Until that moment, like many New Yorkers, I had thought of Moses as The Great Satan.

I viewed him through the prism of Jane Jacobs, the author of 1961's seminal "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." Jacobs' idea of the city - based on streets that mixed residential and commercial uses, all on a human scale - was the direct opposite of his.

He was the proponent of huge apartment complexes with large expanses of grass between them - which, Jacobs correctly observed, remained largely unused.

He was the man who destroyed the South Bronx and many Manhattan neighborhoods to accommodate the automobile.

The demonic view of Moses was reinforced in 1974 by Robert Caro in "The Power Broker," who stressed the ruthlessness with which he achieved his goals.

Thirty-three years later, Moses is again in the spotlight, this time viewed far more favorably.

There are three exhibits about his legacy under the title "Robert Moses and the Modern City," under the overall curatorship of Hilary Ballon, a professor of art and architecture at Columbia University. (Ballon and fellow Columbia professor Kenneth T. Jackson, formerly the director of the New-York Historical Society, have edited the excellent catalogue to the exhibits.)

At the Museum of the City of New York is "Remaking the Metropolis," which includes models of some of Moses' projects that have never been on display. His successes and failures are documented with photos, plans and press clippings.

The Queens Museum of Art focuses on "The Road to Recreation," highlighting the public swimming pools, beaches and playgrounds Moses built. (He created 440 playgrounds - 440!) Noted photographer Andrew Moore was commissioned to shoot these sites all over the city.

The QMA, of course, is in a structure Moses had built for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Its major attraction has always been the painstakingly accurate Panorama of New York Moses commissioned for the 1964 World's Fair, where it was one of the most popular attractions.

Why is there this sudden desire to reevaluate Moses?

"New York was at its nadir in the early '70s when Caro wrote his book," Tom Finkelpearl, executive director of the QMA, explains. "It was almost as if people thought, 'Who can we blame for this?'

"Now that the city has made a remarkable turnaround, it's as if people want to ask, 'Who made this possible?' The answer, again, is Robert Moses."

Finkelpearl notes that Caro was so intent on demonstrating Moses' power that he minimized his defeats, notably the community effort that derailed his attempt to build a four-lane highway through Washington Square.

Finkelpearl says that while there is a desire to look at Moses' achievements more evenhandedly, the estimation of the man himself is unchanged. His racism, for example, is well-documented, but it was standard for the time. It did not prevent him from building a swimming pool in Harlem. He also built Lenox Terrace, the first building in Harlem that had 24-hour doorman service and upscale amenities.

As for his destroying the South Bronx, Ballon points to an overhead view that shows the George Washington Bridge shortly after its completion in 1929.

"It was like a cannon pointed at the South Bronx," she says. "You had all this traffic coming over needing to go North and East - where was the logical place to sort it out?"

An interesting part of the third Moses exhibit, "Slum Clearance and the Superblock Solution" at the Wallach Art Galleries at Columbia University, is the unused designs for Lincoln Center, one of his grandest projects.

Coming back from Columbia on the M11 bus, however, passing blocks and blocks of high-rise apartments, reinforces Jacobs' objections to Moses' plans: The buildings are drab, the grounds lifeless, a stark contrast to the streets just south, where tenements have been renovated, new businesses seem to be thriving and the streets themselves are inviting.

Moses' triumph was taking advantage of the federal money newly flowing to cities. He used it to bring to life the thinking of city planners of his era. He also employed some its top architects, like I.M. Pei, who designed the striking apartment complex Kips Bay in the East 30s.

Moses accomplished what he did because he had amassed power unparalleled before and since. By and large, we are leery of someone who has such unchecked control.

Under Moses, however, the 16 acres that housed the World Trade Center would not have remained empty for five and a half years. Whether we would value what he would have put there is another question.

Originally published on February 18, 2007