Robert Moses

Play Streets & New York City Recreation History

July 20, 2026 by Guest Contributor 1 Comment

In summer thoughts turn to fun at the beach, pool and in parks. The vertical files of the New York City Municipal Library include a trove of publications describing City government’s role in providing recreational opportunities between 1919 and 1979.

A good portion of the contents are news clippings that track, decade by decade, City residents’ recreational choices. “Eel Season Ending For City Anglers” the New York Times reported in 1967; “People Pushing Horses Out Of Park” the Daily News decried as the Claremont Riding Academy was poised to close in 1970; and the perennial “New York on Next to Nothing” from the New York Post are just a few of the titles. [Read more…] about Play Streets & New York City Recreation History

Roadside Attractions: Lake George’s Mid-Century Theme Parks

August 10, 2025 by Anthony F. Hall 8 Comments

By July 4, 1945, the war in Europe was over. That weekend, “many more cars (were) parked on the streets of Lake George Village than have been seen here since the war started,” the Lake George Mirror reported. The transformation of Lake George’s tourist economy from a summer-long resort for the wealthy to a place where middle class and working families could come by car for a two-week vacation had begun.

By 1950, 50,000 people were spending their vacations here every summer. But once these families were here, what were they do? One answer: roadside attractions, specifically, small-scale, family-owned theme parks. By 1957, the Adirondacks contained the greatest concentration of roadside attractions to be found anywhere in the U.S. [Read more…] about Roadside Attractions: Lake George’s Mid-Century Theme Parks

Immigration and Deportation: NYC Mayors and Federal Officials

July 8, 2025 by Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

On April 27, 1972, Mayor John V. Lindsay sent a letter to the Hon. Raymond F. Farrell, Commissioner, Immigration and Naturalization Service, U. S. Department of Justice, in Washington, DC.

Lindsay wrote to Farrell on behalf of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, “who are currently facing deportation proceedings initiated by your Department.” Lindsay acknowledged to Farrell that the couple “speak out with strong and critical voices on major issues of the day.” [Read more…] about Immigration and Deportation: NYC Mayors and Federal Officials

Poems, Books & Bullets: The Seeger Family & World War One

May 11, 2025 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

Musicologist and composer Charles Louis Seeger Jr., a pacifist and conscientious objector, was the father of folk singers Pete Seeger, Mike Seeger and Peggy Seeger all of whom were associated with anti-war movements later in the twentieth century. His younger brother Alan Seeger was a Greenwich Village poet and bohemian who had settled in Paris in 1912.

When Germany declared war on France he joined the French Foreign Legion and was killed in 1916 in action at the Battle of the Somme. His writings were published posthumously and would cement his reputation as an American war poet. In France, his memory is revered to this day. [Read more…] about Poems, Books & Bullets: The Seeger Family & World War One

Robert Moses’ Lake George Park Commission Opposition Began his Downfall

February 11, 2025 by Anthony F. Hall 1 Comment

Inside the Blue Line of the Adirondack Park, only John Brown’s Farm and the Crown Point ruins are managed by the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (State Parks). All other public lands and amenities – camp grounds, picnic areas, hiking trails and lean-tos, camping islands – fall under the supervision of the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).

Wint Aldrich, a Deputy Commissioner for Historic Preservation at Parks through four administrations, once explained that anomaly to me. “The Conservation Department [precursor to DEC] didn’t want Robert Moses anywhere near the Forest Preserve,” Aldrich said. [Read more…] about Robert Moses’ Lake George Park Commission Opposition Began his Downfall

Robert Moses’s Imperial Niagara and St. Lawrence Megaprojects

January 31, 2025 by Guest Contributor 4 Comments

We recently passed the 50th anniversary of the release of Robert Caro’s Pulitzer-prize-winning book about Robert Moses: The Power Broker. Exhaustively comprehensive, Caro’s monumental tome nonetheless virtually ignores one of the most fascinating chapters of Moses’s career: his time as Chairman of the Power Authority of the State of New York (PASNY) from 1954 to 1962.

While heading PASNY, known today as the New York Power Authority, the legendary New York City builder oversaw the remaking of Niagara Falls and the St. Lawrence River for hydropower. [Read more…] about Robert Moses’s Imperial Niagara and St. Lawrence Megaprojects

Nelson Rockefeller, Robert Moses & NYS Parks

November 4, 2024 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (State Parks) has released a new installment of the interactive, online timeline “Blazing a Trail: A History of New York State Parks and Historic Sites” in celebration of New York State Parks’ Centennial.

