Robert Moses: Brooklyn — The Expressway as a Knife

About This Tour

Walk the path of the expressway that sliced through Brooklyn's neighborhoods, and confront one of the most contentious legacies of twentieth-century urban planning. Robert Moses envisioned a borough connected by ribbons of concrete and steel, prioritizing the flow of automobile traffic over the cohesion of long-established communities. This tour explores how a highway became a knife through communities, severing streets that had once formed the social fabric of daily life, isolating residents from neighbors, businesses, and institutions that had anchored their neighborhoods for generations. You will examine the stark contrast between neighborhoods that possessed the political capital and organizational strength to win design concessions—resulting in modifications, sunken roadways, or protective buffers—and those without such influence, who watched their streets bisected with little recourse. Beyond the scars of highway construction, this route also traces the parks and parkways that connected the borough to the sea, reflecting Moses's parallel ambition to democratize access to recreation and waterfront leisure for the masses. These green spaces, still cherished today, stand as a testament to his genuine belief in public works as a civic good, even as his methods displaced thousands and reshaped the borough's demographic and physical landscape. Walking this route offers a nuanced understanding of how infrastructure can simultaneously connect and divide, uplift and displace, revealing the complicated inheritance that Moses left etched into Brooklyn's streets, waterways, and collective memory. Much of what we understand about Robert Moses today comes from the work of Robert Caro, whose landmark 1974 biography The Power Broker drew on years of archival research and hundreds of interviews to expose how a never-elected official amassed extraordinary power over New York's parks, roads, and bridges. Caro's Pulitzer-winning account remains the definitive study of Moses's legacy, and his framing of Moses as a figure who prioritized automobile mobility over community life shapes how these tours read the infrastructure around you. A note before you begin: Robert Moses tours don't necessarily offer beautiful views. His work could be quite utilitarian at times — concrete overpasses, retaining walls, and highway embankments rather than picturesque vistas. But this bold infrastructure profoundly affects how the people living here navigate their daily lives and reinforces patterns of economic segregation that persist to this day. It explains why some parts of New York City are wonderfully walkable, while others feel cut off and car-dependent. As you walk, you'll also get to see how modern-day green space initiatives are softening the impact of Moses's more controversial work, reclaiming spaces beneath and beside his highways for community use, planting gardens, and building waterfront access where once there was only asphalt and chain-link fence.

Tour Highlights

Tour Route & Stops