saying this was their home, their castle, and Mr. Moses would have to drag them from it bodily.
Some took the news quietly, waiting without words to be listed among the missing waiting for the moving van as if it meant
death itself. With the money the Authority paid them for their old home, they went to Florida, or to Arizona, or to another
home in Brooklyn, any home, not seeming to care very much because now they were old people and new homes were all the same.
The old shoemaker, nearly seventy, returned to Southern Italy, back to his native Cosenza, where he had some farmland he hoped
to sell. He had left Cosenza for America when he was twenty-two years old. And now, in 1959, seeing Cosenza again was seeing
how little it had changed. There were still goats and donkeys climbing up the narrow roads, and some peasant women carrying
clay pots on their heads, and a few men wearing black bands on their sleeves or ribbons in their lapels to show that they
were in mourning; and still the same white stone houses speckled against the lush green of the mountainside—houses of many
generations.
When he arrived, he was greeted by relatives he had long forgotten, and they welcomed him like a returning hero. But later
they began to tell him about their ailments, their poverty, all their problems, and he knew what was coming next. So he quickly
began to tell them about his problems, sparing few details, recalling how he had fallen behind in the rent of his shoestore
in Brooklyn, how the Authority had thrown him out without a dime, and how he now found himself back in Italy where he had
started—all because this damned bridge was going to be built, this bridge the Americans were planning to name after an Italian
explorer the shoemaker's relatives had never heard of, this Giovanni da Verrazano, who, sailing for the French in 1524, discovered
New York Bay. The shoemaker went on and on, gesturing with his hands and making his point, making certain they knew he was
no soft touch—and, a day or two later, he went about the business of trying to sell the farmland. . . .
On the Staten Island side, opposition to the bridge was nothing like it was in Brooklyn, where more than twice as many people
and buildings were affected by the bridge; in fact, in Staten Island there had long been powerful factions that dreamed of
the day when a bridge might be built to link their borough more firmly with the rest of New York City Staten Island had always
been the most isolated, the most ignored of New York's five boroughs; it was separated from Manhattan by five miles of water
and a half-hour's ride on the ferry.
While New Yorkers and tourists had always enjoyed riding the Staten Island ferry—"a luxury cruise at a penny a mile"—nobody
was ever much interested in getting to the other side. What was there to see? Sixty percent of the island's fifty-four square
miles were underdeveloped as of 1958. Most of its 225,000 citizens lived in one-family houses. It was the dullest of New York's
boroughs, and when a New York policeman was in the doghouse with headquarters, he was often transferred to Staten Island.
The island first acquired its rural quality when the British controlled it three hundred years ago, encouraging farming rather
than manufacturing, and that was the way many Staten Islanders wanted it to remain—quiet and remote. But on the last day of
1958, after years of debate and doubt, plans for the building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge finally became definite and
the way of those who cherished the traditional life was in decline. But many more Staten Island residents were overjoyed with
the news; they had wanted a change, had grown bored with the provincialism, and now hoped the bridge would trigger a boom—and
suddenly they had their wish.
The bridge announcement was followed by a land rush. Real estate values shot up. A small lot that cost $1,200 in 1958 was
worth $6,000 in 1959, and
Some took the news quietly, waiting without words to be listed among the missing waiting for the moving van as if it meant
death itself. With the money the Authority paid them for their old home, they went to Florida, or to Arizona, or to another
home in Brooklyn, any home, not seeming to care very much because now they were old people and new homes were all the same.
The old shoemaker, nearly seventy, returned to Southern Italy, back to his native Cosenza, where he had some farmland he hoped
to sell. He had left Cosenza for America when he was twenty-two years old. And now, in 1959, seeing Cosenza again was seeing
how little it had changed. There were still goats and donkeys climbing up the narrow roads, and some peasant women carrying
clay pots on their heads, and a few men wearing black bands on their sleeves or ribbons in their lapels to show that they
were in mourning; and still the same white stone houses speckled against the lush green of the mountainside—houses of many
generations.
When he arrived, he was greeted by relatives he had long forgotten, and they welcomed him like a returning hero. But later
they began to tell him about their ailments, their poverty, all their problems, and he knew what was coming next. So he quickly
began to tell them about his problems, sparing few details, recalling how he had fallen behind in the rent of his shoestore
in Brooklyn, how the Authority had thrown him out without a dime, and how he now found himself back in Italy where he had
started—all because this damned bridge was going to be built, this bridge the Americans were planning to name after an Italian
explorer the shoemaker's relatives had never heard of, this Giovanni da Verrazano, who, sailing for the French in 1524, discovered
New York Bay. The shoemaker went on and on, gesturing with his hands and making his point, making certain they knew he was
no soft touch—and, a day or two later, he went about the business of trying to sell the farmland. . . .
On the Staten Island side, opposition to the bridge was nothing like it was in Brooklyn, where more than twice as many people
and buildings were affected by the bridge; in fact, in Staten Island there had long been powerful factions that dreamed of
the day when a bridge might be built to link their borough more firmly with the rest of New York City Staten Island had always
been the most isolated, the most ignored of New York's five boroughs; it was separated from Manhattan by five miles of water
and a half-hour's ride on the ferry.
While New Yorkers and tourists had always enjoyed riding the Staten Island ferry—"a luxury cruise at a penny a mile"—nobody
was ever much interested in getting to the other side. What was there to see? Sixty percent of the island's fifty-four square
miles were underdeveloped as of 1958. Most of its 225,000 citizens lived in one-family houses. It was the dullest of New York's
boroughs, and when a New York policeman was in the doghouse with headquarters, he was often transferred to Staten Island.
The island first acquired its rural quality when the British controlled it three hundred years ago, encouraging farming rather
than manufacturing, and that was the way many Staten Islanders wanted it to remain—quiet and remote. But on the last day of
1958, after years of debate and doubt, plans for the building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge finally became definite and
the way of those who cherished the traditional life was in decline. But many more Staten Island residents were overjoyed with
the news; they had wanted a change, had grown bored with the provincialism, and now hoped the bridge would trigger a boom—and
suddenly they had their wish.
The bridge announcement was followed by a land rush. Real estate values shot up. A small lot that cost $1,200 in 1958 was
worth $6,000 in 1959, and
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