text:
To Die For

To Die For is a 1995 satirical black comedy film directed by Gus Van Sant, and written by Buck Henry based on Joyce Maynard‘s novel of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the story of Pamela Smart. It stars Nicole Kidman, Joaquin Phoenix and Matt Dillon, with Illeana Douglas, Wayne Knight, Casey Affleck, Kurtwood Smith, Dan Hedaya, and Alison Folland in supporting roles. Kidman was nominated for a BAFTA, and won a Golden Globe Award and a Best Actress Award at the 1st Empire Awards for her performance. Her character has been described as suffering from narcissistic personality disorder in the scientific journal BMC Psychiatry.

The film includes cameos by George Segal, David Cronenberg, author Maynard, and screenwriter Henry. It features original music by Danny Elfman.

Plot
In the fictional town of Little Hope, New Hampshire, Suzanne Stone is a glamorous and ambitious young woman who has always been obsessed with being on television, aspiring to become a world-famous broadcast journalist. She begins a passionate romance with Larry Maretto, an Italian American, whom her parents disapprove of, and the two quickly marry. Despite the differences between their families, the two seemingly settle into married life happily, and Larry promises to support her career ambitions. She uses his family restaurant business to keep herself financially stable and takes a job as an assistant at WWEN, a local cable station, in hopes of climbing the network ladder. Through relentless persistence, she is eventually promoted to doing the station's evening weather report.

Suzanne goes to a local high school to recruit subjects for a documentary she is producing, Teens Speak Out, that focuses on various issues teenagers are facing. She immediately attracts two delinquents, Jimmy Emmett and Russel Hines, and befriends Lydia Mertz, a shy and insecure girl who admires Suzanne’s glamor and worldliness. Larry begins pressuring Suzanne to give up her career in favor of helping out at the restaurant and starting a family with him. As he becomes more persistent, Suzanne views him as an impediment to her desired future and immediately begins plotting his murder. She seduces Jimmy and convinces him to murder Larry by falsely claiming abuse and promising they will have a future together in California once Larry is dead. She also manipulates Lydia into procuring a gun. One night while Suzanne delivers the evening weather report, Jimmy and Russell break into the Marettos' condo, and Jimmy shoots  Larry to death.

Though Larry's death is ruled the result of a botched burglary, the police stumble across a Teens Speak Out clip of Suzanne at their school, which points to her sexual involvement with Jimmy. The teens are arrested and connected to the crime scene. Lydia makes a deal with the police to converse with Suzanne while wearing a wire, and Suzanne unwittingly reveals her hand in the murder. However, despite this damning evidence, Suzanne argues that the police resorted to entrapment and is released on bail. All the charges against Suzanne are dropped.

Basking in the media spotlight, however, Suzanne fabricates a story about Larry being a cocaine addict who was murdered by Jimmy and Russell, his purported dealers. Jimmy and Russell are sentenced to life in prison. Russell gets his sentence reduced while Lydia is released on probation. Meanwhile, Larry's father, Joe, realizes Suzanne was behind his son's death and uses his mafia connections to have her murdered. A hitman lures Suzanne away from her home by posing as a movie studio executive, kills her, and conceals her body beneath a frozen lake.

Lydia tells her side of the story in a televised interview and gains national attention, becoming a celebrity. Janice, Larry's sister who always hated Suzanne, practices her figure skating on the frozen lake where Suzanne's corpse lies.

Production
To Die For is a mixture of styles, combining a traditional drama with darkly comic direct-to-camera monologues by Kidman's character, and mockumentary interviews, some tragic, with certain of the other characters in the film.

The film and the novel it is based on were both inspired by the facts that emerged during the trial of Pamela Smart, a school media services coordinator who was imprisoned for seducing a 16-year-old student and convincing him to kill her husband.

The role of Suzanne Stone was originally offered to Meg Ryan, who turned down the part and the $5 million salary offered. Kidman, who was later cast in the role, was paid $2 million.

The film was primarily shot in Toronto in 1994. High school scenes at "Little Hope High" were filmed at King City Secondary School in King City, Ontario, and some actual students of the school were cast as extras.

The honeymoon scenes with Larry and Suzanne were filmed in the Tampa Bay area of Florida.

Critical reception
The film was screened out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. To Die For was very well received by critics, with Nicole Kidman's performance being especially praised. The film holds an 89% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 61 reviews, where the consensus reads "Smart, funny, and thoroughly well-cast, To Die For takes a sharp – and sadly prescient – stab at dissecting America's obsession with celebrity." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100 based on reviews from 23 critics.

Katherine Ramsland of Crime Library describes the film as an example of a work displaying women with antisocial personalities; Ramsland describes Suzanne as a "manipulator extraordinaire" who harms people through third parties.

In her review in The New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "an irresistible black comedy and a wicked delight" and added, "[it] takes aim at tabloid ethics and hits a solid bull's-eye, with Ms. Kidman's teasingly beautiful Suzanne as the most alluring of media-mad monsters. The target is broad, but Gus Van Sant's film is too expertly sharp and funny for that to matter; instead, it shows off this director's slyness better than any of his work since Drugstore Cowboy ... Both Mr. Van Sant and Ms. Kidman have reinvented themselves miraculously for this occasion, which brings out the best in all concerned."

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said of Kidman, "[she] brings to the role layers of meaning, intention and impulse. Telling her story in close-up – as she does throughout the film – Kidman lets you see the calculation, the wheels turning, the transparent efforts to charm that succeed in charming all the same ... her beauty and magnetism are electric. Undeniably she belongs on camera, which means it's equally undeniable that Suzanne belongs on camera. That in itself is an irony, a commentary or both."

Writing in 2007, Emanuel Levy stated, "mean-spirited satire, told in mock-tabloid style, this film features the best performance of Nicole Kidman to date (better than The Hours for which she won an Oscar), as an amoral small-town girl obsessed with becoming a TV star."

American Film Institute recognition:
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
 * Suzanne Stone – Nominated Villain
 * AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – Nominated

Box office
The film grossed $21 million in the United States and Canada and $41 million worldwide.

Home media
To Die For was released on VHS following its theatrical release and on DVD on November 10, 1998. It was released on Blu-ray on November 8, 2011. A 4K remaster of the film was released by The Criterion Collection on Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray on March 26, 2024.

title: To Die For


text:
Fabiola of Belgium

Fabiola Fernanda María-de-las-Victorias Antonia Adelaida de Mora y Aragón (11 June 1928 – 5 December 2014) was Queen of the Belgians as the wife of King Baudouin from their marriage in 1960 until his death in 1993. The couple had no children, as all five of Fabiola's pregnancies resulted in miscarriage, so the Crown passed to her husband's younger brother, King Albert II.

Early life
Doña Fabiola de Mora y Aragón was born on 11 June 1928 in Madrid, Spain, at the Palacio de Zurbano, the main residence of the Marqués de Casa Riera. She was the daughter of Don Gonzalo de Mora y Fernández y Riera y del Olmo, 4th Marqués de Casa Riera, 2nd Count of Mora (1887–1957), and his wife, Doña Blanca de Aragón y Carrillo de Albornoz y Barroeta-Aldamar y Elío (1892–1981), daughter of the 6th Marchioness of Casa Torres and Viscountess of Baiguer. Her godmother was Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain.

Queen Fabiola was the fifth child and had six siblings. One of her siblings was Jaime de Mora y Aragón.

She worked as a nurse in a hospital in Madrid and lived with her mother. Before her marriage, she published an album of 12 fairy tales (Los doce cuentos maravillosos), one of which ("The Indian Water Lilies") would get its own pavilion in the Efteling theme park in 1966.

Marriage
On 15 December 1960, Fabiola married Baudouin, who had been King of the Belgians since the abdication of his father, Leopold III, in 1951. At the marriage ceremony in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula, she wore a 1926 Art Deco tiara that had been a gift of the Belgian state to her husband's mother, Astrid of Sweden, upon her marriage to Leopold III. Her dress of satin and ermine was designed by the couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga. Fabiola was a hospital nurse at the time of her engagement; Time magazine, in its 26 September 1960, issue, called Doña Fabiola the "Cinderella Girl" and described her as "an attractive young woman, though no raving beauty" and "the girl who could not catch a man." On the occasion of her marriage, Spanish bakers set out to honour Fabiola and created a type of bread, "la fabiola", which is still made in Palencia.

The explorer Guido Derom named the Queen Fabiola Mountains – a newly discovered range of Antarctic mountains – in her honour in 1961. She also has several varieties of ornamental plants named after her.

The royal couple had no children, as the Queen's five pregnancies ended in miscarriage in 1961, 1962, 1963, 1966 and 1968. Fabiola openly spoke about her miscarriages in 2008: 'You know, I myself lost five children. You learn something from that experience. I had problems with all my pregnancies, but you know, in the end I think life is beautiful'. She and Baudouin I called the miscarriages a chance to be able to love all children. She was deeply involved with the upbringing of Prince Philippe and Princess Astrid.

Activities
After the death of Queen Elisabeth, in November 1965, Queen Fabiola became the honorary president of Queen Elisabeth Music Competition. Queen Fabiola attended the elimination rounds and the finals of each session.

During the 1990s, the Hospital Saint-Pierre in Brussels was important in matters around AIDS. Queen Fabiola visited them in 1993 and embraced a patient. She was one of the first public figures to do this.

In September 1993, she became the president of the King Baudouin Foundation, established in 1976 to mark the twenty fifth anniversary of King Baudouin's accession. The foundation's purpose is to improving the living conditions of the population.

Queen Fabiola also founded the Social Secretariat of the Queen with the purpose to answering many requests for help. She has supported study programmes aimed at prevention and treatment of dyslexia among children.

She established Queen Fabiola Fund for Mental Health. The foundation's purpose is to help people with mental problems. During her entire life, she devoted herself to causes such as young women prostitution, human slavery and people with disabilities. Queen Fabiola received several humanitarian awards in her lifetime and was awarded the Ceres Medal in 2001 by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Every year, Queen Fabiola attend the Summit on Economic Progress of Rural Women at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. The purpose of the summit is to create a movement of first ladies to respond to the call for help from the deprived women in the third world.

