New York had essentially no real state parks before Moses built them.

Evidence

In 1922, there wasn’t a single state park in New York anywhere east of the Hudson River. West of the Hudson, between the Palisades and Buffalo, there were twenty—nineteen enclaves around famous old mansions or Revolutionary War battlefields that had been purchased by private philanthropists and donated to the state, and one, a thousand-acre tract on the Genesee River, that was New York’s only state park of substantial size, donated by Buffalo philanthropist William Pryor Letchworth. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 727

Categorization

• XREF: Base contrast for the book’s larger argument that Moses single-handedly created the state’s park system, an institutional blank slate. — connects to: New York’s donated state parks were neglected and going unused before Moses. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 728; No pre-Moses American official could design and implement large-scale public parks — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 58; The state had never bought any shoreline along Lake George until Moses acted — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 1059
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to ‘Grafting & Growth: On Trees as Infrastructure’ framing of parks as underused public infrastructure — here an entire state had none east of the Hudson.

Broader Connections

• New York’s donated state parks were neglected and going unused before Moses. #corroborates (0.85) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 728
• The state had never bought any shoreline along Lake George until Moses acted #corroborates (0.75) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 1059
• No pre-Moses American official could design and implement large-scale public parks #corroborates (0.70) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 58