'The Power Broker' turns 50: Robert Caro reflects on book that toppled image of Robert Moses

It took glaciers thousands of years to shape Long Island. In just a few decades, Robert Moses entirely altered its landscape with a vast network of roadways and state parks.

In the early 1960s, a young Newsday reporter named Robert Caro wondered how Moses, who almost always used the title New York City parks commissioner, wielded such influence that he could build the Cross Island Parkway, Orient Beach State Park and virtually every recreation spot and major infrastructure project in between without ever being elected to public office.

"He was building the Long Island Expressway, but it wasn't a park, and it wasn't in the city," Caro recalled during a recent interview in his Manhattan office, where at the age of 88 he still writes almost every day.

"I asked, 'What's his position?' and as soon as you asked that question, something started to open up because he had like 12 positions and you thought, 'Who is this guy?' " Caro said.

That curiosity led him to write "The Power Broker," a 1,246-page tome, published 50 years ago this month. It is widely viewed as one of the most important books written about New York and continues to capture generations of readers with its deep examination of urban planning, housing policy and political influence.

With exhaustive research and fluid prose, Caro toppled the myth of the state’s master builder who oversaw construction of 13 bridges, 416 miles of parkways, public housing projects, hundreds of parks and the Fire Island beach that now bears his name. He also was the force behind Lincoln Center, Shea Stadium and Flushing Meadows-Corona Park that housed World’s Fairs in 1939 and 1964.

On Long Island, he built numerous parks, including Heckscher, Sunken Meadow, Belmont Lake and his crown jewel, Jones Beach State Park.

But every project came with casualties. Caro examined how city neighborhoods were bulldozed and hundreds of thousands of people were pushed from their homes. Even more troubling, Caro writes, is that the majority were Black, Latino and poor.

In "The Power Broker," Caro points out there is no accurate figure for all the people evicted from their homes for Moses’ public work projects, but one estimate places it at 320,000 just between 1946 and 1956.

If Moses wanted a project done, it almost certainly was.

Four-pound book turns digital

"The Power Broker" took Caro seven years to complete. He conducted more than 500 interviews and pored over thousands of documents to outline how Moses amassed power through the use of appointed positions such as city parks commissioner, president of the Long Island State Park Commission and chairman of the New York State Power Authority and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority.

The book’s 50th anniversary is being celebrated with an exhibit at the New-York  Historical Society, which also houses Caro’s archives. It displays artifacts, manuscript drafts, letters Caro wrote to Moses asking for an interview, and other items that provide a window into his meticulous researching and thoughtful writing processes.

And for the first time, the almost four-pound book is available in a digital format.

"There was really nothing like it," Valerie Paley, senior vice president and director of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library at the New-York Historical Society, said of "The Power Broker." "I don't know if there are any words to describe the monumental quality of this one work of nonfiction."

Paley noted that there was something "remarkably tenacious about what Moses did and how he was able to hang onto that power, but it’s also a cautionary tale."

Moses was not used to the scrutiny that Caro employed in the book, she said. The press coverage of him had been largely positive.

"It looked like what he was doing was really for the people, like the public parks and taking pieces of Long Island from the robber barons and making these beautiful areas accessible to people," Paley said.

Caro: Moses 'starved' mass transit

Caro outlines how Moses, from a young age, was filled with ideas and plans for New York City and the surrounding region. He fell in love with the South Shore of Long Island, spent hours swimming and boating and sketching plans for a massive public park.

When Jones Beach State Park first opened in 1929, the public — as well as architects — were dazzled by its Beaux-Arts designed bathhouses, Art Deco motifs, vast parking lots, recreational fields and beautiful shoreline.

Moses also "starved" mass transit by redirecting funding for roadways, Caro said, favoring middle class drivers over those who used public transit.

"He was building the Long Island Expressway, which everybody knew was reshaping Long Island," Caro said. "Everyone was asking him to build a light rail line down in the middle, and he wasn't going to do it."

By creating a culture of cars, Moses turned the New York region into one "in which transportation — getting from one place to another — would be an irritating, life-consuming concern" for its residents, Caro wrote.

Caro's reporting on LI

As a Newsday investigative reporter, Caro closely followed the various plans to build bridges across Long Island Sound and how they could forever alter the waterway and its ecology.

Another Newsday series, "Suffolk: The Sick Giant," ran in 1963 and detailed the challenges Suffolk County faced even as Nassau County was booming. Home building was down and too many jobs were linked to the defense industry, experts concluded.

He credits Newsday editor Alan Hathway and legendary investigative journalist Robert Greene with teaching him journalistic lessons he uses to this day.

Perhaps his most important investigative series was "Misery Acres," which uncovered land scams aimed at retirees. Sometimes for just $10 a month, newspaper ads promised land plots in luxurious developments in Arizona with titles including "Paradise Acres" and "Sunward Ho! Ranchos," along with images of country clubs and swimming pools.

"Something struck me as funny," he said. "I’ve never been able to say what, but I knew something was wrong with this."

Caro flew to Las Vegas and drove into the desert. He found mostly dry swaths of undeveloped land without access to water or electricity. During one drive, he spotted an elderly woman carrying two buckets down a barren road.

It was 74-year-old Millie Sanderson, a widow and one-time Massapequa resident, who had used all her money on a down payment on a lot. Forced to stay, she built a shack made out of lumber she hauled out of the garbage dump. Her car broke, forcing her to walk more than a mile for water.

"Once they take the down payment, they won’t do a thing for you," she told Caro. "The electric company won’t extend the lines over there unless the land company puts up the money and they won’t. I have no radio or TV . . . my light is a kerosene lamp."

More than any study or survey, Millie Sanderson illustrated the heartbreaking human toll of the scams.

"That’s when it dawned on me," Caro recalled. "You can do anything, any story, no matter how complicated if you can tell the story through one person and really bring the reader in."

The series sparked creation of a new law, signed by New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in 1963, to prevent land fraud.

Sacrifices

For all the acclaim Caro has received for "The Power Broker," the seven-year journey was difficult. He quit his job at Newsday around 1967 to give his full attention to the project. He and his wife, Ina, had to sell their Roslyn home and move with their young son to a Bronx apartment.

"I tried to do the book while I was at Newsday and I wasn’t getting anywhere," Caro said. "I realized there was something huge here I was not understanding." 

After the book was published, Moses aired his grievances with a 23-page statement saying the book was full of "unsupported charges" and "random haymakers thrown at just about everybody in public life." 

The book launched Caro into the next phase of his career, which has included four volumes on the life of President Lyndon B. Johnson, with a fifth still in the works. Ina, a writer, has worked as his primary researcher.

When asked about his favorite Robert Moses project, Caro doesn’t hesitate to name Jones Beach.

After working nights at Newsday, Caro would have breakfast, play tennis in Valley Stream with Ina and then drive to Jones Beach, where he would catch up on sleep.

"You couldn’t look around Jones Beach and not know it was a work of genius, you know?" Caro said.

Research assistance by Caroline Curtin and Laura Mann

By Lisa L. Colangelo

lisa.colangelo@newsday.com@lisalcolangelo

Lisa joined Newsday as a staff writer in 2019. She previously worked at amNewYork, the New York Daily News and the Asbury Park Press covering politics, government and general assignment.