The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

by Robert A. Caro

New York was the postman handing you the registered letter that you both knew was the eviction notice. It was the long queues that formed in the early afternoon at the Municipal Lodging Houses, and it was the desperate haste of the men turned away to get to one of the nearby bars which allowed customers who purchased even a single drink to sleep on the floor as long as there was space. Subways were truly for sleeping, and when patrolmen walked along station platforms rapping on soles, the men lying there arose without a protest, carefully gathering up their pallets of newspapers, shuffled onto a train and rode to the next station, where they spread their papers and lay down again.