Remembering the Ramifications of Robert Moses's Lincoln Square Renewal Project

Few of the world’s classical music festivals have so lodged themselves in the collective consciousness like Mostly Mozart has, spawning an array of knock-offs and even a Peanuts cartoon that riffed on its name. As it’s been forced to go virtual for 2020 — a year that has, to say the least, encouraged us to take a hard look at various issues — it might be a good idea to reflect upon the history of where the festival usually takes place. When Mostly Mozart was launched in 1966 to fill the summertime scheduling hole at Lincoln Center’s recently-opened Philharmonic Hall, Lincoln Center was still very much under construction as part of the Lincoln Square Renewal Project, which was transforming a neighborhood of mainly lower-income minorities, some artists, and hundreds of businesses, into a mid-century temple of marble modernism … with the questionable stamp of Robert Moses all over it.

The area, of course, is steeped in a history that began with the Native Americans. In the 18^th century, Dutch settlers named what is now the neighborhood’s portion of Broadway — and originally a Native American trading route — Bloomingdale Road (“Bloomingdale” referring to “Vale of Flowers”), and farms dotted the landscape. As the city grew northward through Manhattan in the 19^th century, the neighborhood eventually developed into Lincoln Square, around and to the west of the bow-tie shaped area where Broadway and Columbus intersect, and San Juan Hill to its west. (There is some ambiguity regarding the boundaries, especially when referring to Lincoln Square — considered by some to be much of the land between 59^th and 72^nd Streets — and this comes into play as our story progresses.)

By the early 20^th century, Lincoln Square (probably not actually named for Abraham Lincoln, but perhaps for a long-lost landowner … but nobody really knows) was considered a rough neighborhood in the shadow of the Ninth Avenue El, but also home to a vibrant arts community. In addition to its creative residents, eventually three theaters stood just off the square; one of them, The Colonial, hosted acts like Charlie Chaplin and Harry Houdini; while another, the Sixty-Third Street Theater, presented groundbreaking shows including Broadway’s first all-Black Broadway musical (Shuffle Along starring Josephine Baker) and Mae West’s Sex (so scandalous it landed her in jail).

Throughout the late 19^th and into the 20^th century, the San Juan Hill section (possibly named for the Spanish-American War’s 1898 battle of the same name — at which the all-Black Buffalo Soldiers were key to the victory) developed into a very busy, very crowded African-American community. Home to most of the city’s Black population at the time, a block was said to house around 5,000 people, and clashes with nearby immigrant neighborhoods (especially the Irish enclave of Hell’s Kitchen) were unfortunately frequent (such unrest between various ethnicities was prevalent throughout the city, fueled by an array of gangs — see Gangs of New York). Nonetheless, the neighborhood was vibrant and culturally important, especially to jazz — it’s where pianist James P. Johnson dreamed up The Charleston (popularized by the musical Runnin’ Wild, which premiered at The Colonial) and Thelonius Monk grew up.

By the 1950s, Puerto Ricans were also a well-represented segment of the Lincoln Square and San Juan Hill community. Though the area is sometimes touted as an inspiration for West Side Story, it’s not really the case— an early draft was set on the Lower East Side with Jewish and Catholic protagonists, and Arthur Laurents and Leonard Bernstein developed the piece further in Los Angeles during the Chicano American riots. Additionally, the location of the film’s scenes famously shot in 1960 in the area’s empty tenements was on 68^th Street, the future site of the Lincoln Towers buildings.

The stage for the neighborhood’s destruction was set in the 1940s, when the New York City Housing Authority had named Lincoln Square and San Juan Hill the worst slum in the city. By the end of that decade, part of it had been cleared for the Amsterdam Houses (which still stand behind the Metropolitan Opera between West 61^st and 65^th Streets, from Amsterdam to West End Avenue). Eventually, The Mayor’s Committee on Slum Clearance, helmed by Robert Moses, officially declared the area a slum, which enabled Moses to utilize eminent domain to put forth a new plan for another large swath of the neighborhood, and in 1956 the Lincoln Square Development Plan was approved. It took advantage of Title I of the 1949 Federal Housing Act to acquire essentially an L-shaped, piece of land for private development. The project displaced more than 7,000 families and 800 businesses.

