Breaking Eggs

I attended a gallery talk in conjunction with the exhibition Robert Moses and the Modern City, Slum Clearance and the Superblock Solution at Columbia University, March 23, 2007. Moderator was Hillary Ballon, curator of the exhibition and author of the book Robert Moses and the Modern City, the Transformation of New York.

This is a rough account of what went on at the gallery talk, a meeting of three men who were there at the time: Philip Schorr, relocation manager, Harris L. Present, activist and housing advocate, and Eugene Morris, attorney. They were all directly involved in the relocation of residents, shopkeepers and others, clearing the slums to replace them with superblocks, and in the implementation of the Lincoln Square Renewal Plan with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts as its centerpiece. They had not seen each other for 50 years, but this reunion brought everything back to life again.

Philip Schorr worked as a relocation manager at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) before joining the private sector.

"Under the Title 1 program exciting, glamorous things were about to happen. I wanted to be part of that. It presented an enormous challenge because the places where the new housing was going to be built were bustling with humanity. We had two things going for us, Robert Moses and eminent domain. The sponsors did not want to be associated with bad displacement practices, so we were taking a different road. We were not going to be combative, we were going to be cooperative. We had a legal weapon, the administrative tools and the financial support to do it."

His encounters with Robert Moses were impersonal and limited.

"In 1953 I met Robert Moses at a ribbon cutting. I was wearing my blue suit. Robert Moses noticed me and asked ‘who is the bar mitzvah boy?’ That was the first time he insulted me. The second time was at the groundbreaking of Lincoln Center. That is where Moses made the remark that ‘you can’t make an omelette, without breaking eggs.’ I felt personally insulted. All that I had worked for was degraded in one snippet. That was a very bad metaphor, it was uncalled for."

In 1949, when the Title 1 measure was passed, Harris Present was absolutely in favor of it.

"It called for partnership with the private industry, to improve conditions of poor people and secure decent, safe and sanitary housing commensurate with the ability to pay."

He was member of a city-wide committee to seek solutions for housing relocation problems, and an advocate for minority groups, especially Puerto Ricans.

"I ended up opposing everything the Lincoln Square plan was about. That happened to be the largest plan of all, and it was about to displace an integrated, vibrant community. I firmly believed, and still do, that government should asked itself ‘how can we improve the quality of life for the people that live in these so-called slums,’ and not ‘what do we want to put here, and how are we going to get rid of them?’ You should build for the people first, and then you can clear the slums. The relocation program did in fact not solve the problem, it just moved the problem away. If a person got relocated, he would end up in the next slum, to be relocated again. It was slum transferrence instead of slum clearance."

He, too, never met Robert Moses.

"I only know that he knew who I was, because I was told that he supported me in denouncing a particular sponsor with a bad reputation during a meeting at the mayor's office."

Morris headed up a group of lawyers preparing plans for developers.

"We were the legal people. If an obstacle appeared , we found a way to get around it. We looked to see how things could get done. We became specialists at it. Other lawyers did not know how to do it, or did not want to do it. It was considered risky business, because if the plan did not get approved, no money could be made. So you always needed someone willing to pay up front."

Morris dealt with Robert Moses' top aides, but did not meet with Moses in person.

"Moses had no staff to work on urban redevopment. He came up with the concept, and then he would find the people to work out the details. He would find the right architects and the developers that could do the job. As long as they were competent, he would get them the work."

Despite the fight put up by Present, Lincoln Square got built. He feels like he won in the end, though.

"You just do not see projects like that anymore. You just do not come in and bulldoze an area. There is much greater recognition of the interests of existing communities, and the tenants, shopkeepers and business people's rights."

After the fight over Lincoln Square, Present went on to support the Cooper Square Committee, a neighborhood group on the Lower East Side, that opposed Moses' Cooper Square renewal plan. With his help they created an alternate plan that was adopted by the city, and, eventually, led to a more diversified urban development.

Both Schorr and Morris rejected Present's implication that the relocation process was mishandled and led to unneccesary human suffering. Schorr replied:

"We did everything we could to make sure that people were relocated to decent, safe and affordable housing. I will not deny that there were individual problems, but in the end everybody benefitted. It was all for the greater good."

Morris however refused to respond to the allegations made by Present.

"I am too mad. He is [still] talking crap."