Being stripped of power freed Moses’s imagination but left it with nowhere to act

Evidence

There were a hundred big things left to do, and a thousand small: he had put Lincoln Center together for the Rockefellers and then they had goofed up by not providing ramps and wider roadways from the West Side Highway; “they don’t grasp [the problem], they don’t even remotely grasp it,” he said one day; he could take care of it in a couple of months—and if it wasn’t taken care of, you were always going to have an access problem there. The walls of his office on Randall’s Island were covered with pictures of his achievements—pictures of bridges and dams illuminated at night—and through the window behind him could be seen the solid concrete and steel of the Triborough Bridge. But the office was dominated by a huge map of New York City. And while that map was crisscrossed with the solid lines that represented achievements built—highways, bridges, tunnels—on it also were lines, many lines, that were not solid but broken: lines representing achievements not yet built, dreams yet to be turned into reality. As he sat at his desk, that map, its width wider than his armspread, its height taller than a man, stared back at him, reminding this man to whom accomplishment was so important that there was so much yet to accomplish. … There was visible behind his urge to keep building an element almost of desperation; the public was doubting the wisdom of his creations—the way to convince them was to complete the system, to build more highways, more bridges, more housing—to build, build, build in a frantic attempt to rescue his reputation. But there was behind the urge also genuine creative drive, a drive undimmed by eighty years of life, the shaping impulse of the shaping man—and a drive supported by the arrogance which since his youth had told him in a voice that would not be denied that he had the answer to the problem, that he knew what to do. If only he were to be allowed to do it. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 4666

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Even in total political eclipse, Moses’ intelligence remained his most dangerous asset — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 4601; A builder’s name can invert from symbol of good to symbol of evil — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 4684; Moses reframed pristine emptiness as a canvas awaiting masses of people — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 717 (+4 more)