Lincoln Square Site Plan

(The New York Public Library Digital Collections)

Moses, motivated by his maniacal need to slam through his new urban vision, secured a number of institutions to commit to the Lincoln Square site, including Fordham University and the American Red Cross. For the new performing arts center portion of the plan — about one-third of the land and undoubtedly the crown jewel of the project — two of New York City’s most prominent musical powerhouses were the first on board: The Metropolitan Opera, which had been wanting to relocate from its 39^th Street home, and the New York Philharmonic, whose lease at Carnegie Hall was running out (at the time, the hall was set to be demolished for a “red tower”). Eventually, other organizations, including The New York City Ballet, New York City Opera, and The Juilliard School, signed up, and with John D. Rockefeller spearheading the fundraising, it wasn’t long until another large swath of Lincoln Square and San Juan Hill vanished and President Dwight D. Eisenhower was breaking ground in a May 1959 ceremony.

Moses was known for just getting the job done — and not necessarily following the rules in order to do it. There were questions as to whether the Lincoln Square redevelopment should really go forward, not only because of the human cost of displacing low-income minority families and businesses through a program that purported to help people but rarely ever did, but also because of questions regarding the appraisal of the land. Additionally, there were worries that the plan wasn’t technically following the Housing Act’s laws — there was a debate as to whether or not the project primarily benefited the immediate area, and the inclusion of the Catholic-owned Fordham went against the separation of church and state rule. Lawsuits were filed, and the case was even argued in front of the Supreme Court, but nonetheless, the project moved forward.

Urban renewal projects like these required each developer to acquire the property for their part of the plan, and they were also responsible for any help given to the residents in their relocation. Moses didn’t care what happened to the people and, unfortunately, neither did many of the developers, so as a result, many who lost their homes were unceremoniously tossed out, often forced to move to other low-income neighborhoods, contributing to even more overcrowding and segregation. Additionally, in the case of Lincoln Square, the planned residential buildings were mainly priced for middle-income tenants, effectively shutting-out the poor, minority residents who were being displaced.

According to an April 1959 Lincoln Center newsletter, the newly-created arts center had become a landlord when it purchased the first three blocks of its site (West 62^nd to West 65^th between Columbus and Amsterdam) on February 28, 1958 (it bought another half block, where Alice Tully Hall and Juilliard now stand, that October). There were 81 tenements, 75 rooming houses, 17 commercial buildings, and six institutions on the site. The report stated:

In one house, 32 people were crowded into 22 rooms. A tenant on 63^rd Street lived with his wife and nine children in a one-window basement, dangerously alongside the building’s heating plant. In all, the Center found 141 Building Department violations that had to be removed immediately.

The area had an exceptional variety of businesses; exceptional even for a city as various as New York. The 306 commercial tenants ranged from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to a china doll shop and suspected bookmaking parlors.

Demolition began in July 1958. Lincoln Center did, at least, take some responsibility for the residents the campus was displacing, and tasked Braislin, Porter, & Wheelock, Inc. with overseeing the project. According to a December 1959 newsletter, by the end of the process, 1,647 families were relocated, 1,160 of which moved to rental situations in NYC. Of those:

• 44% self-relocated, and most were eligible for bonuses ranging from $275 to $500 (depending on the size of the apartment), paid for by Lincoln Center.
• 15.7% relocated to public housing
• 39.4% relocated to private housing found for them by Lincoln Center.
• Of the 1,647 families, 898 (56%) relocated within Manhattan, 81% stayed in New York City, and 24% relocated in the area west of Central Park.

So yes, this “urban renewal project” was part of a system that at the time that was just going nuts clearing neighborhoods of poor and minority residents. But Lincoln Center, at least, did the right thing by some of the people in the neighborhood. That said, it was definitely the glorious centerpiece of the whole project, and is undoubtedly why the entire Lincoln Square Renewal Project got the green light in spite of some questionable details.

In a recent statement, Lincoln Center wrote, “The displacement of Indigenous, Black, and Latinx families that took place prior to the construction of our campus is abhorrent. We may never know its full impact on those dispossessed of the land on which Lincoln Center sits. But only by acknowledging this history can we begin to confront the racism from which our institution has benefited.”

Ultimately, the Lincoln Square project facilitated the total transformation of the area into what is today a mainly middle- and upper-class enclave of towers (a few remnants of the old neighborhood remain, like the tenement at 33 West 63^rd). Luckily, the fight against these kinds of urban renewal projects spurred activists like Jane Jacobs and ultimately led to the historic preservation and tenants’ rights movements, and Lincoln Square was among Moses’s last projects.