by Lynn Maliszewski, Assistant Director of Archives and Collections, Queens Museum
This essay was published to accompany the production of Straight Line Crazy.
In Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the prickly legacy of Robert Moses is tangible. Moses was elected commissioner of the Department of Parks for New York City in 1934 and managed the transformation of an 897-acre ash dump in Flushing into parkland in preparation for the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair. Today, a 20-minute walk from the subway or bus stop outside the park will get you to the Queens Museum. The hum of Grand Central Parkway bewilders local groundhog populations and muffles bird chirps from the Queens Zoo’s aviary, situated across the eight-lane roadway outside the entrance to the Museum. Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the fourth largest in the five boroughs, is at the nexus of four highways built by Moses—a deceptive convenience when amplified car traffic and minimized subway service coincide on weekends. Moses’s legacy as both park-builder and polluter, connective tissue and toxin, compels a new interpretation of the city by way of The Panorama of the City of New York: what new correlations can be made between momentous change and consequences that compound over time? Why were exceptions made or voices silenced when it came to particular urban infrastructure decisions, and how do they continue to haunt or mystify the populace?
At the Queens Museum, we maintain The Panorama as part of our permanent collection on-site. The model debuted at the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair as a city planning tool, an educational apparatus, and a symbolic trophy for Moses. The Panorama was updated regularly between 1966 and 1970, then became too expensive to do on a regular basis. It was last updated in its entirety in 1992. Today, we are devising theatrical and technological methods to allow increased access to the model and illustrate how much has changed since its debut. Animating this artifact will allow visitors to comprehend long-term repercussions of Moses’s apathy toward the city’s dynamics and ecosystems. By making complex histories of the city more accessible, we hope to imagine more equitable methods of optimizing the city by way of civic engagement, cooperation, and community building.
As New York City grows and mutates more dramatically with each passing year, there are advantages to keeping The Panorama frozen in time. It provides a visual benchmark for comparison when it comes to the scale of the city, the effects of climate change, and shifting personalities of neighborhoods. Moses denied being a “planner,” and The Panorama makes as much clear: while a degree of functionality is present, each infrastructural choice exemplifies an ingrained bias against working-class and marginalized communities. Using The Panorama as a tool to understand the city, new projects will reflect upon patterns of classism, racism, and corruption that remain from Moses’s era. The model doesn’t depict communities Moses uprooted or historical buildings he demolished, but we plan to demonstrate their importance by way of oral histories, archival content, and dedicated scholarship. For each unobstructed disturbance of the social and economic fabric, the Museum can impart context so we might understand the fallout of these decisions experienced by New Yorkers, past and present.
In The Panorama, visitors are placed within and above New York City, offering a rare opportunity to reflect upon the urban ecosystem with criticality and imagination. New York City is an oasis for connection: a stroll down an unpredictably quiet street or a memorable conversation with a stranger impacts quality of life, reminding us that the “hustle and bustle” of the city is necessarily interwoven with humanity. Even if Robert Moses never saw it this way, we’re ready to find new modes of engagement that support the vibrancy of this city over time.
