It was with great sadness that we learned this week of the passing of Curtis Roosevelt, grandson of FDR. Curtis was a member of our Advisory Board and a stalwart supporter of the Living New Deal. Dick Walker visited Curtis and his… read more
Thirteen of Indiana’s 24 current state parks were developed or improved by New Deal agencies. Pokagon State Park, in the lake-filled glacial moraine of the far northeast corner of the state near Angola, is the only one listed virtually in… read more
Built in 1938, the art deco Richmond Post Office has long been a center of activity in this once-bustling shipbuilding city on San Francisco Bay. In 2014, the staff at the Richmond Museum of History learned that a mural once… read more
It is rare for any artist to support a family solely through artistic prowess, and rarer still during the Great Depression. Joseph Jacinto “Jo” Mora (1876-1947) was such an artist. Mora used his wits as well as his expansive creative… read more
In 1928, conservationist, hiker, and University of California alumnus Robert Sibley, saw into the future of the open rolling hills above the Berkeley campus. “These valuable pieces of land ought to be preserved forever,” he forewarned. So began a movement… read more
Visitors to Goliad State Park and Historic Site in South Texas marvel at the park’s architectural centerpiece, Mission Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñiga. Many are surprised to learn it’s a reconstruction, built on top of the mission’s 1749… read more
We’re very excited about all the buzz surrounding Douglas Brinkley’s Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America. (In fact, Gray Brechin is reviewing it for our Fall 2016 newsletter.) In a recent edition of the Saturday Evening Post, Brinkley… read more
Heartening news from St. Helena, California: Rep. Mike Thompson (D) is leading the charge for a stamp memorializing Lew Keller’s “Grape Pickers,” a WPA mural installed at the St. Helena Post Office in 1942. Thompson and four other Congressmembers recently… read more
Featured in my 1980 publication, Art Deco in Indianapolis, the stunning WPA-built Naval Armory, the work of architect Ben H. Bacon, has graced the bank of the non-navigable White River since before its dedication in October 1938. At the time… read more
“Among the many WPA initiatives I discovered in my early research were archaeological digs and historical re-creations, and they gave me the idea for an analogous effort: to create an ever-expanding excavation to reveal a buried and lost civilization. This was not, however,… read more