There were suddenly, with the exception of a tiny fort converted into an aquarium, no buildings at all

In the upper part of Manhattan the masses of concrete were mostly sixty feet high, or seventy; in the centre of the island, they were a hundred and fifty or two hundred. But as the island narrowed towards its southern tip, they were four hundred feet high, five hundred, cramming closer and closer together, bulking up higher and higher as they loomed southward pressing inexorably toward the island's tip - until at the very tip, at the very end of the most crowded island in the world, at the very spot in the entire world in which buildings should have been crowded most closely together, there were suddenly, with the exception of a tiny fort converted into an aquarium, no buildings at all. At a point at which a single square foot of land was worth thousands of dollars, at which the value of an acre was computed not in millions of dollars, but in the tens of millions, there sat 967,032 square metres of land - 22.2 acres - vacant except for grass and trees, pathways between them, benches, and a broad, breezy waterfront promenade.

R. Caro, The power broker (1974), 647-8

230,000 dead rats were counted in a single week at the zoo site alone

In Central Park, Moses' men restored Olmstead's long-defaced buildings, replanted the Shakespeare garden, placing next to every flower a quotation from the Bard in which it was mentioned, and exterminated herds of rats; 230,000 dead ones were counted in a single week at the zoo site alone. 

R. Caro, The power broker (1974), 374

But free and open debate had not made his dreams come true.

Once, no reformer, no idealist, had believed more sincerely than he in free and open discussion. No reformer, no idealist, had argued more vigorously that legislative bills should be fully debated, and that the debates should be published so that the citizenry could be informed on the issues. 

But free and open debate had not made his dreams come true. Instead, politicians had crushed them. And now he was going to make sure that, with the exception of Al Smith and Belle Moskowitz, no one — not citizenry, not press, not Legislature — was going to know what was in the bills dealing with parks that the Legislature was going to pass. The best bill drafted in Albany set to work.

R. Caro, The power broker (1974), 173