Working for the People: Promise and Performance in Public Space.

MOSES, Robert .

$975.00

Item Number: 124814

New York : Harper & Brothers, 1956.

First edition of this work by the legendary Robert Moses. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Janet Hooper Ostahn, the daughter of an old and valued friend, from Robert Moses.” Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Foreword by Herbert Bayard Swope. Books signed by Moses are uncommon.

Robert Moses was a public official who worked mainly in the New York metropolitan area. Known as the "master builder" of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, Rockland County, and Westchester County, he is sometimes compared to Baron Haussmann of Second Empire Paris, and was one of the most polarizing figures in the history of United States urban development. His decisions favoring highways over public transit helped create the modern suburbs of Long Island. Although he was not a trained civil engineer,[a] Moses's programs and designs influenced a generation of engineers, architects, and urban planners nationwide. Moses held up to 12 official titles simultaneously, including New York City Parks Commissioner and Chairman of the Long Island State Park Commission, but was never elected to any public office. He ran only once, as the Republican nominee for Governor of New York in 1934, and lost in a landslide. Nevertheless, he created and led numerous semi-autonomous public authorities, through which he controlled millions of dollars in revenue and directly issued bonds to fund new ventures with little or no input or oversight. As a result of Moses's work, New York has the United States' greatest proportion of public benefit corporations, which remain the primary driver of infrastructure building and maintenance and account for most of the state's debt. Moses's projects were considered economically necessary by many contemporaries after the Great Depression. Moses led the construction of New York campuses for the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs and helped persuade the United Nations to locate its headquarters in Manhattan instead of Philadelphia.