Frances Perkins: The Woman behind the New Deal

In 1963, at the age of 83, Frances Perkins gave a series of lectures at UCLA entitled, “Labor Under the New Deal and the New Frontier.” She told her audience that for years after her tenure as FDR’s Secretary of… read more

The Women Who Painted Coit Tower

Just as FDR’s Administration gave Eleanor Roosevelt and Frances Perkins the opportunity to profoundly shape public policy, the New Deal also opened up real and meaningful work for women in the arts.  One place this played out was atop San… read more

Herbert Maier and the Parkitecture of the 1930s

Arts & Crafts architecture—with its emphasis on native materials, skilled workmanship, sensitivity to nature, and indigenous motifs—fell out of fashion after World War I. Revival styles and the rising tide of modernism supplanted it, but so did economics: the craftsmanship… read more

Finding Your New Deal Ancestry

The Living New Deal website now features a new page: Find Your New Deal Ancestry. This page walks you through requisition information and records from the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Lous, Missouri, part of the National Archives…. read more