Moses rejected famous architects in favor of an unknown staffer’s designs

Evidence

Finding the bathhouse designs submitted by the famous architects unimaginative, Moses selected those of an unknown young commission staffer, Herbert Magoon. Magoon had designed two vast pleasure palaces to sit upon the sand. One was a long, low, sweeping expanse of brick and stone and green-tinted glass. Its central portion—a terrace raised just five feet above the beach; behind the terrace, wide expanses of green-tinted glass separated by thin vertical stone columns that held another, set-back terrace surmounted by canopies, and behind that terrace a wall topped with flags—was set off from two wings of glass and brickwork by two simple, square, flat-topped medieval turrets. It was simple, almost austere, from a distance, but Magoon’s detail drawings showed Moses that the turrets and walls had been cunningly worked with a thousand little devices of stone and brick. The other bathhouse was, if also of stone and brick, much gayer—Middle Eastern, in fact, almost Moorish. If the first bathhouse, despite its lack of height, resembled a medieval castle like those from which knights rode forth to join the Crusades, the second looked like one of the castles the knights saw when they reached the Holy Land. Each of its two towers, which seemed, at sixty feet, very tall against the dunes, was topped, in fact, with a green turret that swirled upward into a little spear point as did the helmets of the sultan’s warriors the knights might have had to fight. Moses was ecstatic over the designs. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 981

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 personally dictated Jones Beach’s design, overriding famous hired architects — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 980; The young Moses already refused to accept rejection from authority figures — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 183 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Moses once refused political land deals even at the cost of his ambition #corroborates (0.76) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 913
• Moses refused the patronage sinecure Smith offered him in 1923 #corroborates (0.75) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 623
• The young Moses already refused to accept rejection from authority figures #exemplifies (0.72) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 183