Moses scouted estate property secretly on foot to plan seizures

Evidence

Generally, Moses preferred to be by himself. He walked alone through vast, empty shuttered mansions, through potato fields where farmers worked peacefully, not knowing that the man looking at them was planning to take their fields away. Walls and guards kept him from getting a good look from paved public roads at the route he was considering for the northern parkway, but he discovered unpaved back roads through many of the estates, and he spent days walking along those deserted paths, a solitary figure with a long stride. Through the trees he could see the great castles; at their gates, on little black and gold signs, he could see the names of the great barons who had built them. And the barons, private behind their walls, did not know that staring at those walls was a man determined to tear them down. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 748

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the reconnaissance walk as the foundational act of power — how Moses’ personal survey of land preceded and made possible its transformation, a study in how leaders physically survey what they will later control.
• CANDY: The image of the great barons behind their walls unknowingly watched by the man who would tear them down is compact and vivid.
• XREF: connects to: A deserted millionaire estate became Moses’s template for public recreation land — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 722; Moses ordered state troopers to back his unpermitted private surveyors onto a farmer’s land — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 797

Broader Connections

• Moses ordered state troopers to back his unpermitted private surveyors onto a farmer’s land #exemplifies (0.80) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 797