Queen dowager
Baudouin died in late July 1993 and was succeeded by his younger brother, Albert II. Fabiola moved out of the Royal Castle of Laeken to the more modest Château of Stuyvenberg and reduced her public appearances so as not to overshadow her sister-in-law, Queen Paola.

Admired for her devout Roman Catholicism and involvement in social causes particularly those related to mental health, children's issues and women's issues, Queen Fabiola received the 2001 Ceres Medal, in recognition of her work to promote rural women in developing countries. The medal was given by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). She was also honorary president of the King Baudouin Foundation.

In July 2009, the Belgian press published news of anonymous death threats she received stating she would be shot with a crossbow. She responded to the threats during Belgian National Day celebrations by waving an apple to the crowd in a reference to the William Tell folk tale. Subsequent threats by an individual said to have a similar signature to the July 2009 threat-writer were received again in January 2010.

In January 2013, the Socialist Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo criticised Queen Fabiola for her plans to set up a private foundation (Fons Pereos), which would have been a tax-efficient way to pass wealth to her relatives as well as to charitable causes. It was widely seen by the public as inheritance tax evasion (although, since the construction was admitted by Di Rupo to be legal, it would more precisely be a case of tax avoidance). Queen Fabiola denied the charges in a rare public statement: "I have never had the intention of depositing funds I received from the public purse with my foundation.  All the monies that I receive from the civil list go on expenditure on my household. The lion's share goes on salaries."

Linguistic skills
According to official sources, Queen Fabiola was fluent in French, Dutch, English, German and Italian, in addition to her native Spanish.

Illness and death
Queen Fabiola was hospitalised for 15 days with pneumonia beginning 16 January 2009, with her condition described as "serious". She subsequently recovered and began attending public functions the following May. Queen Fabiola had been in poor health for years, having osteoporosis, as well as having never fully recovered from a lung inflammation she had in 2009. On the evening of 5 December 2014, the Royal Palace announced that Queen Fabiola had died at the Château of Stuyvenberg.

Funeral
The federal government declared a period of national mourning from Saturday 6 December to Friday 12 December, the day when the funeral of Queen Fabiola took place at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels.

The Royal Family, members of the government and the Lord Speaker received the coffin at the Royal Palace on 10 December where it was placed in the grand antechamber, where it was decorated with flowers and attended by an honour guard of generals, members of the King's Royal Military household. Godfried Cardinal Danneels, Metropolitan Archbishop-emeritus of Mechelen-Brussels, celebrated the Requiem Mass.

Members of several royal families around the world including the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, Empress of Japan, Queen of Denmark, King and Queen of Sweden, King of Norway accompanied by his sister Princess Astrid, former King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain, former Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, the Sovereign Prince of Liechtenstein, former Empress Farah of Iran and Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand, attended the funeral. No members of the British Royal Family or the Monégasque Princely Family attended the funeral, leading to criticism by both Belgian and international press.

Honours

 * Belgium: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Leopold
 * Vatican: Dame Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre
 * Holy See: Dame of the Decoration of Honour
 * Empire of Iran: Recipient of the Commemorative Medal of the 2,500 year Celebration of the Persian Empire
 * Netherlands: Recipient of the Wedding Medal of Princess Beatrix and Claus van Amsberg
 * Portugal
 * Republic of Portugal: Grand Cross of the Order of Christ
 * Portuguese Royal Family: Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Saint Isabel
 * Thailand: Dame Grand Cordon with Chain of the Order of the Royal House of Chakri
 * Spain:
 * Dame Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic
 * Lady of the Villa de Tejada
 * Dame of the Royal Nobility Corps of the Principality of Gerona
 * Dame of the Royal Nobility Corps of Madrid
 * EEB1: A building; Fabiola; was named after her in the school campus of the European School of Brussels one

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Fabiola of Belgium


text: User talk:66.30.55.40

title: User talk:66.30.55.40


text:
Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women

Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, a women's prison in the town of Bedford, New York, is the largest New York State women's prison. The prison previously opened under the name Westfield State Farm in 1901. It lies just outside the hamlet and census-designated place Bedford Hills, New York.

Facility
Bedford Hills Correctional Facility (formerly Bedford Hills Correctional Institution) is one of three New York facilities exclusively for women, the others being Albion Correctional Facility, and Taconic Correctional Facility. Taconic, a medium/minimum-security prison, lies directly across the street from Bedford Hills, while Albion is located in western New York between Rochester and Buffalo.

The site has been known as the New York State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills, and later as Westfield State Farm. Under the name Westfield State Farm, it housed 487 women in 1930, and 645 in 1940.

A prison nursery was first established upon the opening of the prison, in 1901. The current incarnation, Bedford Hills' family-centered program, was founded by Sister Elaine Roulet. It has served as a model for other prison programs in the United States and is considered the standard for innovative family-centered programs. Mothers incarcerated there are separate from the general population, in the Infant Development Center located on a single floor of one of the buildings. Those who wish to participate in the program must not have had any involvement with child welfare authorities in the past, nor can anyone who has been convicted of a violent crime. Children are allowed to stay in the nursery until 12 months (one year), although this can be extended up to 18 months ($1 1/2$ years) so the mother can be released with her child. it is the longest operating prison nursery in the U.S.

In the post–Furman v. Georgia period, from the time New York reinstated the death penalty in 1995 until its repeal in 2007, Bedford Hills prison was designated as having the state death row for women. However, New York State did not execute anyone during that time, nor since 1963.

Political unrest and due process
In 1974, in what came to be called the August Rebellion, the prisoners briefly took over parts of the prison in reaction to guards' assault on Carol Crooks, an incarcerated woman organizing for prisoners' rights. About 200 of the 450-plus incarcerated women rebelled in protest of the inhumane treatment of Crooks at Bedford Hills. The order directing such compliance had been in effect since 1975.

The prisoners won a subsequent civil-action lawsuit, initiated by Elizabeth Powell, that led to greater protections of Fourth Amendment (due process) rights for incarcerated people, in Powell v. Ward (1976).

Following the 1974 rebellion, the prison administration failed to give legal due process in prison disciplinary hearings. Incarcerated women who had been held in solitary confinement brought a lawsuit for violation of due process. They won a $127,000 fund from an out-of-court settlement reached in 1981 after a federal District Court "held state authorities in contempt for failing to provide due process for inmates involved in disciplinary hearings."

A prisoners' committee chose to spend the fund for improving prison life; the top priority was a $10,000 lobbying fund to be used to press for merit time legislation to allow time off for good behavior. The committee's purchases also included word processors and a copier; recreational equipment such as roller skates; and legal services, including paying for lobbying to have merit time eligibility expanded under state law. An uprising in the prison in November, 1981, that resulted in disciplinary reports against 61 inmates. The reports were exactly the opposite of the court's ruling, Mr. Coughlin observed, adding, You can't throw away due process by whim. The administrative staff was all demoted or transferred, and the disciplinary charges against the inmates were dropped. Thomas A. Coughlin, State Corrections Commissioner, stated in 1982 that the troubles at Bedford were the fault of the previous local administration.

