Jane’s Walk ’24
We already have 12 walks posted on our Join a Walk page for May 3, 4, and 5.
And, join us on April 18 at 7 p.m. at Remai Modern for the film Motherless Brooklyn.
This movie is adapted from a detective novel by Edward Norton, who also produces, directs, and stars in this 2019 neo-noir crime film.
Motherless Brooklyn is considered in many ways to be as much an adaptation of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker, as an adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s detective novel. Norton adds characters such as Moses Randolph, played by Alec Baldwin, who is based on the controversial NYC urban planner Robert Moses. Norton also drew inspiration from Jane Jacobs, a prominent critic of housing discrimination during the 50 and 60s. Cherry Jones plays Gabby Horowitz, a community activist in the mold of Greenwich Village crusader Jane Jacobs. Other notable actors in this film include Bruce Willis and Willem Defoe.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of the biography, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Moses designed and implemented dozens of highways and bridges, sometimes at great cost to the communities he nominally served. The book has been highly influential on city planners and politicians and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975.
The podcast 99 Percent Invisible is hosting the Power Broker Book Club for this entire year claiming, “This massive book is about 1200 pages long and is perhaps the most important and complete explanation of how cities are formed, how neighbourhoods are destroyed, bridges are erected, roads are laid down, parks are designed, fortunes are made, lives are ruined, and power is amassed.”
Author Robert Caro has said that he was heavily influenced by Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities, but there is no mention of Jane Jacobs in The Power Broker. Robert Caro’s wife, who typed the original manuscript, reported that there was a wonderful chapter on Jane Jacobs, but when the book was submitted to the publisher it had to be cut by a third. Several chapters covering the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Port Authority, and Jane Jacobs stopping the Lower Manhattan Expressway were cut. Knopf sent Jacobs advance copies of The Power Broker and she wrote a blurb for the book.
See you at Jane’s Walk ’24
Seventy people came along on Don Greer’s fascinating walk that included stops at City Park area businesses, schools, and houses of architectural and historical interest. Thank you to Don and the City Park Community Association for planning this walk.