Posted on 01/23/2006 3:51:20 AM PST by Pharmboy
The reviews for Moses are still mixed. It's possible to meet people of "a certain age" from the Bronx and Brooklyn who are still bitter.
He was a city planner more than an engineer. As for "incorruptible," he tended to corrupt other people.
Living in Massachusetts for the last 25 years, we could us a planner and manager like Moses. If you recall NYC prior to Mayor Lindsey, it really did work very well, especially considering the level of congestion.
NYC always worked well, more or less It still does, more or less. The only thing that changes is the volume of political noise.
The fight Moses could not win was cross-crossing the city with highways. He ran into a brick wall of protests down in the west village.
Thank you for the interesting article on another wall found
in Battery Park.
Since my Dutch, Huguenot & English ancestors were living
in that neighorhood in 1600s - 1700s I feel close to what is going on there.
Also your interesting comments on the ballast from Europe
left, expanding the shoreline.
On the flip side of that. Here in San Diego at the enterence to the harbor, Ballast Point -
named for the cobblestones loaded as ballast to replace the goods delivered here in the early years.
Many of those San Diego stones ended up lining the streets
of Boston.
They have pretty good records of the first Europeans in Niew Amsterdam, so you can likely trace your family if you haven't already. When the first permanent Dutch settlement came to the southern tip of Manhattan Island (1626), most were French-speaking Walloons, so the first few years saw French as the most common language spoken there. Twenty years later, it was reported that 18 languages were spoken in Niew Amsterdam (Spanish, English, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Swedish, various African languages, Italian, and others).
I love his sense of humor.
Moses almost ruined Greenwich Village and Fire Island. He seemed drawn to quaintness and creative in his plots to destroy it.
I don't think he was drawn to "quaintness" but, rather, didn't consider it. He had a very -- for lack of a better description -- a "practical" mind. He was also, seemingly, obsessed with cars as a mode of transportation.
Yeah, I think so. I'll ping when I get home (and get the list updated).
Missed that...thanks. LOL!
>Its a WALL!! Not like a historically significant landfill.
It's not just any wall.
If it's a man-made wall, it was build by our European forefathers and, therefore, it must be preserved as an extention of Europe in the New World.
>To put the icing on the cake, our entire archaeological crew was cursed by a self appointed African priest from North Carolina haha.
I remember reading in newspapers of those threats by blacks. The funny thing is that most of the bodies were non-blacks.
Be prepared! Be ready!
Thought you might find this interesting.
Oh thanks!!!
"Also, it might interest some of you to note that the shoreline of lower Manhattan expanded in the early years since ships from Europe would drop their ballast (stones and soil) as they came closer to shore so they would ride higher in the water and get near to shore. This natural landfill was therefore made of European soil."
I know that a little of this went on. But wasn't it just replacing some stones with what they were then going to carry.
What I mean is, it's not like ships today, which use water ballast, and which do let it out. (Which is how the Zebra mussel is being transplanted all around the world.)
I don't believe ships of the period had the ability to dump ballast. Am I wrong?
One of the reasons why we could argue about him for years -- he accomplished a lot of genuine good, but was also the architect and driving force behind of some really bad ideas.
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