The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s biography of Robert Moses, will have been published 50 years as of September 16th.

Through February 2nd, the New York Historical Society has an exhibit on the book, celebrating the anniversary. The exhibit is really interesting, and is composed of various pieces of Robert Caro’s archive, which is stored at the Society.

Notes from interviews with Lillian Edelstein (left) and Robert Moses (right).

One of the most powerful parts of the book is the chapter on Moses’ choice to build one mile of the Cross Bronx Expressway through East Tremont instead of Crotona Park, which would displace 1,500 less people. The museum contrasts the notes from an interview with Lillian Edelstein, one of the evicted who led the fight against the alignment with notes from an interview with Moses himself, where he dismisses Edelstein and others fighting. It’s a really shocking contrast.

I was also wowed to learn that Robert Caro and his editor, Robert Gottleib (who he has since worked on every book with), had to slash 350,000 words from the original draft to get the book to a size that was possible to bind into a book. The final draft is ~650,000 words, so the original draft was ~1 million words.

Signed copies with personalized inscriptions are available of all of Caro’s books at the NYHS shop, where Caro stops by every couple months. This exhibit will be up until February, and I can’t recommend it enough. The small bit I included is less than 10% of what is there.

Links:

• Robert Moses and the saga of the racist parkway bridges
• Exhibit page
• Robert Moses: an Atlantic Portrait, The Atlantic, 1939.
• The Cross Bronx Expressway and the Ruination of the Bronx, Vassar.
• The Plans for the Lower Manhattan Expressway, Slate.