Two texts that I have used to examine our essential question regarding what determines if a site is preserved are Seeking New York by Tom Miller and Working by Robert Caro. Caro’s book has a section describing the Power Broker and he explains how Moses used his power and influence to coerce others and remove lower-income families from their neighborhoods and homes. Seeking New York breaks down the story of different buildings in NYC. I noticed a name that appeared in both of these books, and thought it connected to our essential question. In the Greenwich Village section of Seeking, Miller shares the history behind the famous ‘Twin Peaks’ apartment building on Bedford st. The apartment was built and designed by Clifford Daily. Miller begins the section by describing the origins of the idea: “In the spring of 1925, millionaire Otto Kahn had lunch in a most unexpected spot – the tiny wooden tearoom named the Little House on Greenwich Village’s Bedford Street. Joining him was builder Clifford Reed Daily, who lived nearby on Sheridan Square. Daily was pitching a deal,” (45). Otto Kahn went on to finance the project, and the building was finished in 1926. I used this chapter to write the description of Twin Peaks after we photographed it, but didn’t think more of it. A week later I was reading the chapter City-Shaper in Working, which covers Moses’ life and work. Caro describes a discovery he made while researching Moses’ construction of the Northern State Parkway: “[The letter] referred, in obscure terms, to an arrangement between Moses and the multimillionaire Otto Kahn…the Northern State Parkway had originally been supposed to run through the middle of an eighteen-hole private golf course that Kahn had constructed for his pleasure on his Dix Hills estate. In 1926, the legislature was refusing to allocate funds to Moses for any purposes connected with the parkway, so that he didn’t even have enough money for surveys. The letter showed that Kahn had offered to secretly donate $10,000 to the Park Commission for surveys, provided that some of the surveys found a new route for the parkway – one that would not cross his estate at all. And they revealed that Moses had secretly accepted the money, had used it for surveys, and had indeed found a new route – one that avoided Kahn’s estate. South of Kahn’s estate lay the estates of other powerful robber barons, so the route was shifted south again – more than three miles south – so that it ran down the center of Long Island, through a group of small farms,” (54-55). Caro goes on to describe the destruction of one of the family farms, and the effect on the family. Although there are probably hundreds of these hidden deals in the history of NYC development, I was particularly taken aback by this one and the recurrence of Otto Kahn. Both the construction of the iconic Village building and the deal regarding the parkway happened in 1926. Kahn’s actions tell us a lot about our essential questions. Because of his money and subsequent influence, Kahn made a massive impact on two very different areas of New York and on the lives of many people to this day. When asking what determines if a site is preserved and how we can gain an understanding of New York’s future, the actions of Otto Kahn show us that New York was shaped by the will of the rich and powerful and often at the expense of lower-income families and communities. These two stories show that, in one year and over a wide expanse of the state, Otto Kahn (who had no political standing) determined what was built, where it was built, and what was destroyed.