Notable people incarcerated at Bedford Hills

 * Kathy Boudin, a Weather Underground leftist convicted in 1984 for her involvement in the 1981 Brinks robbery that resulted in the killing of three people. She was sentenced to life in prison, became a public health expert while in prison, and was released on September 17, 2003, after serving 22 years. After her parole she accepted a job in the HIV/AIDS Clinic at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center and as adjunct professor at Columbia University.
 * Stacey Castor, wife who was charged in 2007 with second degree murder, second degree attempted murder, and offering a false instrument in the first degree. She was found guilty of intentionally poisoning then-husband David Castor with antifreeze in 2005 and attempting to murder her daughter Ashley Wallace. In addition, she was suspected of having murdered her first husband, Michael Wallace, whose grave lay next to David Castor's. After an autopsy performed on Michael Wallace's body found traces of antifreeze and rat poison in his remains, the medical examiner ruled the death a poisoning homicide. Castor was found dead in her cell on June 11, 2016, as a result of a heart attack.
 * Judith Alice Clark, convicted in 1983 for her involvement in the same 1981 Brinks robbery as Kathy Boudin. She was not represented by counsel at trial and was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences at Bedford Hills. She was granted parole on April 17, 2019, after spending 38 years in prison. She co-founded the AIDS Counseling and Education (ACE) program at Bedford Hills, which has been emulated in prisons nationwide, and was instrumental in establishing a college program at Bedford Hills that has helped more than 100 prisoners earn college degrees.
 * Carol Crooks, organizer for reform of prison conditions and due process for incarcerated people
 * Amy Fisher, famously nicknamed "The Long Island Lolita" by the press, she was convicted of the 1992 shooting of the wife of her lover Joey Buttafuoco, with whom she began an affair as a 16-year-old student. She served seven years in prison and was released in 1999.
 * Jean Harris murdered her ex-lover, Dr. Herman Tarnower, who was a cardiologist and author of the best-selling book The Scarsdale Diet. Eleven years after Harris's conviction, Governor Mario Cuomo commuted the remainder of her sentence on December 29, 1992, as she was being prepped for quadruple bypass heart surgery. She was released from prison by the parole board after serving 11 years and later moved to the Whitney Center, a retirement home in Hamden, Connecticut. She died on December 23, 2012, aged 89, at an assisted-living facility in New Haven, Connecticut.
 * Katrina Haslip, co-founder of AIDS Counseling and Education at Bedford Hills and AIDS activist after release who was a major contributor to expanding eligibility for federal AIDS social security payments to more women and intravenous drug users
 * Donna Hylton, was convicted of second degree murder and two counts of first degree kidnapping. She was sentenced to concurrent indeterminate prison terms of 25 years to life. She served 27 years in prison. After prison, Donna Hylton wrote the memoir A Little Piece of Light and founded a non profit with the same name which helps individuals who are directly impacted by trauma and involvement in the criminal justice system.
 * Barbara Kogan; in October 1990, her husband George was shot on an Upper East Side Manhattan street. Kogan immediately became a suspect but was not convicted for nearly two decades, after she accepted a plea bargain admitting to conspiring to hire a hit man to kill her husband of 24 years because of a lengthy, acrimonious divorce.
 * Reminisce Mackie, a rapper known as Remy Ma, got into an altercation with a friend inside a vehicle parked outside a club, when Mackie fired two shots in the woman's stomach. Mackie later turned herself in, and was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to eight years. Mackie was released on parole July 31, 2014.
 * Joyce Mitchell assisted in the escape of inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt, and was sentenced to 2 1/3 to 7 years in prison. She was released on February 5, 2020.
 * Yoselyn Ortega, perpetrator of the 2012 Murder of the Krim siblings. Ortega received two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
 * Joy Powell was charged with felony assault and burglary, though she claims the accusations are fabricated and politically motivated. She will be eligible for parole in the year 2045, when she is 84 years old.
 * Nixzaliz Santiago, convicted of manslaughter in connection with the death of her daughter, Nixzmary Brown, and sentenced to 43 years in prison. Nixzmary's stepfather Cesar Rodriguez tortured Nixzmary (by binding her, duct-taping her mouth, and beat her), and her mother allegedly ignored this and didn't contact authorities in time to save her daughter's life.
 * Pamela Smart, a former media services consultant found guilty in March 1991 for conspiring with her underage lover, William Flynn, and his three associates to kill her 24-year-old husband, Greggory Smart, in Derry, New Hampshire. She was transferred to Bedford Hills from the New Hampshire State Prison for Women in March 1993, because New Hampshire lacked a secure enough facility to house her. The higher security was necessary due to the high-profile nature of her case. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility for parole.
 * Lacey Spears, serving 20 years to life for the murder of her son Garnett.
 * Marybeth Tinning, serving 20 years to life in prison for the murder of several of her children. She was denied parole in March 2007 after serving 20 years in prison. Released from prison on August 21, 2018.
 * Carolyn Warmus, former teacher convicted for the murder of Paul Solomon's wife Betty Jean to get closer with him. Warmus and Solomon were both teachers at the same school, and Warmus frequently visited the Solomons' house. Her first trial was a mistrial, but a new piece of evidence linked her to the murder, and Warmus was found guilty at her second trial. She faced the minimum of 15 years, but Judge Carey sentenced her to the maximum of 25-years-to-life in prison.
 * Anna Sorokin, known by the alias Anna Delvey, is a Russian-born fraudster. She moved to New York City in 2013 and created the fictitious identity of Anna Delvey, pretending to be a wealthy German heiress. In 2019, she was convicted of multiple counts of attempted grand larceny, theft of services and larceny in the second degree for scamming New York City hotels and wealthy acquaintances.
 * Blanche Wright, convicted of murder, as a hitwoman accomplice of The Council's contract killer Robert Young aka Miguel Sanchez's, and sentenced to Bedford Hills on November 11, 1980.
 * Nicole Addimando, found guilty of second-degree murder of her boyfriend Chris Grover. She was sentenced to 19 years to life.
 * Tiffany VanAlstyne, on Dec. 18, 2014, VanAlstyne choked her cousin Kenneth White in their mobile home after she became "a little frustrated" with the kindergartner, she said. Police discovered Kenneth's lifeless body in a snowbank across the street from the home, but only after VanAlstyne delayed their investigation by concocting a lie that kidnappers had abducted the boy. She was sentenced to 18 years to life.
 * Angela Pollina, Pollina and her fiancee, former NYPD officer Michael Valva, were both convicted of 2nd degree murder in the death of 8 year old Thomas Valva. Thomas had Autism. Thomas and his brothers were starved, beaten, prevented from using the bathroom and mentally abused. Thomas was forced to sleep in a freezing cold garage with no pillows or blankets and froze to death which Valva and Pollina conspired to cover up.
 * Shirley Winters, suspected serial killer, child murderer and arsonist, Winters pleaded guilty to manslaughter on April 21, 2008. In May 2024, Winters was released from prison and sent to a psychiatric facility.


text:
Talk:Butterfly

Semi-protected edit request on 14 February 2022
Butterfly: Declining Numbers

Butterfly numbers have drastically dropped 50% in the year 2021. In addition to climate changes contributing to the decreasing numbers, other factors that contribute to their decline includes the increased use of pesticides, and habitat destruction.

Source: http://www.ecosystemgardening.com/butterfly-numbers-plunge-by-50-percent.html Goosette (talk) 00:40, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Per the source provided, All the information on this website is published in good faith and for general information purpose only. This website does not make any warranties about the completeness, reliability and accuracy of this information. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:46, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 May 2022
I would like to add the following to the "Declining Numbers" section:

In terms of climate change, there are both negative and positive effects on butterflies. It is very dependent on the species and the terrain or climate range they have access to. As stated in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, the range of butterfly species has spread dramatically throughout Europe as a direct result of climate change. Correspondingly, some of the species in an attempt to find cooler conditions have gone locally extinct. Many more species, particularly in the south of Spain, are especially threatened. Other reasons for the declining numbers of the butterfly species population besides global warming include deforestation and habitat degradation, and the heavy use of insecticides and herbicides. According to National Geographic, grazing, mining, drilling, and farming combined constitute for more than half of all of the current deforestation. Particularly, habitat destruction is having a heavy impact on the butterfly species in North America. (Pskowski, 2019) Three main threats are contributing to the decrease of the butterfly population in North America: deforestation, increased use of herbicides, and decrease in milkweed availability. Two majorly used herbicides used in the agricultural industry, glyphosate and dicamba, are especially detrimental to the monarch butterfly population because they are toxic and harmful to milkweed. This is noteworthy because milkweed is the only food source of the monarch butterfly. According to the Royal Entomological Society, there has been a decline of milkweed species in the midwest by 58%. And from 1999 to 2010, there was an 81% decrease in monarch production in the midwest. These findings suggest that the loss of milkweed contributes majorly to the decline of monarch butterfly populations. However, even with the obvious risks insecticides pose to the butterfly populations, little has been done on how it will affect butterflies. The little research that has been done has found that neonicotinoids, a type of herbicide related to nicotine, kills monarch butterflies when inside of a laboratory environment. The effects of this herbicide on the predators of butterflies and other insects have also been found to be harmful. . All of this information is particularly alarming when taking into account how important butterflies are for supporting ecosystems. Butterflies and caterpillars are extremely important when it comes to plant and ecosystem survival. Caterpillars cycle nutrients and energy through ecosystems by chewing and digesting the leaves on plants. This makes important sources of sustenance available to the other living organisms. Butterflies are also an important primary food source for other predatory insect species. Because of their impact and presence on the ecosystems they’re within, the presence of butterflies are often used by scientists to indicate a healthy environment. An increase or decrease of a butterfly population can potentially give clues about the changing quality of their surrounding ecosystems. This evident importance of butterfly species brings the need for their conservation. Some ways that conservation has been tried to put in place is through nature preserves and protected areas, and the utilization of more sustainable agricultural practices. LilHorton (talk) 03:30, 18 May 2022 (UTC) LilHorton (talk) 03:30, 18 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Red_information_icon_with_gradient_background.svg Not done for now:Please revise your request based on the Manual of Style. In particular, you do not need to mention where the information is from or declare the same reference repeatedly without a title. You should also use a more neutral tone. Aaron Liu (talk) 07:20, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

UHhhhhhh I think I spot one tiny mistake with the photo
To be honest this is my first time doing edit or chatting on Wikipedia so Im not sure how to use it

BUT!

The "In culture" section YES!

The first image "Butterfly and daisy in Turkey" yes thats the part I wanna point out

Its actually a SPOONWING (Nemopteridae) instead of an Butterfly

So I hope you guys can edit it soon. Thank you <3

(by the way I dont have any photo of butterfly with daisy on hand right now so I cant send you guys any) LeMinhTa (talk) 17:04, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That's a good catch, it's definitely a Neuropteran. I removed the image, and there are plenty of others, so it probably doesn't need a replacement. KoA (talk) 17:14, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Omg I didn't though that someone actually saw my comment and reply :O
 * Thank you (for both saw my suggestion and edit on the mistake)
 * <3 LeMinhTa (talk) 17:16, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * My guess is Nemoptera sinuata, but on Commons, I put the image into the parent category (c:Category:Nemoptera). --Leyo 01:23, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

History
Origin of words 105.113.108.99 (talk) 19:36, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

 * Does the section Butterfly help you? SchreiberBike | ⌨ 00:48, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Butterfly


text:
Welland Canal

The Welland Canal is a ship canal in Ontario, Canada, and part of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes Waterway. The canal traverses the Niagara Peninsula between Port Weller on Lake Ontario, and Port Colborne on Lake Erie, and was erected because the Niagara River—the only natural waterway connecting the lakes—was unnavigable due to Niagara Falls. The Welland Canal enables ships to ascend and descend the Niagara Escarpment, and has followed four different routes since it opened.

The Welland Canal passes about 3,000 ships which transport about 40 e6t of cargo a year. It was a major factor in the growth of the city of Toronto, Ontario. The original canal and its successors allowed goods from Great Lakes ports such as Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago, as well as other heavily industrialized areas of the United States and Ontario, to be shipped to the Port of Montreal or to Quebec City, where they were usually reloaded onto ocean-going vessels for international shipping.

