New York — NEW YORK (AP) — Robert A. Caro stands between two massive columns in the second-floor library of the New York Historical Society, looking out over dozens of friends, family and colleagues. His namesake laboratory towers behind him. Some of his archives are on display nearby.
“The most honest thing I can say tonight, and perhaps the most cliche, is that having my archives here is, in some ways, a dream come true,” the historian said at a recent dinner dedication at the Society, a 200-year-old institution across Central Park that he visited often as a child, dreaming of becoming a writer.
“I wouldn’t say I dreamed of becoming a famous writer,” he added. “But my dream was to become a writer. So now I am a writer and my thesis is here. I would say it’s a dream come true.”
The 88-year-old spends most of his time writing. The fifth and final volume of his Lyndon Johnson series, more than a decade in the making, has no release date yet. But in recent weeks he has been looking back on his first book, the biography that made him famous and, to some, infamous: “The Power Broker.” The Pulitzer Prize-winning chronicle of Robert Moses is a nearly 1,300-page account of the New York City builder whom Caro portrays as a man of historical vision and talent. His ego and disregard for others make him a cautionary tale of unchecked authority.
Caro, a lifelong New Yorker, is an unofficial laureate of the Society and is the subject of a new exhibition, “Turn Every Page,” about his famously thorough research and the publication 50 years ago of “The Power Broker.” “Robert Caro’s The Power Broker at 50” includes typewritten manuscript pages, notebook entries, letters, press articles, drafts of book introductions, and samples of Caro’s reports, including a tally of commuters he and his wife, Ina, completed for Moses’ first major public project, Jones Beach on Long Island.
Caro’s books are still widely bought, taught, and discussed, and are seen as a serious thought symbol, appearing in the background of many journalists and celebrities’ Zoom interviews during the height of the pandemic. In addition to selling signed copies of his books, the association also offers ceramic mugs that read “We’re done with the power broker.”
“The Power Broker” is one of the longest single-volume books in existence, but Caro’s enthusiasts and the author herself have been puzzled by the missing material. Caro’s original manuscript was about a million words long, and Caro and her editor Robert Gottlieb had to cut about 300,000 words so that the book would not need additional editions. Among the missing or largely deleted sections are those about Jane Jacobs, a community activist who helped stop the construction of a freeway through Greenwich Village, and about tenants in Bronx neighborhoods uprooted by the Cross Bronx Expressway.
Caro himself had long forgotten what had happened to the old manuscript pages, which had been boxed up and stored in a filing cabinet decades ago and only opened after the Society acquired his papers in 2020. His archives and exhibitions, now open to the public, offer few clues.
According to Valerie Paley, executive vice president and director of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library of the Society, virtually all of the “Power Broker” documents have been cataloged, and no trace of the Jacobs section or the One Mile sequel has been found. The Society’s online archives site lists thousands of “Power Broker”-related materials, but there are no specifics about Jacobs or his life after his departure from the Bronx.
During a recent interview at his writing office, a short walk from his apartment and association, Caro came across an artifact from the exhibit. It was a napkin on which he had scribbled a few thoughts about “Fiddler on the Roof” and about growing up knowing everyone he met. He had talked to Bronx women who had been displaced by the Moses Highway, and noted that their fate could be compared to that of those driven out of Russia by the Tsar. But what he had hoped would be a long chapter on what happened to them ended up being only 10 pages.
“I remember writing page after page of that chapter,” he said. “I thought it was good, but we got to the end and we had to cut 40,000 words and it had to go.”
“The Power Broker” set the tone for Caro’s grand ambitions and flexible deadlines. He had intended to write the book in a few months, but it took more than seven years, so long that he and Ina ran out of money and had to sell their house. He had a career in journalism—he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for Newsday—but “The Power Broker” was influenced by some of the 19th-century novelists he admired, particularly Anthony Trollope, whose story his wife first told him about.
Caro’s narrative has the scale, moral underpinnings, political acumen, and big characters, including Moses, that he admired in Trollope’s work, such as “The Prime Minister.” Asked whether “The Power Broker” could almost be called a 19th-century nonfiction novel, Caro said, “Hardly.”
When “The Power Broker” was published, Moses issued a 23-page statement denouncing it as “filled with mistakes, unfounded accusations” and “random ramblings” and accusing Caro of listening too closely to “a few street corner grumblers” and “disgruntled truck drivers.” Most critics, however, found the book revelatory, and it continues to be a must-read for anyone interested in politics, urban planning, or New York history. Praisers include President Barack Obama, who recalled being “enchanted” by the book when he awarded Caro the National Humanities Medal in 2010.
Even Jacobs forgave him for not mentioning her. In a 1974 letter on display in the exhibition, she thanked Caro for sending her a copy and thanked him for his hard work.
“I have no doubt that many readers will feel the same way I did. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to him for his many years of hard work, common sense, unceasing curiosity and compassion,” she wrote. “What a wonderful account of the human predicament. It rivals the great novels.”
