The USS Potomac was FDR’s retreat from the pressures of the White House. He sometimes hosted advisors and heads of state aboard the Presidential yacht but it also was his getaway for fishing trips, poker games and family gatherings. At… read more
From 1938 to 1940, Sidney Robertson directed and carried out a remarkable ethnomusicological survey—the WPA California Folk Music Project. Born in San Francisco in 1903, Sidney had grown up in a privileged home punctuated by high cultural activities and training… read more
As a longtime resident of New York City, it was difficult for me to pick a favorite New Deal site, as there so many possibilities. I was tempted to choose Orchard Beach, in the Bronx, where my father learned to… read more
America’s Voices Within the Resettlement Administration, the New Deal agency charged with relocating struggling families, a little known Music Unit deployed field workers to government-planned communities around the country to boost residents’ morale and solidarity through folk music. Using the… read more
The Resettlement Administration (RA) was a sprawling New Deal agency created in 1935 to oversee a disparate set of government initiatives, most of which focused on providing help in rural areas. This included an experimental program to build new homestead… read more
Art for the People Perhaps best known for its public works projects, the WPA also employed tens of thousands of actors, musicians, writers and artists through a jobs program collectively known as Federal One. “Hell, they’ve got to eat too,”… read more
A Work of Art Timberline Lodge, Oregon More than a mile above sea level, Timberline Lodge, about an hour’s drive east of Portland, embodies the New Deal’s aim to make life itself a work of art by wrapping visitors in… read more
New Deal art programs ushered in a watershed decade for American art. From 1933 to 1943, federal art programs hired tens of thousands of unemployed artists, producing over 200,000 artworks, and temporarily making the federal government the single largest patron… read more
During the Great Depression, quiltmaking was a popular activity among Americans. Every smalltown and big city newspaper published a quilt pattern column; over 25,000 Americans entered quilts in the massive Sears Century of Progress quilt contest in hopes of winning… read more
FDR may be best remembered for leading the country though the Great Depression and winning the war against fascism, but some consider his repeal of Prohibition to be a pivotal achievement. Upon signing the 21st Amendment in 1933, (ending the… read more