The Welland Canal in use today is the Fourth Welland Canal. The First Welland Canal was excavated 24 ft wide and 8 ft deep from 1824–1829 with forty wooden locks and commenced operation on November 30, 1829. The Second Welland Canal began excavation in 1841 and was wider at 36 ft and deeper at 9 ft with larger locks made of stone to replace the wooden locks used in the first canal. It was wider and deeper than the first to provide access for larger ships up to 150 ft long. The Second Welland Canal was completed in 1845 and remained in operation for nearly a century before closing permanently in 1935. The Third Welland Canal was designed to follow a straighter and thus shorter route than the first two and began construction in 1872 through 1887. It was 100 ft wide and 14 ft deep, with 26 masonry locks lined with wood to protect ships rubbing against the sides or bottom. The Third Canal locks were again larger being 45 ft wide and 270 ft long. The canal permitted access to larger ships with the Third Canal operating from 1887 until 1935 along with the still operating Second Welland Canal. The Fourth Welland Canal began construction in 1913 and was completed in 1932 with a delay due to World War I consuming vital manpower and materials. The Fourth Canal was once again an enlarged design to accommodate the increased size of ships with the main channel now 350 ft wide and 30 ft deep to permit two large ships to pass going in opposite directions. The current locks are 80 ft wide and 766 ft long. Three years after the Fourth Canal began operating in 1932 the government of Canada closed the Second and Third canals which required costly upkeep as they were deemed redundant. The Fourth Canal is equipped with just eight locks compared to the forty locks needed by the First Welland Canal. In comparison the Panama Canal opened in 1914 with locks 110 ft wide and 1,050 ft long.

The Welland Canal eclipsed other, narrower canals in the region, such as the Trent-Severn Waterway and, significantly, the Erie Canal (which linked the Atlantic and Lake Erie via New York City and Buffalo, New York) by providing a shorter, more direct connection from Port Colbourne on Lake Erie to Port Weller on Lake Ontario.

The southern, Lake Erie terminus of the canal is 99.5 m higher than the northern terminus on Lake Ontario. The canal includes eight 24.4 m ship locks. Seven of the locks (Locks 1–7, the 'Lift' locks) are 233.5 m long and raise (or lower) passing ships by between 43 and 49 ft each. The southernmost lock, (Lock 8 – the 'Guard' or 'Control' lock) is 349.9 m in length. The Garden City Skyway passes over the canal, restricting the maximum height of the masts of the ships allowed on this canal to 35.5 m.

All other highway or railroad crossings of the Welland Canal are either movable bridges (of the vertical lift or bascule bridge types) or tunnels. The maximum permissible length of a ship in this canal is 225.5 m. It takes ships an average of about eleven hours to traverse the entire length of the Welland Canal.

History
Before the digging of the Welland Canal, shipping traffic between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie used a portage road between Chippawa, Ontario, and Queenston, Ontario, which are both located on the Niagara River—above and below Niagara Falls, respectively.

First Welland Canal
The Welland Canal Company was incorporated by the Province of Upper Canada, in 1824, after a petition by nine "freeholders of the District of Niagara". One of the petitioners was William Hamilton Merritt, who was in part looking to provide a regular flow of water for his many water-powered industries along the Twelve Mile Creek in Thorold. The construction began at Allanburg, Ontario, on November 30, at a point now marked as such on the west end of Bridge No. 11 (formerly Highway 20). This canal opened for a trial run on November 30, 1829. After a short ceremony at Lock One, in Port Dalhousie, the schooner Anne & Jane (also called "Annie & Jane" in some texts ) made the first transit, upbound to Buffalo, New York, with Merritt as a passenger on her deck.

The first canal ran from Port Dalhousie, Ontario, on Lake Ontario south along Twelve Mile Creek to St. Catharines. From there it took a winding route up the Niagara Escarpment through Merritton, Ontario, to Thorold, where it continued south via Allanburg to Port Robinson, Ontario, on the Welland River. Ships went east (downstream) on the Welland River to Chippawa, at the south (upper) end of the old portage road, where they made a sharp right turn into the Niagara River, upstream towards Lake Erie. Originally, the section between Allanburg and Port Robinson was planned to be carried in a tunnel. However, the sandy soil in this part of Ontario made a tunnel infeasible, and a deep open-cut canal was dug instead.

A southern extension from Port Robinson opened in 1833, with the founding of Port Colborne. This extension followed the Welland River south to Welland (known then as the settlement of Aqueduct, for the wooden aqueduct that carried the canal over the Welland River at that point), and then split to run south to Port Colborne on Lake Erie. A feeder canal ran southwest from Welland to another point on Lake Erie, just west of Rock Point Provincial Park in Port Maitland. With the opening of the extension, the canal stretched 44 km between the two lakes, with 40 wooden locks. The minimum lock size was 33.5 by, with a minimum canal depth of 2.4 m.

Deterioration of the wood used in the 40 locks and the increasing size of ships led to demand for the Second Welland Canal, which used cut stone locks, within just a few years.

Second Welland Canal

In 1839 the government of Upper Canada approved the purchase of shares in the private canal company in response to the company's continuing financial problems in the face of the continental financial panic of 1837. The public buyout was completed in 1841, and work began to deepen the canal and to reduce the number of locks to 27, each 45.7 by. By 1846, a 2.7 m deep path was completed through the Welland Canal, and by 1848 that depth was extended the rest of the way to the Atlantic Ocean via the future path of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Competition came in 1854 with the opening of the Erie and Ontario Railway, running parallel to the original portage road. In 1859, the Welland Railway opened, parallel to the canal and with the same endpoints. But this railway was affiliated with the canal, and was actually used to help transfer cargoes from the lake ships, which were too large for the small canal locks, to the other end of the canal (The Trillium Railway owns the railway's remnants and Port Colborne Harbour Railway). Smaller ships called "canallers" also took a part of these loads. Due to this problem, it was soon apparent the canal would have to be enlarged again. On April 20, 1882 the canal was re-opened, increasing the depth to twelve feet throughout. The increased depth allowed for ships carrying up to 24,000 bushels of grain to navigate the canal whereas they previously they had only been able to carry about 18,000 bushels. The first trip from Oswego carried 700 tons of coal, compared to 500 tons which was possible before the increased depth.

Third Welland Canal

In 1887, a new shorter alignment was completed between St. Catharines and Port Dalhousie. One of the most interesting features of this third Welland Canal was the Merritton Tunnel, built in 1876 on the Grand Trunk Railway line that ran under the canal between Locks 18 and 19. Another nearby tunnel carried the canal over a sunken section of the St David's Road. The new route had a minimum depth of 4.3 m with 26 stone locks, each 82.3 m long by 13.7 m wide. Even so, the canal was still too small for many boats.

Fourth (current) Welland Canal
Construction on the current canal began in 1913, but work was put on hold from 1916 to 1919 due to a shortage of men and workers during World War I (1914–18) and was completed and officially opened on August 6, 1932. Dredging to the planned 25 foot depth was not completed until 1935. The route was again changed north of St. Catharines, now running directly north to Port Weller. In this configuration, there are eight locks, seven at the Niagara Escarpment and the eighth, a guard lock, at Port Colborne to adjust with the varying water depth in Lake Erie. The depth was now 7.6 m, with locks 233.5 m long by 24.4 m wide. This canal is officially known now as the Welland Ship Canal. The Welland Canal's first "hands-free" vacuum mooring was tested in Lock 7 prior to 2014. The installation of the updated systems for Locks 1 through 7 was originally set to be completed in 2017, but the project was not finished until early 2018 after unforeseen delays.

Welland By-Pass
In the 1950s, with the building of the present St. Lawrence Seaway, a standard depth of 8.2 m was adopted. The 13.4 km long Welland By-Pass, built between 1967 and 1972, opened for the 1973 shipping season, providing a new and shorter alignment between Port Robinson and Port Colborne and by-passing downtown Welland. All three crossings of the new alignment—one an aqueduct for the Welland River—were built as tunnels. Around the same time, the Thorold Tunnel was built at Thorold and several bridges were removed.

Proposed Fifth Welland Canal
These projects were to be tied into a proposed new canal, titled the Fifth Welland Canal, which was planned to by-pass most of the existing canal to the east and to cross the Niagara Escarpment in four twinned Panamax locks. While land for the project was expropriated and early designs initiated, the project never got past early planning or construction stages and has since been shelved.

The present Welland Ship Canal was originally designed to last until 2030, almost 100 years after it first opened, and 200 years since the first full shipping season of the original canal in 1830. Subsequent improvements to the canal infrastructure mean that it may last much longer before it needs to be replaced.

Accidents
On June 20, 1912, the government survey steamer La Canadienne lost control due to mechanical problems in the engine room and smashed into the upstream gates of Lock No. 22 of the 3rd Welland Canal, forcing them open by six inches. The resulting surge of water flooded downstream, cresting the upstream gates of Lock No. 21 where five boys were fishing. One boy ran to safety and one of the boys was saved by a government surveyor. But the remaining three were knocked into the water, drowning in the surge.

On August 25, 1974, the northbound ore-carrier Steelton struck Bridge 12 in Port Robinson. The bridge was rising and the impact knocked the bridge over, destroying it. No one was killed. The bridge master, Albert Beaver, and a watchman on the ship suffered minor injuries. The bridge has not been replaced and the inhabitants of Port Robinson have been served by a ferry for many years. The Welland Public Library archive has images of the aftermath.

On August 11, 2001, the lake freighter Windoc collided with Bridge 11 in Allanburg, closing vessel traffic on the Welland Canal for two days. The accident destroyed the ship's wheelhouse and funnel (chimney), ignited a large fire on board, and caused minor damage to the vertical-lift bridge. The accident and portions of its aftermath were captured on amateur video. The vessel was a total loss, but there were no reported injuries, and no pollution to the waterway. The damage to the bridge was focused on the centre of the vertical-lift span. It was repaired over a number of weeks and reopened to vehicular traffic on November 16, 2001. The Marine Investigation Report concluded, "it is likely that the [vertical-lift bridge] operator's performance was impaired while the bridge span was lowered onto the Windoc."

At around noon on Wednesday September 30, 2015, the Lena J cargo ship collided with Bridge 19 in Port Colborne, closing the bridge to all vehicle and pedestrian traffic until an assessment could be made on the condition of the bridge. The vessel had sustained damage to its bridge, but was still able to continue on its voyage to Burns Harbour, Indiana. Pictures of the damage sustained to the vessel and Bridge 19 were captured. On Friday October 1, 2015, Chris Lee, an acting direct engineer for the City of Port Colborne, said that the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation (SLSMC) will likely close the bridge to all vehicle traffic until the end of the year. However, pedestrians will be able to cross the bridge, and emergency services will be able to cross the bridge on a limited basis. On Tuesday October 6, 2015, the City of Port Colborne released a media statement, which stated that Bridge 19, "will remain closed to vehicular traffic until after the close of the shipping season in December. Repairs will begin in early January." Detour routes have been planned and mapped by the City of Port Colborne and the City of Welland in order to ease the flow of traffic over Bridge 19A.

