Moses--Or the Bull Rushes

Last month Manhattan's tough, free-swinging Park Commissioner Robert Moses* took a swing at the professional city planners, and a battle royal was on. Round I was Commissioner Moses'. In a New York Times article, "Mr. Moses Dissects the Long-Haired Planners," he slashed at critics who claim that he is:

P: Just a politician who would like to control Manhattan's city planning without understanding Manhattan's basic needs.

P: A mere city patcher and prettifier whose chief interest is showy public works but not slum clearance.

P: A man who does not understand that the city of today must be torn down so that the city of tomorrow can be replanned and rebuilt from the ground up.

Last week advocates of city planning lashed back. The Times published their replies under the title, "In Defense of City Planners."

The Beiunslcis. Mr. Moses had been wildly provocative. Most city planners, he snorted, are "subsidized lamas in their remote mountain temples." Their plans may be beautiful. But they are impossible without a social revolution. Many of the planners are emigres who do not understand U.S. conditions, are much too eager to show Americans how to tear down their cities. Moses called these planners the Beiunskis because many of their suggestions begin with "Bei uns [in our country] we do things much better."

Moses named names. Among them:

P: Eliel Saarinen, Finnish founder of the Cranbrook (Mich.) Academy of Art. His city planning, said Moses, leads "straight into communal land ownership."

P: Walter Gropius, former guiding genius of Germany's modernist Bauhaus (liquidated by Hitler), now head of Harvard's Architecture Department. Gropius "fundamentally offers nothing more novel than the lally column and the two-by-four timber." He is "hurting our architecture by advocating a philosophy which doesn't belong here."

P: Frank Lloyd Wright, No. 1 U.S. modernist architect. Wright would "get further" if he "tried an experiment on a reasonable scale, frankly called it an experiment . . . refrained from announcing that it was the pattern of all future American living."

P: Lewis Mumford, voluminous writer on architecture and city planning: "An outspoken revolutionary, often quoted with approval by conservatives who obviously have no notion of the implications of his philosophy."

P: Puerto Rico's Governor Rexford Guy Tugwell, once (1938) chairman of the New York City Planning Commission. Tugwell specializes in "the kind of watercolor planning which consists of splashing green paint at a map and labeling the resulting blobs as 'open areas,' 'green belts,' 'breathing spaces,' etc."

"Stupid Philistines." The city planners' replies were less pungent, but almost as rude. Wrote Manhattan's Carol Aronovici, author of Housing the Masses, and a professional city planner: "Does the Commissioner not recognize the existence of chaotic disorganization in our cities or is it merely that he objects to intelligent, experienced students of cities expressing an opinion in a field in which he is trying to secure full control?" Barbara Lewis of Trenton, N.J. compared Moses to a pulp magazine reader who presumes to attack Shakespeare and Tolstoy. "The genius of Saarinen and Gropius will fortunately long survive this stupid Philistine outburst. Intelligent Americans will blush to think that this is the reception we accord distinguished European artists, and that the grossness of Mr. Moses is the measure of our understanding of city planning." Cried one Bernard Mazel: "[Moses' article] sounded like one of Nazi Germany's racial discussions of Kultur filled with references to 'refugee,' 'foreigners,' . . . only omitting the phrase, 'Why don't they go back where they came from?' "

Great Architects Saarinen, Gropius, Wright maintained an Olympian silence.

*Other Moses titles: Triborough Bridge Authority Chairman, State Council of Parks Chairman, Long Island Park Commission President, New York City Planning Commission member.

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