It is not clear whether Moses sent the letter to Mayor LaGuardia. A penciled notation on the draft said “Hold for plan from Davison.” About a month later, on July 12, 1939, Spargo informed Moses in a memo that “…they won’t be able to start construction [of the new Criminal Courts Building at Foley Square] until 1941. This means that we won’t get the old building out of City Hall Park until 1942.”
Moses decided he needed additional support for the plan to remove the Tweed building. Using his apparently unlimited budget for promotional materials he prepared an illustrated six-page pamphlet to plead his case. In the first two pages, Moses reproduced a letter to the Mayor. Dated September 18, 1939, it considerably embellished Spargo’s earlier draft. The first paragraph described his overall plan for City Hall Park: “With the completion of the southerly portion of City Hall Park formerly occupied by the old post office building and the removal of the fence around it, the first step will have been taken in restoring this park to the public and in providing an appropriate setting for one of the finest bits of architecture in New York City.” (A recent For the Record article described the saga of the Old Post Office, Bring the 5M With You–Two Eagles and a Post-Office.)
Moses continued: “The only blot on the landscape which will remain at the end of 1940 if these funds are appropriated, will be the so-called “Tweed” court house. This ugly and obsolete building, a monument to Boss Tweed and Tammany became notorious because of the extravagance and graft linked with its construction. All those interested in the city and its parks are agreed that City Hall ought to be the only building in the park and the department’s plans have been drawn accordingly. The difficulty has always been finding a site for a new court house to take the place of the Tweed building.”
Moses’ letter went on to describe how Foley Square would serve as the desired alternate site. The pamphlet included an artistic rendering, and a site plan of City Hall Park, minus Tweed. Moses directed Spargo to have 1,000 copies of the pamphlet printed “by the off-set process” for distribution to decision-makers and the press.