The Welland Canal Fallen Workers Memorial at Lock 3 was unveiled on November 12, 2017. This commemorates the 137 workers who died while building the canal.

On July 11, 2020 two cargo ships, the Alanis and the Florence Spirit, struck each other while executing a passing manoeuvre near Port Robinson. According to the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation, no one was injured, no cargo was spilled, and an investigation would be undertaken. The final investigation report was released in August 2022.

Sabotage
The Welland Canal has been the focus of plots on a number of occasions throughout its existence. However, only two have ever been carried out. The earliest and potentially most devastating attack occurred on September 9, 1841, at Lock No. 37 (Allanburg) of the First Welland Canal (43.07796°N, -79.20991°W) (approximately 180 m north of today's Allanburg bridge), when an explosive charge destroyed one of the lock gates. However, a catastrophic flood was prevented when a guard gate located upstream of the lock closed into place preventing the upstream waters from careening down the route of the Canal and causing further damage and possible injury or loss of life. It was suspected that Benjamin Lett was responsible for the explosion.

On April 21, 1900, about 6:30 in the evening, a dynamite charge was set off against the hinges of Lock No. 24 of the Third Welland Canal (just to the east of Lock No. 7 of today's canal (43.12298°N, -79.19237°W)), doing minor damage. This time, the saboteurs were caught in nearby Thorold. John Walsh, John Nolan and the ringleader "Dynamite" Luke Dillon (a member of Clan-na-Gael) were tried at the Welland Courthouse and found guilty, receiving life sentences at Kingston Penitentiary. The "star witness" at the trial was a 16-year-old Thorold girl named Euphemia Constable, who caught a good look at the bombers before being knocked unconscious by the blast. While waiting to testify, the girl received death threats, but, they turned out to be a hoax. As for the prisoners, Nolan lost his sanity while incarcerated, John Walsh was eventually released while Luke Dillon remained in custody until July 12, 1914.

The First World War brought with it plots against the canal and the most notable of them came to be known as "The Von Papen Plot". In April 1916, a United States federal grand jury issued an indictment against Franz von Papen, Captain Hans Tauscher, Captain Karl Boy-Ed, Constantine Covani and Franz von Rintelen on charges of a plot to blow up the Welland Canal. However, Papen was at the time safely on German soil, having been expelled from the US several months previously for alleged earlier acts of espionage and attempted sabotage.

Von Papen remained under indictment on these charges until he became Chancellor of Germany in 1932, at which time the charges were dropped.

Shipping season
The canal regularly opens late March through December, with closure in the winter due to hazardous weather. On March 20, 2007, the record for the earliest season opening was broken, and matched the following year.

Current canal

 * Maximum vessel length: 225.5 m
 * Maximum vessel draft: 8.08 m
 * Maximum above-water clearance: 35.5 m
 * Elevation change between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie: 99.5 m
 * Average transit time between the lakes: 11 hours
 * Length of canal: 43.5 km

List of locks and crossings
Locks and crossings are numbered from north to south.

Profile
The following illustration depicts the profile of the Welland Canal. The horizontal axis is the length of the canal. The vertical axis is the elevation of the canal segments above mean sea level.

Old alignment prior to Welland By-Pass relocation
† If assigned by the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority. The original bridges across the fourth canal were numbered in order. Numbering was not changed as bridges were removed.

title: Welland Canal


text:
Matamata

Matamata is a town in Waikato, New Zealand. It is located near the base of the Kaimai Ranges, and is a thriving farming area known for Thoroughbred horse breeding and training pursuits. It is part of the Matamata-Piako District, which takes in the surrounding rural areas, as well as Morrinsville and Te Aroha. State Highway 27 and the Kinleith Branch railway run through the town. The town has a population of as of

A nearby farm was the location for the Hobbiton Movie Set in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings. The New Zealand government decided to leave the Hobbit holes built on location as tourist attractions. During the period between the filming of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey they had no furniture or props, but could be entered with vistas of the farm viewed from inside them. A "Welcome to Hobbiton" sign has been placed on the main road. In 2011, parts of Hobbiton began to close in preparation for the three new movies based on the first Tolkien novel, The Hobbit.

Demographics
Matamata covers 9.59 km2 and had an estimated population of as of  with a population density of  people per km2.

Before the 2023 census, the town had a smaller boundary, covering 6.16 km2. Using that boundary, Matamata had a population of 7,806 at the 2018 New Zealand census, an increase of 720 people (10.2%) since the 2013 census, and an increase of 1,509 people (24.0%) since the 2006 census. There were 3,111 households, comprising 3,717 males and 4,089 females, giving a sex ratio of 0.91 males per female, with 1,374 people (17.6%) aged under 15 years, 1,314 (16.8%) aged 15 to 29, 2,934 (37.6%) aged 30 to 64, and 2,187 (28.0%) aged 65 or older.

Ethnicities were 84.5% European/Pākehā, 15.7% Māori, 1.7% Pacific peoples, 5.9% Asian, and 1.4% other ethnicities. People may identify with more than one ethnicity.

The percentage of people born overseas was 16.6, compared with 27.1% nationally.

Although some people chose not to answer the census's question about religious affiliation, 49.2% had no religion, 37.2% were Christian, 1.2% had Māori religious beliefs, 1.0% were Hindu, 0.2% were Muslim, 0.7% were Buddhist and 1.8% had other religions.

Of those at least 15 years old, 678 (10.5%) people had a bachelor's or higher degree, and 1,848 (28.7%) people had no formal qualifications. 774 people (12.0%) earned over $70,000 compared to 17.2% nationally. The employment status of those at least 15 was that 2,763 (43.0%) people were employed full-time, 849 (13.2%) were part-time, and 198 (3.1%) were unemployed.

History
In the early nineteenth century, the area including and surrounding the present-day Matamata township was part of the territory of the Ngāti Hinerangi iwi and Ngāti Hauā. The Matamata pā itself was actually located near the present-day settlement of Waharoa, approximately 6 km to the north.

The first European thought to have visited the Matamata area was the trader Phillip Tapsell in about 1830. In 1833 the Reverend Alfred Nesbit Brown visited the area and in 1835 opened a mission near Matamata Pa, but this closed the following year when intertribal warfare broke out. In 1865 Josiah Firth negotiated with Ngāti Hauā leader Wiremu Tamihana and leased a large area of land, including the future site of the town which he named after the pā. Firth constructed a dray road to Cambridge and cleared the Waihou River so that it was navigable by his (small) boats.

Peria, on the outskirts of Matamata, was the scene of the Kīngitanga meeting of 1863.

Firth's estate later failed and by 1904 had been wholly obtained by the Crown and was subdivided into dairy farm units to take advantage of the new technology of refrigeration. It became a dependent Town District in 1917, an independent Town District in 1919 and was constituted a borough in 1935. With the re-organisation of territorial authorities in New Zealand in 1989, Matamata became part of the Matamata-Piako District.

Railway station
Matamata was a station on the Kinleith Branch, from Monday 8 March 1886. It was built by Mr D Fallon for the Thames Valley & Rotorua Railway Co. New Zealand Railways Department took over the line on 1 April 1886. Initially 40 minutes north of the temporary terminus at Oxford (Tirau) and about an hour from Morrinsville. For a while Matamata seems to have become a flag station, though it did have cattle yards and a 60 ft by 30 ft a goods shed. By 1886 it also had a coal shed able to hold 50 tons, a stationmaster's house, 2 cottages, urinals and a 20000 impgal brick water tank supplied by a 60 ft diameter windpump from a well, which was deepened that year. By 1896 Matamata had gained a 4th class station, platform, cart approach and a passing loop for 32 wagons. A telephone came in 1912 and a verandah in 1914. Authority to shift the verandah at Avondale station to Matamata when new station is built, and re-erect, amount £35. House for stationmaster. Platform extended to 175 feet. To extend it to 300 feet will cost £90. Authority for £60 for platform extension. 1919 extension of the verandah have been authorised. In 1919 part of the old Drury station building was erected as a luggage room at Matamata. Improvements are to be put in hand, estimated cost £6,000. Lighting of station and houses. 1927 Additional seating accommodation on platform. 1953	Approval for bicycle shed, estimated cost £90. There was a Post Office at the station until 1911. It had two members of staff from 1913. Matamata was included in the annual returns of railway traffic. For example, in 1924 it sold 26,367 tickets and exported 26,084 sheep and pigs. In 1950 8,868 tickets were sold and it transported 42,322 sheep and pigs. A petrol engined shunter was used in the station yard from 1936. Several Drewry 0-4-0 shunters were introduced in 1936.

The station building was replaced on Monday 17 May 1965 by a new £23,500 steel portal frame and block-work building, with a new platform and approach road from Hetana Street, built by Way & Works Branch staff. The old station was sold for removal by July 1967.

Matamata closed to passengers on 12 November 1968, but reopened to serve the Geyserland Express from 9 December 1991 until 7 October 2001.

Since closure the station has been the Railside by the Green community centre since 2002, though it is fenced off from the platform. Occasional excursions still use the platform.

Sports
Matamata is home to the Matamata Swifts soccer team, who compete in the Lotto Sport Italia NRFL Division 1A.

Educational institutions
Matamata College is the town's co-educational state secondary school, with a roll of  as of.

Matamata Intermediate is the town's co-educational state intermediate school, with a roll of.

There are two co-educational state primary schools: Matamata Primary School, with a roll of ; and Firth School, with a roll of. The motto for Firth School is E Tipu E Rea, which translates as Grow and Flourish.

Matamata Christian School is a co-educational state integrated Christian primary school, with a roll of.

St Joseph's Catholic School is a co-educational state integrated Catholic school, with a roll of.

