Wait until evening

Author Robert Caro uses a quotation attributed to the Greek playwright Sophocles as the epigraph of his monumental biography The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York1: One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been. It’s such a hauntingly perfect opening for that book. Caro uses it to masterfully frame Moses’s long career - how his early idealistic “morning” eventually gave way to a controversial and complicated “evening”. The Master Builder Robert Moses was the “master builder” of mid-20th century New York City and neighboring Long Island. As the shaper of modern New York, he is easily the most polarizing figure in the history of urban planning in the United States. Although he never held elected office, Moses was the most powerful person in New York City government from the 1930s to the 1960s. Operating through a complex network of public authorities that insulated him from democratic oversight, he constructed 627 miles of expressways, 13 bridges,…