Moses and Smith grew up in opposite social worlds

Evidence

Moses’ youth was set against a backdrop of Lucerne and Elberon, broad elm trees and leafy arbors, red damask and paneled walls, and coffee streaming from a spout of silver into bright, fragile cups. Smith spent his youth in the Fourth Ward, a wilderness of tenements stretching away from the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. His grandparents had come to earth in that ward, for no better reason than that they happened to see a “Rooms to Let” sign hung out only a few blocks from the Beekman Street pier where they were deposited in 1841 by the Black Ball Line—along with a shipload of other ragged Westmeath Irish—and they were too hungry and too tired to walk farther. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 495

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Al Smith’s rootedness in his neighborhood differed starkly from Moses’ restlessness. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 487