Notable people

 * Kristine Crabb
 * Shane Dye
 * Claudia Pond Eyley
 * Casey Kopua
 * Michael Moroney
 * Dave O'Sullivan
 * Paul O'Sullivan
 * Lance O'Sullivan
 * Tim Mikkelson
 * Hon Mike Rann CNZM
 * Dame Patsy Reddy
 * Tom Sainsbury
 * Matthew Stanley
 * Dame Catherine Tizard
 * Kyle Wealleans

Nearby towns
Smaller towns nearby are:
 * Hinuera
 * Peria
 * Turanga-O-Moana
 * Te Poi
 * Waharoa
 * Walton, New Zealand
 * Wardville, New Zealand

title: Matamata


text: User:Hephaestos

title: User:Hephaestos


text:
Robert Moses

Robert Moses (December 18, 1888 – July 29, 1981) was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York metropolitan area during the early to mid-20th century. Moses is regarded as one of the most powerful and influential people in the history of New York City and New York State. The grand scale of his infrastructure projects and his philosophy of urban development influenced a generation of engineers, architects, and urban planners across the United States.

Never elected to any office, Moses held various positions throughout his more-than-40-year career. He held as many as 12 titles at once, including New York City Parks Commissioner and chairman of the Long Island State Park Commission. By working closely with New York governor Al Smith early in his career, he became expert in writing laws and navigating and manipulating the workings of state government. He created and led numerous semi-autonomous public authorities, through which he controlled millions of dollars in revenue and directly issued bonds to fund new ventures with little outside input or oversight.

Moses's projects transformed the New York area and revolutionized the way cities in the U.S. were designed and built. As Long Island State Park Commissioner, Moses oversaw the construction of Jones Beach State Park, the most-visited public beach in the United States, and was the primary architect of the New York State Parkway System. As head of the Triborough Bridge Authority, Moses had near-complete control over bridges and tunnels in New York City as well as the tolls collected from them; he built, among others, the Triborough Bridge, the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel, and the Throgs Neck Bridge, as well as several major highways. These roadways and bridges, alongside urban renewal efforts that destroyed huge swaths of tenement housing and replaced them with large public housing projects, transformed the physical fabric of New York and inspired other cities to undertake similar development endeavors.

Moses's reputation declined after the publication of Robert Caro's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography The Power Broker (1974), which cast doubt on the purported benefits of many of Moses's projects and further cast Moses as racist. In large part because of The Power Broker, Moses is today considered a controversial figure in the history of New York City as well as New York State.

Early life and education
Moses was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 18, 1888, to parents of German Jewish descent, Bella (Silverman) and Emanuel Moses. He spent the first nine years of his life living at 83 Dwight Street in New Haven, two blocks from Yale University. In 1897, the Moses family moved to New York City, where they lived on East 46th Street off Fifth Avenue. Moses's father was a successful department store owner and real estate speculator in New Haven. In order for the family to move to New York City, he sold his real estate holdings and store, then retired. Moses's mother was active in the settlement movement, with her own love of building. Robert Moses and his brother Paul attended several schools for their elementary and secondary education, including the Ethical Culture School, the Dwight School and the Mohegan Lake School, a military academy near Peekskill.

After graduating from Yale College (B.A., 1909) and Wadham College, Oxford (B.A., Jurisprudence, 1911; M.A., 1913), and earning a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 1914, Moses became attracted to New York City reform politics.

Career
A committed idealist, Moses developed several plans to rid New York of patronage hiring practices, including authoring a 1919 proposal to reorganize the New York state government, which was ultimately not adopted but drew the attention of Belle Moskowitz, a friend and trusted advisor to Governor Al Smith. When the state Secretary of State's position became appointive rather than elective, Smith named Moses. He served from 1927 to 1929.

Moses rose to power with Smith, who was elected as governor in 1918, and then again in 1922. With Smith's support, Moses set in motion a sweeping consolidation of the New York State government. During that period Moses began his first foray into large-scale public work initiatives, while drawing on Smith's political power to enact legislation. This helped create the new Long Island State Park Commission and the State Council of Parks. In 1924, Governor Smith appointed Moses chairman of the State Council of Parks and president of the Long Island State Park Commission. This centralization allowed Smith to run a government later used as a model for Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal federal government. Moses also received numerous commissions that he carried out efficiently, such as the development of Jones Beach State Park. Displaying a strong command of law as well as matters of engineering, Moses became known for his skill in drafting legislation, and was called "the best bill drafter in Albany". At a time when the public was accustomed to Tammany Hall corruption and incompetence, Moses was seen as a savior of government.

Shortly after President Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933, the federal government found itself with millions of New Deal dollars to spend, yet states and cities had few projects ready. Moses was one of the few local officials who had projects shovel ready. For that reason, New York City was able to obtain significant Works Progress Administration (WPA), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), and other Depression-era funding. One of his most influential and longest-lasting positions was that of Parks Commissioner of New York City, a role he served from January 18, 1934, to May 23, 1960.

Offices held
The many offices and professional titles that Moses held gave him unusually broad power to shape urban development in the New York metropolitan region. These include, according to the New York Preservation Archive Project:
 * Long Island State Park Commission (President, 1924–1963)
 * New York State Council of Parks (Chairman, 1924–1963)
 * New York Secretary of State (1927–1929)
 * Bethpage State Park Authority (President, 1933–1963)
 * Emergency Public Works Commission (Chairman, 1933–1934)
 * Jones Beach Parkway Authority (President, 1933–1963)
 * New York City Department of Parks (Commissioner, 1934–1960)
 * Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (Chairman, 1934–1968)
 * New York City Planning Commission (Commissioner, 1942–1960)
 * New York State Power Authority (Chairman, 1954–1962)
 * New York's World Fair (President, 1960–1966)
 * Office of the Governor of New York (Special Advisor on Housing, 1974–1975)

Influence
During the 1920s, Moses sparred with Franklin D. Roosevelt, then head of the Taconic State Park Commission, who favored the prompt construction of a parkway through the Hudson Valley. Moses succeeded in diverting funds to his Long Island parkway projects (the Northern State Parkway, the Southern State Parkway and the Wantagh State Parkway), although the Taconic State Parkway was later completed as well. Moses helped build Long Island's Meadowbrook State Parkway. It was the first fully divided limited access highway in the world.

Moses was a highly influential figure in the initiation of many of the reforms that restructured New York state's government during the 1920s. A 'Reconstruction Commission' headed by Moses produced a highly influential report that provided recommendations that would largely be adopted, including the consolidation of 187 existing agencies under 18 departments, a new executive budget system, and the four-year term limit for the governorship.

WPA swimming pools
During the Depression, Moses, along with Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, was especially interested in creating new pools and other bathing facilities, such as those in Jacob Riis Park, Jones Beach, and Orchard Beach. He devised a list of 23 pools around the city. The pools would be built using funds from the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a federal agency created as part of the New Deal to combat the Depression's negative effects.

Eleven of these pools were to be designed concurrently and open in 1936. These comprised ten pools at Astoria Park, Betsy Head Park, Crotona Park, Hamilton Fish Park, Highbridge Park, Thomas Jefferson Park, McCarren Park, Red Hook Park, Jackie Robinson Park, and Sunset Park, as well as a standalone facility at Tompkinsville Pool. Moses, along with architects Aymar Embury II and Gilmore David Clarke, created a common design for these proposed aquatic centers. Each location was to have distinct pools for diving, swimming, and wading; bleachers and viewing areas; and bathhouses with locker rooms that could be used as gymnasiums. The pools were to have several common features, such as a minimum 55 yd length, underwater lighting, heating, filtration, and low-cost construction materials. To fit the requirement for cheap materials, each building would be built using elements of the Streamline Moderne and Classical architectural styles. The buildings would also be near "comfort stations", additional playgrounds, and spruced-up landscapes.

Construction for some of the 11 pools began in October 1934. By mid-1936, ten of the eleven WPA-funded pools were completed and were being opened at a rate of one per week. Combined, the facilities could accommodate 66,000 swimmers. The eleven WPA pools were considered for New York City landmark status in 1990. Ten of the pools were designated as New York City landmarks in 2007 and 2008.

Moses allegedly fought to keep African American swimmers out of his pools and beaches. One subordinate remembers Moses saying the pools should be kept a few degrees colder, allegedly because Moses believed African Americans did not like cold water.

Triborough Bridge
Although Moses had power over the construction of all New York City Housing Authority public housing projects and headed many other entities, it was his chairmanship of the Triborough Bridge Authority that gave him the most power.

The Triborough Bridge (later officially renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge) opened in 1936, connecting the Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens via three separate spans. Language in its Authority's bond contracts and multi-year Commissioner appointments made it largely impervious to pressure from mayors and governors. While New York City and New York State were perpetually strapped for money, the bridge's toll revenues amounted to tens of millions of dollars a year. The Authority was thus able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars by selling bonds, a method also used by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to fund large public construction projects. Toll revenues rose quickly as traffic on the bridges exceeded all projections. Rather than pay off the bonds, Moses used the revenue to build other toll projects, a cycle that would feed on itself.

Brooklyn–Battery link
In the late 1930s a municipal controversy raged over whether an additional vehicular link between Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan should be built as a bridge or a tunnel. Bridges can be wider and cheaper to build, but taller and longer bridges use more ramp space at landfall than tunnels do. A "Brooklyn Battery Bridge" would have decimated Battery Park and physically encroached on the financial district, and for this reason, the bridge was opposed by the Regional Plan Association, historical preservationists, Wall Street financial interests, property owners, various high society people, construction unions, the Manhattan borough president, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and governor Herbert H. Lehman. Despite this, Moses favored a bridge, which could both carry more automobile traffic and serve as a higher visibility monument than a tunnel. LaGuardia and Lehman as usual had little money to spend, in part due to the Great Depression, while the federal government was running low on funds after recently spending $105 million ($1.8 billion in 2016) on the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and other City projects and refused to provide any additional funds to New York. Awash in funds from Triborough Bridge tolls, Moses deemed that money could only be spent on a bridge. He also clashed with the chief engineer of the project, Ole Singstad, who preferred a tunnel instead of a bridge.

