Moses conceived the Jones Beach park as an integrated traffic and recreation system.

Evidence

Yanking an envelope from his pocket, Moses began to sketch on its back: Two X’s to represent the bathhouses, lines to show how they would be connected on the beach side by a wide boardwalk, on the bay side by an “Ocean Parkway.” Midway between the two X’s, where the causeway from the mainland would join the parkway, he drew a large circle between two squares. The causeway would end in a circle, he said. People who didn’t want to use the bathhouses could drive around it and into the squares, parking lots each large enough to hold ten thousand cars, and then walk with their families to the beach through underpasses under the parkway, or they could drive around the circle, stop on the beach side, drop their families off first, and then park in the lots and walk back to the beach to join them. Or, if they didn’t want to go to the beach at all, they could simply keep driving on the parkway east or west. The families that got out at the circle would walk to the beach along a broad mall that ended at the boardwalk, and along the boardwalk would be open-air cafés serving inexpensive meals and a restaurant with cuisine, atmosphere and service equal to the finest in America. And stretching off to either side would be outdoor games: pitch-and-putt golf, table and paddle tennis, shuffleboard, roller-skating rinks, baseball fields set in little stadia. For the evenings, there would be bandstands and dancing under the stars. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 978

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Moses invented the idea that parks should host active recreation, not just passive nature — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 710; Moses envisioned parks as active recreation facilities while reformers favored rustic preservation — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 710; Robert Moses reframed American parks from passive nature to active recreation — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 732 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Moses envisioned parks as active recreation facilities while reformers favored rustic preservation #expands (0.82) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 710
• Robert Moses reframed American parks from passive nature to active recreation #expands (0.80) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 732
• Moses invented the idea that parks should host active recreation, not just passive nature #expands (0.78) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 710