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🪵 The Threshold

Moses personally dictated Jones Beach's design, overriding famous hired architects

Properties2
tagsja-picks, causal_relationships, trade, singleton, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@caro_power_1974, loc. 980

3 min read

Moses personally dictated Jones Beach’s design, overriding famous hired architects

Evidence

The men gathered around Moses included some of the biggest names in American architecture, but they didn’t think big enough for him. When they began drawing up tentative plans, the plans naturally included a water tower; fresh water had to be provided in great quantities in any large park, of course. But their water towers were conventional water towers: aluminum storage tanks set on four spindly uprights, they were exactly like the ones that, in other parks, were invariably the unsightliest feature of the landscape. Moses determined to turn the potentially ugliest part of the park he had planned into its most beautiful. He already knew that he wanted a focal point for the beach, a beautiful centerpiece big enough to be seen from miles away, that would be a symbol of Jones Beach, something that visitors could identify with—he was, after all, the son of the woman who had ordered the huge “Camp Madison” banner—and it might as well be the water tower. But he had a hard time getting the architects to think in his terms. “I was very anxious to have this water tower mean something architecturally,” he recalls. “I got the top people out there and I asked them about it. The first suggestion came from our chief engineer and I said, ‘That’s the goddamnedest stupid thing I’ve ever heard.’ And then someone suggested a lighthouse, and I said, ‘No, goddammit, we’re not going to have any lighthouse.’ We already had a lighthouse, for God’s sake.” (He was referring to the Fire Island lighthouse, which was visible from the eastern end of Jones Beach.) On the next trip to the beach, Harvey Corbett suggested that the water tower be designed as an Italian campanile, or church bell tower. There were many different types, Corbett said, and started to reel them off. As he was reeling, he mentioned the one in Venice. Venice! “I like the one in Venice best,” Moses said. According to one of the men there, “he pulled out another one of his envelopes and sketched the campanile in Venice right there—and that’s how the water tower was done. And that’s the way ‘most everything was done. He had the architects and engineers there, but he was the architect and the engineer of Jones Beach. He’s more responsible for the design of Jones Beach than any architect or engineer or all of us put together.” — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 980

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Moses rejected monumental stodginess in favor of joyful beach architecture — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 977; Moses specified costly luxury facing materials for every Jones Beach structure — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 982; Moses rejected famous architects in favor of an unknown staffer’s designs — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 981 (+1 more)

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