The New Deal Lives on “Economic Update”

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Gray Brechin and Richard A Walker discussed the legacy of the New Deal as guests on Richard Wolff’s weekly radio program “Economic Update”, broadcast from New York to hundreds of stations around the country on June 1st.  The half-hour interview, “The New Deal Lives”, can be found through Truthout.org or Democracy at Work. Richard Wolff is a well-known economics professor and a popular and provocative commentator on economic news and current politics in the United States.

Walker & Brechin in studio with Rick Wolff


Walker & Brechin in studio with Rick Wolff

Living New Deal’s History in BOOM: A Journal of California

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Project founder Gray Brechin has published an account of the origins and development of the Living New Deal in the oddly-name but much-read magazine BOOM: A Journal of California.  The article, “A New Deal for California: Finding a Hidden History in Plain Sight”, appeared in the Winter 2014 issue.  A pdf version can be downloaded here.  Brechin – A New Deal for California-BOOM.

"Sea Forms" Interior Mosaic

A Forgotten Arts Competition – For Ships!

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Did you hear the one about the New Deal competition to decorate round-the-world passenger-cargo ships? No? You’re not alone. Few people know of this 1940 Section of Fine Arts competition, which generated over 70 pieces of art for six ships.

Living New Deal Associate Wayne Yanda has been researching this competition for several years and had the opportunity to visit with the last surviving winner, Bernard Perlin, whose post office mural in South Orange, NJ can still be seen. Other notable winners were Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Hildreth Meière, and Edmund Lewandowski.  Over 450 artists submitted more than 1400 designs, the second largest held by the Fine Arts Section after 1939’s 48-State competition.

Yanda has started a RocketHub crowdfunding campaign for a research trip to the National Archives and the Archives of American Art. If enough people donate, he’ll spend almost two weeks gathering the images and documents needed for his book, tentatively titled, Arts Afloat: The New Deal’s Lost Competitions. An exhibit is also in the works.

Visit https://www.rockethub.com/projects/51615-arts-afloat-the-new-deal-s-lost-competitions to learn more about this project. The last day to take part is Tuesday, May 19, 2015.

San Francisco Chronicle Salute to the Living New Deal

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Popular Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik gave a nice shout-out to Gray Brechin for being honored by the California Book Club and called attention to the Living New Deal’s just-issued New Deal map of San Francisco.  Here’s what she said, in full:

“Gray Brechin, who on March 30 will receive the California Book Club’s Oscar Lewis Award for contributions to Western history, will have on hand copies of the spiffy new San Francisco Guide to Art and Architecture of the New Deal, a brochure that identifies New Deal projects around the city. This is a project of the UC Berkeley Department of Geography, which hopes to create similar brochures for other cities about the country. There are more than 300 New Deal projects in the Bay Area, including 11 in Golden Gate Park. More information is at www.livingnewdeal.org.”

Thanks to Leah for the recognition, even if she got a couple things a tiny bit wrong: the 300+ New Deal sites are just in the city of San Francisco alone and the SF map is a project of our non-profit in Berkeley.  The original column can be found in the March 18th edition of the San Francisco Chronicle on page E8 (the back page of the Datebook section).

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Public Works Site Recognizes the Living New Deal

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The Living New Deal and National New Deal Preservation Association received a nice tip of the hat from a trade journal called Government Product News, a magazine serving some 20,000 local government officials around the country.  They contacted LND’s Harvey Smith for some examples of WPA buildings and then posted this paean to public works produced by the Works Progress Administration.  Editor Michael Keating of GPN reports a strong response from the readers of the website and their newsletter.  Thank you, Mr. Keating!

Page view from Government Product News

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Page view from Government Product News

When America Invested in Infrastructure: Smithsonian Magazine

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Mt. Hood National Park

Timberline Lodge, 2014
Mt. Hood National Park
Photo Credit: Gary Braasch © Gary Braasch/CORBIS

The Smithsonian Magazine recently ran a fine article on the legacy of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) by writer Andrea Stone, When America Invested in Infrastructure, These Beautiful Landmarks Were the Result.  The article features wonderful photographs and brief essays about eight famous New Deal structures, such as the Mt. Hood Timberline Lodge (OR) and Red Rock Amphitheater (CO).  It quotes Bob Leighninger, author of Long-range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal and Living New Deal Research Board member and has links to our website at the Living New Deal.

Now, if we could just get the Smithsonian Institution to create a New Deal History pavilion, our dreams would be fulfilled!

Living New Deal Fund Drive

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Lovers' Leap

Lovers' Leap
We’re celebrating our double-your-money challenge grant!  Source
Photo Credit: Seth Gaines United States Postal Service

The Living New Deal Project needs your help to keep going.  Our goal is to raise $100,000 to cover our yearly expenses (data entry, website, events, newsletters, maps, etc.) and to keep expanding our activities.  The project is snowballing in terms of site submissions, volunteers around the country, and public recognition; and we have some important new initiatives, such as hand-held New Deal maps of New York, Washington, DC and San Francisco, a New Deal film archive and festival, and a National New Deal Preservation Conference.  We depend on hundreds of supporters to provide the wherewithal.

Thanks to the generosity of one of our board members, we have a grant that will double-match all contributions up to a total of $25,000 (=$75,000).  That means a contribution of $100 becomes $300!  Last year, our donors gave over $22,000, which yielded $66,000 for the Living New Deal budget (and we raised another $20,ooo from a university grant). For information on how to give, see our Donation Page.

When Louis Kahn and Roosevelt Created a New Jersey Utopia

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Author Perdita Buchan has written a lovely encomium to Louis Kahn’s modernist houses set in the New Town of Jersey Homesteads (now Roosevelt) created by the New Deal’s Resettlement Administration.  Along the way she extolls Kahn’s design for the Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island, New York City, built after the architect’s death.  She also salutes the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt embodied in both the utopian ideals of the greenbelt towns and the Four Freedoms enumerated in his inaugural address of 1941.  Here is the full story in Curbed.Com.

Louis Kahn house at Roosevelt, NJ

Louis Kahn house at Roosevelt, NJ
Louis Kahn house at Roosevelt, NJ  Source
Photo Credit: unknown

Living New Deal Makes the Boston Globe

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Ross Moffett 1937 mural in former Union Square Post Office in Somerville, Mass.

Mural in former Somerville MA Post Office, 2014
Ross Moffett 1937 mural in former Union Square Post Office in Somerville, Mass.  Source
Photo Credit: MATTHEW J. LEE/GLOBE STAFF

We were very pleased that the Living New Deal was acknowledged in a wonderful opinion piece in the Boston Globe on the day after Thanksgiving.  In an editorial entitled, “When public buildings were revered”, writer René Loth captures the spirit of the New Deal in asking why Americans no longer value public places as they once did and deplores the privatization of the New Deal legacy.  “We have traveled a long way from a time when public buildings were revered precisely because they belonged to everyone.”

We particularly liked this observation:

“Sturdily made, architecturally significant, the New Deal’s public buildings project a sense of authority and even grandeur, but with the clean, stripped-down lines of the Art Deco style. Even simple cabins in state parks creatively used natural materials to blend in with their settings. They are artifacts of a time when government institutions — schools, courthouses, even waterworks — commanded a certain respect, and the quality of design and craftsmanship reflected that.”

And we appreciate that the article included the url of the Living New Deal website.

To download the article as a pdf, click here.