Only a lack of a key federal approval thwarted the bridge project. President Roosevelt ordered the War Department to assert that bombing a bridge in that location would block East River access to the Brooklyn Navy Yard upstream. Thwarted, Moses dismantled the New York Aquarium on Castle Clinton and moved it to Coney Island in Brooklyn, where it grew much bigger. This was in apparent retaliation, based on specious claims that the proposed tunnel would undermine Castle Clinton's foundation. He also attempted to raze Castle Clinton itself, the historic fort surviving only after being transferred to the federal government. Moses now had no other option for a trans-river crossing than to build a tunnel. He commissioned the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel (now officially the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel), a tunnel connecting Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan. A 1941 publication from the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority claimed that the government had forced them to build a tunnel at "twice the cost, twice the operating fees, twice the difficulty to engineer, and half the traffic," although engineering studies did not support these conclusions, and a tunnel may have held many of the advantages Moses publicly tried to attach to the bridge option.

This had not been the first time Moses pressed for a bridge over a tunnel. He had tried to upstage the Tunnel Authority when the Queens-Midtown Tunnel was being planned. He had raised the same arguments, which failed due to their lack of political support.

Post-war influence of urban development and projects
Moses's power increased after World War II after Mayor LaGuardia retired and a series of successors consented to almost all of his proposals. Named city "construction coordinator" in 1946 by Mayor William O'Dwyer, Moses became New York City's de facto representative in Washington. Moses was also given powers over public housing that had eluded him under LaGuardia. When O'Dwyer was forced to resign in disgrace and was succeeded by Vincent R. Impellitteri, Moses was able to assume even greater behind-the-scenes control over infrastructure projects. One of Moses's first steps after Impellitteri took office was halting the creation of a citywide Comprehensive Zoning Plan underway since 1938 that would have curtailed his nearly unlimited power to build within the city and removed the Zoning Commissioner from power in the process. Moses was also empowered as the sole authority to negotiate in Washington for New York City projects. By 1959, he had overseen construction of 28,000 apartment units on hundreds of acres of land. In clearing the land for high-rises in accordance with the towers in the park concept, which at that time was seen as innovative and beneficial by leaving more grassy areas between high-rises, Moses sometimes destroyed almost as many housing units as he built.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, Robert Moses was responsible for the construction of the Triborough, Marine Parkway, Throgs Neck, Bronx-Whitestone, Henry Hudson, and Verrazzano-Narrows Bridges. His other projects included the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and Staten Island Expressway (together constituting most of Interstate 278); the Cross-Bronx Expressway; many New York State parkways; and other highways. Federal interest had shifted from parkway to freeway systems, and the new roads mostly conformed to the new vision, lacking the landscaping or the commercial traffic restrictions of the pre-war highways. He was the mover behind Shea Stadium and Lincoln Center, and contributed to the United Nations headquarters. On November 25, 1950, Governor Thomas E. Dewey appointed Moses along with former Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson and former Justice Charles C. Lockwood as a member of the Temporary Long Island Railroad Commission, installed after the Richmond Hill train crash on November 22, 1950, that claimed 79 lives. The Commission recommended the state purchase and operation by non-profit public authority of the railway service.

Moses had influence outside the New York area as well. Public officials in many smaller American cities hired him to design freeway networks in the 1940s and early 1950s. For example, Portland, Oregon hired Moses in 1943; his plan included a loop around the city center, with spurs running through neighborhoods. Of this plan, only I-405, its links with I-5, and the Fremont Bridge were built.

Moses himself did not know how to drive an automobile. Moses's highways in the first half of the 20th century were parkways—curving, landscaped "ribbon parks" that were intended to be pleasures to travel as well as "lungs for the city"—though the Post–World War II economic expansion and notion of the automotive city brought freeways, most notably in the form of the vast, federally funded Interstate Highway System network.

Brooklyn Dodgers
When Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley sought to replace the outdated and dilapidated Ebbets Field, he proposed building a new stadium near the Long Island Rail Road on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush Avenue (next to the present-day Barclays Center, home of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets). O'Malley urged Moses to help him secure the property through eminent domain, but he refused, having already decided to build a parking garage on the site. Moreover, O'Malley's proposal — to have the city acquire the property for several times as much as he had originally said he was willing to pay — was rejected by both pro- and anti-Moses officials, newspapers, and the public as an unacceptable government subsidy of a private business enterprise.

Moses envisioned New York's newest stadium being built in Queens' Flushing Meadows on the former (and as it turned out, future) site of the World's Fair, where it would eventually host all three of the city's major league teams of the day. O'Malley vehemently opposed this plan, citing the team's Brooklyn identity. Moses refused to budge, and after the 1957 season the Dodgers left for Los Angeles and the New York Giants left for San Francisco. Moses was later able to build the 55,000-seat multi-purpose Shea Stadium on the site; construction ran from October 1961 to its delayed completion in April 1964. The stadium attracted an expansion franchise: the New York Mets, who played at Shea until 2008, when the stadium was demolished and replaced with Citi Field. The NFL's New York Jets also played its home games at Shea from 1964 until 1983, after which the team moved its home games to the Meadowlands Sports Complex in New Jersey.

End of the Moses era
Moses's reputation began to fade during the 1960s. Around this time, Moses's political acumen began to fail him, as he unwisely picked several controversial political battles he could not possibly win. For example, his campaign against the free Shakespeare in the Park program received much negative publicity, and his effort to destroy a shaded playground in Central Park to make way for a parking lot for the expensive Tavern-on-the-Green restaurant earned him many enemies among the middle-class voters of the Upper West Side.

The opposition reached a climax over the demolition of Pennsylvania Station, which many attributed to the "development scheme" mentality cultivated by Moses even though it was the impoverished Pennsylvania Railroad that was actually responsible for the demolition. This casual destruction of one of New York's greatest architectural landmarks helped prompt many city residents to turn against Moses's plans to build a Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have gone through Greenwich Village and what is now SoHo. This plan and the Mid-Manhattan Expressway both failed politically. One of his most vocal critics during this time was the urban activist Jane Jacobs, whose book The Death and Life of Great American Cities was instrumental in turning opinion against Moses's plans; the city government rejected the expressway in 1964.

Moses's power was further eroded by his association with the 1964 New York World's Fair. His projections for attendance of 70 million people for this event proved wildly optimistic, and generous contracts for fair executives and contractors made matters worse economically. Moses's repeated and forceful public denials of the fair's considerable financial difficulties in the face of evidence to the contrary eventually provoked press and governmental investigations, which found accounting irregularities. In his organization of the fair, Moses's reputation was now undermined by the same personal character traits that had worked in his favor in the past: disdain for the opinions of others and high-handed attempts to get his way in moments of conflict by turning to the press. The fact that the fair was not sanctioned by the Bureau of International Expositions (BIE), the worldwide body supervising such events, would be devastating to the success of the event. Moses refused to accept BIE requirements, including a restriction against charging ground rents to exhibitors, and the BIE in turn instructed its member nations not to participate. The United States had already staged the sanctioned Century 21 Exposition in Seattle in 1962. According to the rules of the organization, no one nation could host more than one fair in a decade. The major European democracies, as well as Canada, Australia, and the Soviet Union, were all BIE members and they declined to participate, instead reserving their efforts for Expo 67 in Montreal.

After the World's Fair debacle, New York City mayor John Lindsay, along with Governor Nelson Rockefeller, sought to direct toll revenues from the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority's (TBTA) bridges and tunnels to cover deficits in the city's then financially ailing agencies, including the subway system. Moses opposed this idea and fought to prevent it. Lindsay then removed Moses from his post as the city's chief advocate for federal highway money in Washington.

The legislature's vote to fold the TBTA into the newly created Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) could have led to a lawsuit by the TBTA bondholders. Since the bond contracts were written into state law, it was unconstitutional to impair existing contractual obligations, as the bondholders had the right of approval over such actions. The largest holder of TBTA bonds, and thus agent for all the others, was the Chase Manhattan Bank, headed then by David Rockefeller, the governor's brother. No suit was filed. Moses could have directed TBTA to go to court against the action, but having been promised a role in the merged authority, Moses declined to challenge the merger. On March 1, 1968, the TBTA was folded into the MTA and Moses gave up his post as chairman of the TBTA. He eventually became a consultant to the MTA, but its new chairman and the governor froze him out—the promised role did not materialize, and for all practical purposes Moses was out of power.

Moses had thought he had convinced Nelson Rockefeller of the need for one last great bridge project, a span crossing Long Island Sound from Rye to Oyster Bay. Rockefeller did not press for the project in the late 1960s through 1970, fearing public backlash among suburban Republicans would hinder his re-election prospects. A 1972 study found the bridge was fiscally prudent and could be environmentally manageable (according to the comparatively low environmental impact parameters of that period), but the anti-development sentiment was now insurmountable and in 1973 Rockefeller canceled plans for the bridge.

The Power Broker
Moses's image suffered a further blow in 1974 with the publication of The Power Broker, a Pulitzer Prize–winning biography by Robert A. Caro. Caro's 1,200-page opus (edited down from 2,000 or so pages) showed Moses generally in a negative light; essayist Phillip Lopate writes that "Moses's satanic reputation with the public can be traced, in the main, to ... Caro's magnificent biography". For example, Caro describes Moses's lack of sensitivity in the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway, and how he disfavored public transit. Much of Moses's reputation is attributable to Caro, whose book won both the Pulitzer Prize in Biography in 1975 and the Francis Parkman Prize (which is awarded by the Society of American Historians), and was named one of the 100 greatest non-fiction books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library. Upon its publication, Moses denounced the biography in a 23-page statement, to which Caro replied to defend his work's integrity.

