central park at 150

Yale 2, Princeton 1
A Short History of Parks Commissioners
At Mid-century: Moses, Morris, and Hoving

By Henry Stern

I was very fortunate to have served 15
years as parks commissioner: seven
by appointment of Mayor Ed Koch
and, after a four-year period, variously
referred to as the Interregnum or the
Occupation, eight years under Mayor
Rudy Giuliani.
During that time, more things
happened than I can remember, but
the cumulative experience was one
of excitement and pleasure.
Parks is considered the happy
agency in city government because its
mission is to bring people pleasure.
Other agencies deal with less attractive
aspects of urban life: The police
fight crime, firefighters save folks from
burning to death, health and hospitals
treats the sick, social services cares for
the poor, and corrections deals with the
imprisoned.
So parks is the plum, and the commissionership
has in the past been
treated as a reward for well-born political
supporters of the mayor.
For example, when Robert Moses
was induced to resign as parks commissioner
in May 1960 after a recordbreaking
26-year tenure, Mayor Robert
F. Wagner appointed Newbold Morris,
a descendant of the Revolutionary family
that owned Morrisania.
Morris was a Yale alumnus, as was
Moses, but only one was a scholar.
The former was a gentleman and the
latter was a student. Neither was both.
The reason Moses left parks was to become
president of the 1964 World’s Fair,
a position that paid $100,000 a year, which
at the time was a great deal of money.
The salary of the parks commissioner
was then $25,000, but Morris had been
what we call today a trust-fund kid.
He had also served as president of the
City Council under Mayor Fiorello La
Guardia and had run as a Republican (a
real one) for mayor in 1949.
He was also the candidate of the Liberal
party, and I remember his campaign
song: “No wonder they call him Newbold,
because he’s new and he’s bold, so
make Morris mayor.”
Alas, the voters were not swayed
by the jingle and reelected William
O’Dwyer, who eight months later resigned
when he was appointed ambassador
to Mexico by President Harry S
Truman.
This removed O’Dwyer from the reach
of local authorities, who were investigating
corruption in his administration.
As events transpired, O’Dwyer
stayed in Mexico for many years after
President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed
a new ambassador. He must
have found the climate salubrious.
As commissioner, Morris fulfilled the
ceremonial duties attendant to the office.
The management of the agency
was under the old boys whom Moses
had left in charge: John Mulcahy as
executive officer, and Alexander Wirin
as assistant executive officer.
At one point in 1966, a parks employee
we were trying to get to work
told me: “Newbold Morris was a
good commissioner. He never interfered
with the department.”
You may note that while other
agencies had deputy and assistant
commissioners, in parks, only Moses
had the title. Executive officer is a military
and police title, and Moses tried
to build the agency in that tradition.
Morris was commissioner for 5 1/2
years, leaving in January 1966 when the
newly elected mayor, John V. Lindsay,
appointed his campaign parks adviser,
the director of the Cloisters, Thomas
Pearsall Field Hoving, as parks commissioner.
Hoving’s father, Walter, was president
of Tiffany’s and a conservative
Republican.
When told that Lindsay had replaced
him, Morris’s response was
shock: “How could he?” he said.
“We’re both Scroll and Key.”
Hoving was just 35 and a Princeton
graduate who had received a Ph.D. in
art history with a dissertation on the
Bury St. Edmund’s Cross, a prominent
English antiquity.
His impact on parks was electrifying,
trying to transform an agency into
something live and exciting, welcoming
people to the parks through happenings,
sort of modern art public
events.
He brought a young crew into the
Arsenal offices, a revolution similar to
the one Moses brought about in 1934,
when he brought in professionals and
technicians and threw out the political
jobholders.
However, 32 years later (eight
mayoral terms), the best of the Moses
men had died, retired, or moved on to
better jobs. It was time for another
upheaval.
Henry Stern is former parks commissioner and director of nycivic.org. E-mail responses to him at starquest
@nycivic.org.

12 • New York Resident The Week of July 14, 2003
• www. newyorkresident.com • (212) 993-9410

Henry J. Stern is the director of NYCivic.