Summary
Highlights
Robert Moses, celebrated as New York's master builder, spearheaded more construction than anyone since the Pharaohs. A resident of Babylon Village, Moses is renowned for conceptualizing the modern state park and superhighway. His journey began with exploring the Great South Bay in his motorboat, which led to the discovery of the then-inaccessible Jones Beach. Notably, he never learned to drive himself.
While commuting, Moses observed undeveloped forests and New York City-owned land from the old Brooklyn water supply. He leveraged these linear properties to build the Sunrise Highway and planned the Southern State Parkway without needing extensive private land condemnation. His vision for the Wantagh Parkway and causeway to Jones Beach arose instantly upon seeing an access point to the Great South Bay. Today, Jones Beach is also connected by the Meadowbrook and Robert Moses Causeways.
Jones Beach broke ground in December 1926. Its iconic tower, inspired by St. Mark's Campanile in Venice, houses a 300,000-gallon water tank fed by deep pipes from an aquifer. The park featured a massive 5,000-vehicle parking field and pedestrian tunnels for safe beach access. Moses insisted on costly Barbazon bricks and Ohio sandstone for the bathhouses, reflecting the colors of the sand, sea, and sky, to avoid the crowded, carnival-like atmosphere of Coney Island. Jones Beach offered respectable games like miniature golf and shuffleboard, with even Governor Franklin Roosevelt praising it as the state's best investment.
Robert Moses built the Triborough Suspension Bridge, known today as the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, with Swiss engineer Othmar Ammann, who also designed the Whitestone, Throgs Neck, and Verrazzano-Narrows bridges. The Triborough Bridge, opened in 1936, was a complex of three bridges and viaducts, connecting Queens, Wards Island, Randall's Island, and the Bronx, significantly easing travel to Long Island parks from the Bronx and Westchester. Moses also transformed leftover land parcels under the Queens approach into a quarter-mile recreational oasis, and Astoria Park's Olympic-sized pool was a highlight.
The Triborough project ingeniously included 14 miles of approach highways, leading to New York's first continuous, signal-free multi-lane limited-access highway system. Moses extended the North Queen shoreline by over 100 yards into Flushing Bay to create land for the Grand Central Parkway Extension, avoiding costly condemnations. The Queens Botanical Garden interchange, known as 'the pretzel,' efficiently sorted multiple roadways without signals. The Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, opened for the 1939 World's Fair, underwent significant modifications for structural stability after a similar bridge collapsed.
The Belt Parkway, largely constructed by dredging sand from the bay, formed a circumferential parkway around Brooklyn and Queens, connecting various existing and new expressways like the Cross Island Parkway and Shore Parkway. The Long Island Expressway (LIE), the last major highway built by Moses, began construction in the 1950s. Critics, like Robert Caro, lamented the absence of a rail corridor during the LIE's construction, which contributed to urban sprawl on Long Island.
The Throgs Neck Bridge, opened in 1961, was another collaboration between Moses and Ammann, providing a third crossing from Long Island's North Shore to the Bronx. It was intended to connect to the Clearview Expressway, which was only partially built due to protests from Queens Village residents, leaving it as a 'truncated highway to nowhere.' In an innovative move for the Grand Central Parkway widening in the 1960s, Moses cantilevered service roads over the depressed parkway to avoid condemning homes.
The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, opened in 1964 and designed by Ammann, was Moses's final major project for New York City and its last bridge over navigable waters. Its towers are so far apart that their tops are 1 5/8 inches wider than their bases due to the Earth's curvature. Moses also envisioned a Long Island Sound crossing from Rye to Oyster Bay, but Governor Rockefeller ultimately opposed it due to political costs. In 2007, a proposed 16-mile tunnel faced sharp opposition.
Robert Moses passed away in 1981 at 92. His legacy includes over 600 neighborhood parks and playgrounds, in addition to his monumental roadways and bridges. The Northern State Parkway, designed with careful landscaping, created an illusion of driving through a green space. In 1997, the Department of Transportation preserved much of the original stone facings of the parkway overpasses during widening. In 1999, Jones Beach celebrated its 70th birthday, with attendees praising Moses's foresight and the enduring appeal of the 'heavenly' beach. Rick Striker shared a letter from Moses, confirming his appreciation for Long Island and Jones Beach.