Robert Moses (fourth from right), in his role as president of the New York World's Fair 1964-65 Corp., watches as President John F. Kennedy inspects a model of the fairgrounds.
Moses didn't always get his way. Renderings of Moses' proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway looked glamorous.
Moses' proposed Brooklyn-Battery Bridge would have been cheaper to build than a tunnel, but the entrance and exit ramps would have required demolition of historic Castle Clinton and much of Battery Park.
An aerial view shows the scar such a roadway would have inflicted on Manhattan.
Projects Moses successfully built in New York City include Morningside Gardens on the Upper West Side.
A 1957 experimental co-op that counted Thurgood Marshall among its many black professional residents, and Sunset Pool in Brooklyn, one of 11 pools that Moses opened in the summer of 1936.
Urbanist Jane Jacobs in the 1960s rides her bike through a Manhattan neighborhood threatened by one of Moses' expressway projects. Jacobs fought Moses and won, triggering the nationwide shift toward community participation in urban planning.
Robert Moses with a model of the proposed Brooklyn-Battery Bridge, 1939.
