Tell Us About Your Favorite New Deal Site Westmoreland Park, Portland, Oregon Westmoreland Park is four blocks from my home in Portland, Oregon. I enjoy it often and recently discovered it was created from swampy farmland by hundreds of WPA… read more
In 1937, Theodora and John Murray were among 850 families selected to reside in an experimental city built and owned by the federal government. About a half-hour’s drive from Washington, DC., Greenbelt, Maryland is one of three planned residential communities… read more
Tell Us About Your Favorite New Deal Site Does a Shelf of Books Qualify as Public Works? My favorite WPA project isn’t a road or a bridge or even a school. It’s not a library, but you’re getting warmer. The… read more
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was accomplished in many pursuits, but, according to the New Yorker, other than scrambled eggs she couldn’t cook worth beans. To show solidarity with those suffering during the Great Depression, upon moving in to the White… read more
WPA artist Victor Arnautoff’s controversial mural, “Life of Washington,” has been a lightning rod for controversy ever since it was completed in 1936. The 1600-foot fresco covering the walls and ceiling of the main entryway at San Francisco’s George Washington… read more
Ruth Gottstein, 1922-2022 A lifelong activist and champion of New Deal art, Ruth Gottstein, daughter of New Deal artist Bernard Zakheim, died on August 30 at age 100. Ruth vividly recalled accompanying her father, a founder of the San Francisco… read more
Over fifty years before the Americans with Disabilities Act, the New Deal undertook the first major federal effort to aid citizens with physical and mental challenges. Between 1933 and 1943, mainly through the Works Progress Administration (WPA), thousands of New… read more
The federal government began taxing marijuana in 1937 after Harry Anslinger, commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, testified to a Congressional committee that smoking marijuana “produces in it users insanity, criminality and death.” H.R. 6385, The Marihuana Tax Act,… read more
Tell Us About Your Favorite New Deal Site Send us a first-person story of 100 (or so) words describing the site and why you chose it. Submissions will appear in future issues of The Fireside! Be sure to include a photo… read more
On June 11, 1939, as war loomed over Europe, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, joined FDR and his staff at the president’s Hyde Park, New York, residence. The menu of that day included “Hot Dogs (if… read more