BAY SHORE, N.Y. -- Master builder Robert Moses was remembered Friday as a man who accomplished more than the pharaohs.
'He was a true Renaissance man,' the Rev. Laurence McGinley, former president of Fordham University, said in his eulogy.
More than 800 people attended a 40-minute funeral service for Moses, who died Wednesday at the age of 92. The service was held at St. Peter's By-the-Sea Church, a short distance from Moses' summer home on Long Island.
Moses, who constructed the New York metropolitan area's mighty network of roads and bridges, was a member of the church and laid its cornerstone in 1959.
Moses' widow, Mary, and his two daughters, Jane Collins of Babylon, N.Y., and Barbara Olds of Greenwich, Conn., sat in the first row.
The mourners included Gov. Hugh Carey and his wife, Evangeline, New York City Mayor Edward Koch, former Mayor Robert Wagner, state Parks Commissioner Orin Lehman and William Ronan, former head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Koch noted that in carrying out his projects, Moses often got into disputes.
'If you never had controversy, you never built anything and Moses was a monumental builder,' the mayor said. He was a tough adversary, but if you take the pros and cons about him, you would have to come up with a huge plus.'
Moses left monuments to himself everywhere -- Jones Beach, 11 bridges including the Triborough and the Verrazano-Narrows, the New York Coliseum, Lincoln Center, the Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant and 75 state parks.
To link them, he built 481 miles of highways, including the Saw Mill River, Hutchinson River and Grand Central parkways and Manhattan's West Side Highway.
Moses' fall from power began in 1962, when Gov. Nelson Rockefeller asked him to resign as president of the State Council of Parks. Moses replied by quitting all his state jobs -- five at the time.
Moses was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.