Moses gained his first autonomous power base at age thirty-five

Evidence

On April 18, a pen in the Executive Chamber scrawled across the bills: “Approved—AES.” On the same date, Smith appointed to the regional park commissions the men whose names he had previously agreed upon with Moses. He appointed Moses president of the Long Island State Park Commission, a post that gave him automatic membership on the State Council of Parks, and as Moses’ co-commissioners on the three-member Long Island Commission the Governor appointed two men Moses knew he could count on to let him run the commission by himself. On April 30, Moses and the other heads of the regional park commissions met in Albany and, with paternal smiles in his direction, the older commission heads elected the youngest member of the State Council of Parks as its chairman. … At the age of thirty-five, Robert Moses had power. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 789