Classic Mr NYC

"He made this city!"

In the movie Chinatown, the evil Noah Cross says this twice about his former business partner Hollis Mulwray. Cross both loved and hated him. Mulwray built a dam that brought water to LA and made them rich. But when Mulwray refused to build another dam -- as part of a dark plot to steal water and land in the Valley, and to make LA even bigger -- Cross murdered him. Still, even after that, Cross pays tribute to his victim's great legacy.

Cross and Mulwray are entirely fictional, obviously, but Mulwray is based on the very real William Mulholland who built the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, bringing massive amounts of fresh water to the young desert city. Within a decade its population has tripled -- oh yes, Mulholland made that city.

New York City is, of course, much older and not on a desert. And if you asked most people today who "made" NYC, they might point to Robert Moses or argue that no one person is responsible for "making" NYC in its 400-something year history.

But they would be wrong. One man did make NYC, at least the city of five boroughs we live in today: Andrew Haswell Green.

I blogged about him briefly a few years ago, specifically citing a Bowery Boys episode about the man. Yet I realize that I have not really given him his due: Green truly is the "Father of Greater New York." His vision, his efforts, his ideas, were resposible for: Central Park, The New York Public Library,The Metropolitan Museum, The Bronx Zoo, The American Museum of Natural History, Riverside Drive, Morningside Park, Fort Washington Park. And Green chaired the committee, and had the vision, to consolidate the five counties of Bronx, New York, Queens, Kings, and Richmond into one city -- Greater New York.

So yes -- he made this city! The NYC we live in today was Green's vision. 

And the reason, I think, I never properly gave him his due it because our city, his city, hasn't done it either.  

Remember in Godfather II when Hyman Roth says about his (also) dead former partner Moe Green that he was responsible for creating Las Vegas? And remember when Roth yells that there isn't even a signpost or plaque commorating this "great man"? 

Well, in Mr NYC's opinion, the memorials to Green NYC are extremely insufficiant. There's a small park on the Upper East Side and a bench in Central Park. There's also an island up in the Niagara River named after him. But these minor memorials don't seem to, in any way, really give the man his due. He doesn't even have a street or a building named after him! Ed Koch has a friggin' major bridge named after him -- but not this guy? Green needs to have a massive memorial named after  him, a huge tribute.

Why not City Hall? 

Because he made this city!