This project employs photographs, illustrations, paintings, documents, archival footage, maps, and narrative to tell the story of the development of the New York State Parks System during the era of liberal Republican Nelson Rockefellerin thee 1960s.
[Read more…] about Nelson Rockefeller, Robert Moses & NYS Parks

Making Long Island: A History of Growth and the American Dream

September 29, 2023 by Chris Kretz Leave a Comment

Larry Samuel is an author and historian whose book Making Long Island: A History of Growth and the American Dream (History Press, 2023) looks at the development of Long Island throughout the 20th Century. [Read more…] about Making Long Island: A History of Growth and the American Dream

Central Park Casino: The Epitome of Jazz Age New York City

July 5, 2023 by Holley Snaith 2 Comments

The Central Park Casino, situated at Fifth Avenue and 72nd Street, was a premier New York City restaurant and nightclub, epitomizing the era of the Jazz Age. The Casino, with its grand dining room and perfectly polished dance floor, entertained some of the most prominent names in New York, from Tammany Hall politicians to Broadway stars and even royalty. Yet this exclusive, glamorous, and somewhat dangerous, appeal that was the Casino’s trademark, led to its demise during the darkest days of America’s great financial crisis. [Read more…] about Central Park Casino: The Epitome of Jazz Age New York City

Redeeming Al Smith: New York’s Four-Time Governor

May 1, 2023 by Chris Kretz Leave a Comment

Al Smith was many things during his political career: reform champion after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, four-time governor of New York State, the first Catholic presidential candidate. But he was always a New York City boy at heart. [Read more…] about Redeeming Al Smith: New York’s Four-Time Governor

Robert Moses: The Man New Yorkers Love to Hate

November 14, 2022 by Chris Kretz Leave a Comment

Robert Moses is the man many New Yorkers love to hate. This is in no small part due to his own hubris and the impact he had on the people living in the path of his massive construction projects. Add to that Robert Caro’s hard hitting 1974 biography The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Vintage Book, 1975) and you’ve got a reputation that is hard to live down. [Read more…] about Robert Moses: The Man New Yorkers Love to Hate

Long Island’s Barrier Beaches: Gilgo Culture & History

October 17, 2022 by Chris Kretz Leave a Comment

Long Island’s barrier beaches are fascinating places. Stretched along the south shore of the island, they persist through much of Long Island history as wild natural landscapes constantly shifting and remolded by the Atlantic Ocean. And despite the storms and shipwrecks and isolation, people have persisted in thinking “I want to live there.” [Read more…] about Long Island’s Barrier Beaches: Gilgo Culture & History

Bruce Dearstyne’s ‘Spirit of New York’ Reissued In Expanded Edition

January 24, 2022 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

Bruce W. Dearstyne’s expanded new edition of The Spirit of New York (SUNY Press, 2022; first published 2016) explores nineteen dramatic events from New York State’s history that altered the course of U.S. history.

From the launch of the state government in April 1777 thru the tragedy of September 11th and through the debut of the musical play Hamilton in 2015, Dearstyne’s chapters describe great political changes, historical turning points, and struggles for social, racial, and environmental reform.
[Read more…] about Bruce Dearstyne’s ‘Spirit of New York’ Reissued In Expanded Edition

Robert Moses’ Least Controversial Triumph: The Niagara Power Plant

February 9, 2017 by Rock Brynner Leave a Comment

The many controversies that surrounded Robert Moses during his long career as New York’s “Master Builder” were sharpened by his long battle with Jane Jacobs and by Robert Caro’s 1974 biography, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974).

But his least contentious achievements are also the most unknown: the construction of the New York Power Authority’s hydroelectric plants along the St. Lawrence and Niagara Rivers. [Read more…] about Robert Moses’ Least Controversial Triumph: The Niagara Power Plant

Adirondack Environmental History Going Online

April 8, 2014 by Anthony F. Hall 3 Comments

Governor Al Smith helped block the construction of a highway along the shore of Tongue Mountain, but it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who was instrumental in protecting the east shore of Lake George, documents in the Apperson-Schaefer collection at the Kelly Adirondack Center at Union College in Schenectady suggest.

With funding from the bond acts of 1916 and 1926, much of Tongue Mountain and many of the islands in the Narrows were now protected, permanently, as parts of the Adirondack Forest Preserve.

But by 1926, John Apperson, the General Electric engineer who dedicated much of his life to the protection of Lake George, had become concerned about the future of the east side. [Read more…] about Adirondack Environmental History Going Online

Robert Moses

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