Brief Historical Thoughts on Empowering People to Build in NYC
Moving beyond "We can't, because Robert Moses!" just like the past moved beyond "We can't, because Tammany!"
“We can’t give people the power to build things, or they will destroy everything we love.”
This is not a new sentiment.
In the modern day, it takes the form of the Moses meme: “We can’t give people—the government or others—the power to build/execute, or they will destroy everything we love, just like Robert Moses did!”
But we’ve seen this attitude come and go many times in New York City. I just want to point out a few historical instances, and suggest that it’s possible to get past these moments to build again.
Theodore Roosevelt on the difficulty of police reform (1895-1897)
When Theodore Roosevelt was the president of the NYC police board of commissioners from 1895-1897, he ran into vetocracy and general public distrust of giving government officials the power to act quickly. I agree completely with the diagnosis and solution he presents in his autobiography (emphasis added):
The form of government of the Police Department at that time was such as to make it a matter of extreme difficulty to get good results. It represented that device of old-school American political thought, the desire to establish checks and balances so elaborate that no man shall have power enough to do anything very bad. In practice this always means that no man has power enough to do anything good, and that what is bad is done anyhow.
In most positions the “division of powers” theory works unmitigated mischief. The only way to get good service is to give somebody power to render it, facing the fact that power which will enable a man to do a job well will also necessarily enable him to do it ill if he is the wrong kind of man. What is normally needed is the concentration in the hands of one man, or of a very small body of men, of ample power to enable him or them to do the work that is necessary; and then the devising of means to hold these men fully accountable for the exercise of that power by the people. This of course means that, if the people are willing to see power misused, it will be misused. But it also means that if, as we hold, the people are fit for self-government—if, in other words, our talk and our institutions are not shams—we will get good government. I do not contend that my theory will automatically bring good government. I do contend that it will enable us to get as good government as we deserve, and that the other way will not.1
His solution is clear, and is as correct now as it was then: empower one or a few people to act vigorously, and draw clear lines of accountability to evaluate their actions.
You either empower people to act, with mechanisms to evaluate their work, or you do not get action—or, if you do, it is very slow and horrendously expensive. There is no secret third option of “empower people to act with constant checks and get good, efficient results.”
Boss Tweed, Tammany Hall, and the first subways
Tammany Hall was a Democratic political machine that dominated New York City politics during various periods of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among other things, they were famous for stealing immense amounts of money from the government via inflated contract prices. See this recounting of the events of 1871:
Under screaming headlines—“Gigantic Frauds of the Ring Exposed”—the paper detailed [the] system of kickbacks. Contractors on public projects padded their bills and slipped the overcharge back under the table. The surcharge to the city usually ranged from 10 to 85 percent, though on occasions it soared to truly empyrean heights of corruption. One member of a Tweed-affiliated club was paid $23,553.51 for furnishing thirty-six awnings, boosting the per-awning price from the market rate of $12.50 to a Ring rate of $654.26. Construction of the county courthouse allowed for an orgy of such creative accounting, and the building wound up costing four times as much as the Houses of Parliament and twice the price of Alaska.
The Times stories brought to a head a growing international crisis of confidence in New York City’s ability to pay its debts…Now overseas bankers refused to extend further credit. The Berlin stock exchange struck the city’s bonds from its official list.2
The memory and fear of this theft was seared into the minds of nineteenth century New Yorkers. As a result, they did not trust the government to do things without robbing them—and this included building the first New York City subways.
When civic leaders and government officials debated who should build the subway, they were extremely skeptical of giving the city the power to do it directly. A New York Chamber of Commerce report from 1894 treated the fear of Tammany-style corruption to be so obvious it needed no clarification: “For reasons that need not be stated in this report, your committee cannot advocate the building of any system of rapid transit by the city of New York…”3
Abram Hewitt, New York City mayor from 1887-1888, said the following when addressing the same Chamber of Commerce in 1894, making the fear explicit:
“It has been objected to the undertaking of this work by the city and on account of the city that there would be scandals involved in the expenditure of this large amount of money by the city authorities, and that the administration of such a work by the city authorities after it was constructed would result in an intolerable abuse, and would practically turn over the city of New York to the politicians and their followers. This objection would be an absolutely conclusive one in my mind, and I suppose to the mind of everybody else, if it were necessary that either the construction or administration of the work should reside in the hands of city officials. There is no such necessity.”4
This fear of government action led the city to pursue a franchise model: the city would own the subway rights of way, sell bonds to help with the initial capital investment, and sell franchise contracts to private companies to build and operate them. The city gave private companies the power to build, because the government could not be trusted. The consequence? The first subways opened on time and on budget, despite fervent opposition.
How do we exit the current “Moses moment?”
Theodore Roosevelt found ways to work around the difficulties in the police department of his time, and was happy with his results: “…I wouldn’t have given up my two years as President of the Police Board for a great deal. In the first place I did accomplish a good deal, and, in the next place, it was exceedingly interesting, alike from the executive, the political, the sociological and the ethnic standpoints.”5
He later praised the changes that New York City made in the governmental reorganization that occured during the consolidation in 1898: “The law at present is much better than in our day, so far as governing the force is concerned. There is now a single Commissioner, and the mayor has complete power over him.”6
And the New York Chamber of Commerce and other civic leaders threaded the needle between distrust of the government and the need to get the subways built—with the franchise contract!
We in the modern era have not yet fully figured out how to get out of the Moses-addled, broad-based distrust of anyone to build, public or private. But this is the task of our era, and I think we’ll find a way through it just like our predecessors got past their own anti-building, anti-action moments.

Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography, Chapter VI: “The New York Police,” pp.188-189 (1913).
Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Chapter 57: “The New York Commune?” p.1009 (1999).
New York Chamber of Commerce, Rapid Transit in New York City and in Other Great Cities, p.62 (1905).
See above, p.68.
Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Rudyard Kipling, January 5, 1898. From Theodore Roosevelt: Letters and Speeches, p.128.
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography, Chapter VI: “The New York Police,” p.205 (1913).
I find this note particularly astute: “His solution is clear, and is as correct now as it was then: empower one or a few people to act vigorously, and draw clear lines of accountability to evaluate their actions.”
New York’s long list of elected offices (and commissions featuring commissioners appointed often by several different elected officials) creates many veto points and makes it difficult for the public to understand who is responsible for fixing problems they encounter.
UDATE; 1/19/25- The memory and fear of the harms and lies is seared into the minds of 21st century Americans . As a result, they do not trust the government to do things without harming them—and this includes the new Administration that takes power tomorrow at Noon, January 20, 2025. All good will is fickle, revolutions happen during rising expectations. Hopelessness isn’t the danger, Hope is the danger.
Sorry. This is the present situation in America and New York. The government are no longer are content with stealing or failing, they mean harm, we are certain from what they DO they’re harmful and it matches their rhetoric. Corruption can be reformed, fatal harms must be answered another way. As the system is the law that way is barred.
Barring miraculous successes, in a year or so the new administration will be as successful as Louis XVI’s last ministers and their fate the same.
Everything you wrote is true, so is what I wrote, if not about the future then certainly today.