The New Deal’s contributions to the city are largely unknown, but they transformed the nation’s capital. Our forthcoming “Map and Guide to the Art and Architecture of New Deal Washington, DC” is meant to educate visitors, residents and federal workers about the vast New Deal legacy that surrounds them.
Among the District’s more than 500 New Deal sites are Rock Creek Park, the National Zoo, Howard University, Frederick Douglass’s home and the Federal Trade Commission Building. Along with details on major sites, the map features walking tours of downtown DC and buildings housing large collections of works by New Deal artists.The map launch, delayed by Covid-19, will take place early in 2021.
For the map’s cover, we chose a mural at the Department of the Interior, “Incident in Contemporary American Life,” by Mitchell Jamieson, depicting Marian Anderson’s Freedom Concert in 1939. After the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Anderson to perform at Constitution Hall because of her race, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the group in protest and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes offered the Lincoln Memorial instead. The event, nationally broadcast by radio, brought some 75,000 people came to the National Mall to hear Anderson sing.