Robert Moses was an influential and contentious urban planner. He helped secure the construction of the UN offices in New York City, the Silver Towers were part of his urban renewal program, and he was crucial to building bridges and other important—if often controversial—infrastructure projects throughout the city. However, his legacy is more about his desires to build expressways over public transportation and make the city more car-friendly than people-friendly. His most famous project was the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have carved a 10-lane highway through Soho, Little Italy, and Greenwich Village, all but destroying most of the cast iron buildings which are now landmarked. Jane Jacobs was an advocate who opposed many of Moses’ ideas. Thanks to her grassroots organization the expressway was doomed, and the decline of Moses’ career had started. With fiscally irresponsible decisions made about the World’s Fair, and a campaign against the free Shakespeare in the Park series, confidence in Moses’ competence was on the decline. He died in 1981, at the age of 92, and his legacy—the good and the bad—shape the city today.
