Saturday, July 18, 2009

Last Stop for Moynihan Station?

Haven't seen anything in the news (meaning the NYT) about the long-delayed Moynihan Station, conceived of and basically half-financed by my ex-boss, the political and scholarly genius (formerly) Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), who's seat Hillary took over when he passed away.
The idea seemed so simple that it might actually get done in post-Robert Moses NY. Convert McKim, Mead, & White's 33rd and Eighth Ave. monumental post office into a replacement for the city's greatest act of civic vandalism, the 1960s criminal destruction of their original Neo-Classical masterpiece, the old Pennsylvania Station, where the already completely dated Madison Square Garden and underground hellhole replacement station are now.
The PO was moving to new quarters. Why not use the space for something beautiful and uplifting for the hundreds of thousands of commuters and others who use the station now (ever been to the LIRR platform? Like Dante's vision of Hell, only more crowded and with less light)?
This was 1996. Anyone see anything recently in the news? I know the Dolan's want to replace MSG (it needs it) but nothing recently.

Moynihan was someone who got into trouble because he told people uncomfortable truths that happened to be, well, true. We know how far that gets you in Washington.
Most famous was his 1965 report on the "Negro Family" that said that black men were abandoning their children at truly alarming rates, leaving behind furious fatherless boys that inevitably came to a bad end. Though this turned out to be unfortunately right on the mark, the left at the time accused him of "blaming the victim."

Even more ridiculous was the brou-ha-ha over what became to be known as "the benign neglect memo," which said that racial rhetoric (this was 1970) could "benifit from a period of benign neglect." This somehow got translated in the press as "Moynihan Says Ignore Black Complaints." Moynihan was working as a special advisor to Nixon (yes, Nixon).

Moynihan was a brilliant scholar who was sometimes regarded, (and he humorously acknowledged this)as not being entirely serious by New York Intellectuals because he was not Jewish. Worse, he was an Irish Catholic, just like the kids that beat them up on the way to Schul.

At the same time, he was misunderstood by the civil rights era black leadership because he was so blunt and seemingly unapologetic and unsympathetic to the plight of blacks. This couldn't have been more off the mark, as he often sympathetically compared them to the unwanted and often vilified Irish immigrants of the 19th Century.

He is buried in an unremarkable grave in Arlington Cemetery. Like my father, he barely missed WWII. When I collected his military medals for him (I was putting together an-all inclusive biographical resume for him, the job I was hired for), he said, with characteristic humor, "Oh, they gave you those for just showing up."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As long as it does not tamper with General Farley's monument...the Post Office... it may get built :)

tourguide said...

Farley's is indeed a legend whom somehow no one's ever heard of.

tourguide said...

Who might you be, chieftain? Another urban planning nerd like myself. Reveal thyself!