Caro's depiction of Moses's life gives him full credit for his early achievements, showing, for example, how he conceived and created Jones Beach and the New York State Park system, but also shows how Moses's desire for power came to be more important to him than his earlier dreams. Moses is blamed for having destroyed more than a score of neighborhoods by building 13 expressways across New York City and by building large urban renewal projects with little regard for the urban fabric or for human scale. Yet the author is more neutral in his central premise: the city would have developed much differently without Moses. Other U.S. cities were doing the same thing as New York in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s; Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle, for instance, each built highways straight through their downtown areas just as Moses wished to do in New York. The New York City architectural intelligentsia of the 1940s and 1950s, who largely believed in such proponents of the automobile as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, had supported Moses. Many other cities, like Newark, Chicago, and St. Louis, also built massive, unattractive public housing projects. Caro also points out that Moses demonstrated racist tendencies. These allegedly included opposing black World War II veterans to move into a residential complex specifically designed for these veterans, and purportedly trying to make swimming pool water cold in order to drive away potential African American residents in white neighborhoods.

People had come to see Moses as a bully who disregarded public input, but until the publication of Caro's book, they had not known many details of his private life—for instance, that his older brother Paul had spent much of his life in poverty. Moses was said to have blocked Paul, an engineer, from being hired for any public service jobs including major infrastructure projects that Moses himself had spearheaded. Paul, whom Caro interviewed shortly before the former's death, claimed Robert had exerted undue influence on their mother to change her will in Robert's favor shortly before her death. Caro notes that Paul was on bad terms with their mother over a long period and she may have changed the will of her own accord, and implies that Robert's subsequent treatment of Paul may have been legally justifiable but was morally questionable.

Death

During the last years of his life, Moses concentrated on his lifelong love of swimming and was an active member of the Colonie Hill Health Club.

Moses died of heart disease on July 29, 1981, at the age of 92 at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip, New York.

Moses was of Jewish origin and raised in a secularist manner inspired by the Ethical Culture movement of the late 19th century. He was a convert to Christianity and was interred in a crypt in an outdoor community mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City following services at St. Peter's by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Bay Shore, New York.

Legacy
Various locations and roadways in New York State bear Moses's name. These include two state parks, Robert Moses State Park – Thousand Islands in Massena, New York and Robert Moses State Park – Long Island, the Robert Moses Causeway on Long Island, and the Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant in Lewiston, New York. The Niagara Scenic Parkway in Niagara Falls, New York was originally named the Robert Moses State Parkway in his honor; its name was changed in 2016. The Moses-Saunders Power Dam in Massena, New York also bears his name. Moses also has a school named after him in North Babylon, New York on Long Island; there is also a Robert Moses Playground in New York City. There are other signs of the surviving appreciation held for him by some circles of the public. A statue of Moses was erected next to the Village Hall in his long-time hometown, Babylon Village, New York.

During his tenure as chief of the state park system, the state's inventory of parks grew to nearly 2600000 acre. By the time he left office, he had built 658 playgrounds in New York City alone, plus 416 mi of parkways and 13 bridges. The proportion of public benefit corporations is greater in New York than in any other U.S. state, however, making them the prime mode of infrastructure building and maintenance in New York and accounting for 90% of the state's debt.

Criticism and The Power Broker
Moses's life was most famously characterized in Robert Caro's 1974 award-winning biography The Power Broker.

The book highlighted his practice of starting large projects well beyond any funding approved by the New York State legislature, with the knowledge that it would eventually have to pay for the rest to avoid looking as having failed to review the project properly (a tactic known as ). He was also characterized as using his political power to benefit cronies, including a case in which he secretly shifted the planned route of the Northern State Parkway large distances to avoid impinging on the estates of the rich, but told owners of the family farms who lost land and sometimes their livelihood that it was based on "engineering considerations." The book also charged that Moses libeled other officials who opposed him, attempting to have them removed from office by calling some of them communists during the Red Scare. The biography further notes that Moses fought against schools and other public needs in favor of his preference for parks.

Moses's critics charge that he preferred automobiles over people. They point out that he displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in New York City and destroyed traditional neighborhoods by building multiple expressways through them. The projects contributed to the ruin of the South Bronx and the amusement parks of Coney Island, caused the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants Major League baseball teams to relocate to Los Angeles and San Francisco respectively, and precipitated the decline of public transport from disinvestment and neglect. His building of expressways also hindered the proposed expansion of the New York City Subway from the 1930s to well into the 1960s because the parkways and expressways that were built replaced, at least to some extent, the planned subway lines. The 1968 Program for Action (which was never completed) was hoped to counter that. Other critics charge that he precluded the use of public transit, which would have allowed non-car-owners to enjoy the elaborate recreation facilities he built.

Racism
Caro's The Power Broker also accused Moses of building low bridges across his parkways in order to make them inaccessible to public transit buses, thereby restricting "the use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families" who did not own cars. Caro also wrote that Moses attempted to discourage Black people in particular from visiting Jones Beach, the centerpiece of the Long Island state park system, by such measures as making it difficult for Black groups to get permits to park buses, even if they came anyway (by other roads), and assigning Black lifeguards to "distant, less developed beaches" instead. While the exclusion of commercial vehicles and the use of low bridges where appropriate were standard on earlier parkways, where they had been instituted for aesthetic reasons, Moses appears to have made greater use of low bridges, which his aide Sidney Shapiro said was done to make it more difficult for future legislators to allow commercial vehicles. Woolgar and Cooper refer to the claim about bridges as an "urban legend".

Moses vocally opposed allowing Black war veterans to move into Stuyvesant Town, a Manhattan residential development complex created to house World War II veterans. In response to the biography, Moses defended his forced displacement of poor and minority communities as an inevitable part of urban revitalization: "I raise my stein to the builder who can remove ghettos without moving people as I hail the chef who can make omelets without breaking eggs."

Additionally, there were allegations that Moses selectively chose locations for recreational facilities based on the racial compositions of neighborhood, such as when he selected sites for eleven pools that opened in 1936. According to one author, Moses purposely placed some pools in neighborhoods with mainly white populations to deter African Americans from using them, and other pools intended for African Americans, such as the one in Colonial Park, now Jackie Robinson Park, were placed in inconvenient locations. Another author wrote that of 255 playgrounds built in the 1930s under Moses's tenure, two were in largely Black neighborhoods. Caro wrote that close associates of Moses had claimed they could keep African Americans from using the Thomas Jefferson Pool, in then-predominantly-white East Harlem, by making the water too cold. Nonetheless, no other source has corroborated the claim that heaters in any particular pool were deactivated or not included in the pool's design.

In addition, Moses took a favorable view on the British Empire and a racism much broader than solely the African American Community. He had spoken of British Empire as useful in stemming the "rise of the lesser breeds without the law".

Reappraisal
Some scholars have attempted to rehabilitate Moses's reputation by contrasting the scale of works with the high cost and the slow speed of public works in the decades following his era. The peak of Moses's construction occurred during the economic duress of the Great Depression, and despite the era's woes, Moses's projects were completed in a timely fashion and have been reliable public works since then, which compares favorably to the delays that New York City officials have had in redeveloping the Ground Zero site of the former World Trade Center or to the delays and technical problems surrounding the Second Avenue Subway and Boston's Big Dig project.

Three major exhibits in 2007 prompted a reconsideration of his image among some intellectuals, as they acknowledged the magnitude of his achievements. According to the Columbia University architectural historian Hilary Ballon and colleagues, Moses deserves a better reputation. They argue that his legacy is more relevant than ever and that people take the parks, playgrounds, and housing that Moses built, now generally binding forces in those areas, for granted even if the old-style New York neighborhood was of no interest to Moses himself. Moreover, were it not for Moses's public infrastructure and his resolve to carve out more space, New York might not have been able to recover from the blight and flight of the 1970s and the 1980s to become today's economic magnet.

"Every generation writes its own history," said Kenneth T. Jackson, a historian of New York City to the New York Times in 2007. "It could be that The Power Broker was a reflection of its time: New York was in trouble and had been in decline for 15 years. Now, for a whole host of reasons, New York is entering a new time, a time of optimism, growth and revival that hasn't been seen in half a century. And that causes us to look at our infrastructure," said Jackson. "A lot of big projects are on the table again, and it kind of suggests a Moses era without Moses," he added. Politicians are also reconsidering the Moses legacy; in a 2006 speech to the Regional Plan Association on downstate transportation needs, New York Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer stated a biography of Moses written today might be called At Least He Got It Built: "That's what we need today. A real commitment to get things done."

In popular culture

 * Moses is the subject of a satirical song by John Forster entitled "The Ballad of Robert Moses", included on his 1997 album Helium.
 * In season 3, episode 2 of the television series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, "Kimmy's Roommate Lemonades", Kimmy is shown considering attendance at several New York City colleges with comedic names based on the city's culture and history. One was originally called "Robert Moses College for Whites", and its sign has been altered by crossing out "Whites" and replacing it with the word "Everyone".
 * Moses is the subject of a critical song by NYHC band Sick of It All entitled "Robert Moses was a racist", included on their 2018 album Wake the sleeping dragon!.
 * The band Bob Moses is named after Robert Moses.
 * A fictionalized version of Moses is the main villain of The Unsleeping City, the third season of the web series Dimension 20.
 * The character of Moses Randolph in Motherless Brooklyn is based on Robert Moses.
 * At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, when many TV commentators, politicians and others worked from their homes, The New York Times noted the frequent placement of The Power Broker as a background element.
 * The 2021 film adaptation of West Side Story adds the historical context of New York City's urban gentrification in the 1950s. During the song "America", a group of Puerto Rican demonstrators appear, protesting their pending evictions, and one of them holds a sign condemning Moses.

Other sources
Exhibits:
 * "The Triborough Bridge: Robert Moses and the Automobile Age" exhibit at the New York Transit Museum
 * "Robert Moses and the Modern City" exhibit February 2007 thru May 2007 at 3 New York City museums
 * "Looking Back at Moses" a trio of New York museums
 * Photographs from the Museum of the City of New York exhibit

Papers:
 * Robert Moses papers, 1912–1980, held by the Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library
 * Online letters of Moses
 * Moses's response to Robert Caro's accusations

Archival Audio:
 * The Robert Moses Collection at The WNYC Archives

Interviews:
 * 1973 audio interview of Robert Moses by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, RealAudio at Wired for Books.org
 * Robert A. Caro talks to Richard D. Heffner about Robert Moses on the Open Mind, 1998

title: Robert Moses