In a message dated 98-01-20 11:25:28 EST, [log in to unmask] writes:

> Does anyone know if the bath houses, promenade, water tower
>  and other structures are still in use and standing? Have there been any
>  preservation efforts?

Robert,

I was at Jones Beach last August to see Primus. I read the Caro book many
years ago. I worked for a construction company in NYC that rebuilt (not
restored) several of the Robert Moses swimming pools in the 80's. At one site
in Harlem the company hired an armed guard who wore a white suit with wide
brimmed pimp's hat, and openly carried a sawed off shotgun. The guy was
impressive. Though the Moses era structures have a social and historic
interest, I find the architecture is not much to want to preserve, in my
opinion they are generally boring, dull, and not architecturally or
technically innovative - excepting for the grand bridges. I'm sure there are
exceptions. The housing structures always remind me of the failures of the
socialist soviet system, a depressing lack of imagination.

Working in NYC I admire Robert Moses' tactics in a hostile environment, and in
turn am appalled by them. The way in which Robert Moses ran over the
sentiments of local communities, in many areas totally wiping them out through
eminent domain, is the antipode to what would happen if a zealous
preservationist were to have too much power - such that buildings would always
be preserved against the best interests of the local community.

This is not a problem of preservation vs. development, it is one of local
democracy against autocratic control through legal regulation. It is also a
symptom of the gross neglect of urban planning as a political issue in popular
American culture. Robert Moses was able to gain his position and maintain it
with little opposition for many years.

One of Robert's last projects was to run a highway across Manhattan that would
have bisected the Soho Cast Iron District. It was the local community that
stopped him. I admit it is a pain in the tuckus to drive from the Williamsburg
Bridge to the Holland Tunnel, but I certainly prefer having the cast iron
facades to anything Moses would have given us. Then, again, without the system
of highways around NYC, onto Long Island, and North, the economic vitality of
the area would be seriously impacted. Yet his efforts certainly were not
supportive of mass transportation and locked the future of the region into a
pattern of transportation that restricts environmentally conservative options.

I am always touched by the relocation of the graves in the cemetary where he
ran the LIE into the Midtown Tunnel. My business partner's grandfather
reportedly owned 40 dump trucks and was paid to move the dirt from the Midtown
Tunnel to Maspeth, Queens, where he was again paid to fill in the swamp. If
you are interested in Robert Moses then you may also find reading about Boss
Tweed interesting. Robert Moses was not the first of breed.

][<en Follett