend The Power Broker and Moses' own book Public Works: A Dangerous Trade

A top pick not just for New York libraries
ROBERT MOSES AND THE MODERN CITY: THE TRANSFORMATION OF NEW YORK, which offers a new look at legendary architect Robert Moses, who reshaped the skyline of New York City. Readers familiar with New York will readily recognize some of his major contributions from the Lincoln Center to the Cross Bronx Expressway - so it's surprising to note this is the first major publication since the 1974 biography THE POWER BROKER appeared - and ROBERT MOSES AND THE MODERN CITY: THE TRANSFORMATION OF NEW YORK comes packed with photos that his biography doesn't provide. Far from hastening the demise of New York, this book shows how his works strengthened the central city and brought it into modern times, altering road systems and creating an urban design plan to foster changes. Plenty of detailed history surround the photos and descriptions of each project's special challenges, making this a top pick not just for New York libraries, but for any college-level art or urban planning collection.

ITS A WONDER HE DID NOT TRY TO PART THE EAST RIVER
Now this man had POWER. It is amazing how much control he had over the building of infastructure in NYC, he was the first and last word. He was like a 20th century Baron Hausemann. This book is well written and scholarly and frankly just fascinating. I saw a documentary on Robert Moses one time and was just blown away at his hubris and power. His reign over NYC spanned several powerful mayors and to this day no person has ever had so much power of the cities infrastructure. Great book, highly recommended.