The Box - Marc Levinson [166]
27. James Felt, chairman, City Planning Commission, to O’Connor, September 23, 1959, Wagner Papers, Reel 40508, Frame 691; City of New York Department of City Planning, “Redevelopment of Lower Manhattan East River Piers,” September 1959, Wagner Papers, Reel 4058, Frame 693; Moses to Felt, September 29, 1959, Wagner Papers, Reel 40508, Frame 688; O’Connor to Board of Estimate, November 25, 1959, Wagner Papers, Reel 40531, Frame 2179. Moses, still a powerful figure in the city and the region during this period, appears to have had no interest in freight transportation. The port, maritime affairs, and freight transportation in general receive no mention in Robert A. Caro’s authoritative biography, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York, 1974), and Moses’s own memoir says nothing about shipping beyond the observation that, in the late 1940s, “[o]ur magnificent port was literally dying.” See Moses’s Public Works: A Dangerous Trade (New York, 1970), p. 894. According to Guy Tozzoli, who knew Moses for many years, Moses was very interested in autos and passenger transportation, but had no interest in port-related matters or in the freight-handling problems of New York businesses. Author’s interview, New York, January 13, 2004.
28. Condit, The Port of New York, 2:346.
29. U.S. Department of Commerce, Annual Report of the Federal Maritime Board and Maritime Administration, 1957 (Washington, DC, 1957), p. 12; PNYA, Minutes of the Commissioners, February 14, 1957, p. 98, Meyner Papers, Box 44; PNYA, Weekly Report to the Commissioners, November 15, 1965, Doig Files; “Full-Scale Container Ship Proves Itself,” 6; U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Roll-On, Roll-Off Sea Transportation (Washington, DC, 1957), p. 9; “Propeller Club Annual Convention,” Marine Engineering/Log (November 1958), pp. 64–65.
30. PNYA, “Report on Port Authority Operation of Port Newark & Newark Airport, January 1, 1960-December 31, 1960”; Chinitz, Freight and the Metropolis, p. 156.
31. Elizabeth officiais protested that the Port Authority was violating a 1951 agreement that it would not condemn land in Elizabeth without the city’s consent. See PNYA, Weekly Report to the Commissioners, March 31, 1956; letter, Austin J. Tobin to Elizabeth mayor Nicholas LaCorte, May 21, 1956; New Jersey governor Robert B. Meyner to Elizabeth city attorney Jacob Pfeferstein, June 4, 1956; Memo, Francis A. Mulhearn, PNYA legal department to Tobin, June 29, 1956, all in Doig Files. On the differing reactions to the container, see PNYA, Minutes of Committee on Construction, March 26, 1958, Meyner Papers, Box 44; O’Connor address on Marine and Aviation Day, May 23, 1961, Wagner Papers, Reel 40532, Frame 325; “Creation of a Container Port,” Via—Port of New York, Special Issue: Transatlantic Transport Preview (1965), p. 31; Anthony J. Tozzoli and John S. Wilson, “The Elizabeth, N.J. Port Authority Marine Terminal,” Civil Engineering, January 1969, pp. 34–39.
32. New York Department of Marine and Aviation, press release, January 23, 1961, Wagner Papers, Reel 40532, Frame 357; Remarks by Mayor Robert F. Wagner, August 30, 1962, Wagner Papers, Reel 40532, Frame 457; Walter Hamshar, “Face-Lift for the Waterfront,” New York Herald Tribune, November 2, 1963; “NY Port Development Scored,” JOC, December 23, 1963; New York City Planning Commission, “The Port of New York: Proposals for Development” (1964), pp. 8, 13, and plate 2; Minutes of New York City Council on Port Development and Promotion, November 18, 1963, Wagner Papers, Reel 40532, Frame 728; “Report on Recommendations by the Steering Committee to the Committee for Alleviating Truck Congestion and Delay at the Waterfront of the City of New York,” October 7, 1965, Wagner Papers, Reel 40532, Frame 978.
33. King to Tobin, November 8, 1965; PNYA, Minutes of the Commissioners, November 10, 1965; PNYA, press release, November 15, 1965; PNYA, Minutes of the Commissioners, September 8, 1966; PNYA, transcript of “New Jersey Observations,” WNDT-TV, November 15, 1965, all