Robert Moses - Is He Really a WPA Commissioner?

PART ONE of a two-part podcast series A NEW DEAL FOR NEW YORK. For Part One, we look at the impact FDR and New Deal funding had in shaping New York City's bridges and parks -- thanks to an especially tenacious parks commissioner!

New York City during the 1930s was defined by massive unemployment, long lines at the soup kitchens, Hoovervilles in Central Park.

But this was also the decade of the Triborough Bridge and Orchard Beach, new swimming pools and playgrounds

Faced with the nationwide financial crisis, newly elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt chose to boldly take the crisis on a series of transformative actions by the government that became known as the New Deal.

No other American city would benefit more from the New Deal that New York City. At one point, one out of every seven dollars from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was being spent in New York.

And the two men responsible for funneling federal funding to the city was Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and his new parks commissioner Robert Moses.

Moses amassed a great amount of unchecked power, generating thousands of projects through out the city -- revitalizing the city landscape.

How did Moses acquire so much power? And how did manage to funnel so much federal assistance into his own projects?

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