Macy mobilized opposing politicians across parties to lobby against Moses

Evidence

At their behest, visits were paid to his Biltmore Hotel apartment not only by prominent Republican leaders of the Legislature, friends of Smith from his legislative days, and not only by the single most powerful Republican in New York State—GOP national committeeman Charles D. Hillies—but also by Tammany’s apple-cheeked ally, Democratic boss John McCooey of Brooklyn. One night, as the Governor relaxed at the Biltmore, there appeared before him, ushered in by a pair of Smith’s dearest Tammany friends, W. Kingsland Macy himself, and Macy offered Smith, in this personal appeal, a list of an even dozen other Suffolk County estates closer to the city, beautiful in their own right—a dozen estates whose owners wanted to sell. And, he said, if the commission insisted on having an estate in East Islip, why couldn’t it buy Willie Vanderbilt’s “Idle Hour”? It was as large as the Taylor Estate, as heavily wooded, it had almost as much shore front on the bay—and Vanderbilt’s heirs were trying to sell for 150,000, 100,000 less than the price offered for the Taylor Estate, which, he said, was actually worth much more than the price offered. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 809

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Moses mobilized the Legislature’s power brokers against Lindsay’s reform. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 4561

Broader Connections

• Moses mobilized the Legislature’s power brokers against Lindsay’s reform. #responds-to (0.85) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 4561