Two years in the works, the LND’s Map & Guide to the Art and Architecture of the New Deal in Washington DC. is now available. It features 500 New Deal sites in and around the District, dozens of descriptions and photos of notable sites and a walking tour of New Deal art and architecture around the National Mall. The colorful 18 x 24-inch map folds to pocket size.

The map reveals how the New Deal transformed the nation’s capital. “It’s like finding a lost civilization that had been buried and forgotten,” notes Gray Brechin, founder of the Living New Deal.

“We want to show residents, officials and millions of visitors to the city that the New Deal worked and continues to deliver today,” says Richard A Walker, the Living New Deal’s Executive Director. The New Deal’s legacy includes the Federal Triangle, Capital Parks and other buildings and public artworks that make Washington a monumental city.

We are planning events (virtual and actual) to launch the map and call attention the New Deal’s role modernizing and beautifying the nation’s capital. The map is for sale for $5 on our website, where you’ll find a press release, images and more information. Please tell your friends, family and colleagues. Please add your rating on the Apple App Store.

Mapping the legacy of the New Deal just took a leap forward with the release of the Living New Deal app for iPhones—free from the Apple App Store.

The Living New Deal developed the first-ever online catalog of what the New Deal left to America. Our online map reveals thousands of New Deal public works in all 50 states. With the help of volunteers, we’ve crowdsourced 16,500 New Deal sites so far. We believe that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

With the app, New Deal sleuths can take photographs and videos of their New Deal discoveries, add text or audio and forward their findings direct to us. The app automatically captures the GPS location. Once verified, we add the site or artwork to our ever-expanding database.

The app enables users to switch back-and-forth between the app and the Living New Deal map to find other sites nearby (remember to bookmark our web address, livingnewdeal.org, on your phone’s search engine).

The app is the work of volunteer Kevin Friedly of Indianapolis and our webmaster Lisa Thompson. Our immense thanks to them both. An app for Android phones is our next target.

Please join us on Zoom for Kevin Baker’s talk, Saving the Republic: The New Deal and Far-Right Extremism, about the rise of the far-right during the 1930s to counter the New Deal and its social liberalism.

Baker, an award-winning author, is a contributing editor to Harper’s and a regular contributor to Politico, The New York Times and The New Republic.

Baker offers this preview: “Picture an America in which an angry crowd of veterans surround the Capitol and are dispersed with tear gas and gunfire; a disgruntled Marine general is approached about leading a coup to overturn an election; right-wing fanatics hoard weapons and set up paramilitary camps around the country… We’re not talking about America today but America in the 1930s.”

The webinar is part of our series The Next New Deal, featuring writers, speakers and thinkers on the New Deal and its lessons for today. Thursday, March 24, 2021, 7pm EDT. Click here to register.

We are pleased to welcome two new members to our National Research Board of scholars of the New Deal and present-day America.

Darrick Hamilton, professor of Economics and Urban Policy at The New School in New York is a leading expert on inequality and racial disparity. As Director of the Institute for the Study of Race, Stratification and Political Economy, Darrick is a well-known policy advisor and national media commentator. He is an alumnus of Oberlin College and the University of North Carolina.   

Laura Pulido is professor of Geography at the University of Oregon in Eugene. She is known for her work on how race, class and gender shape the places we live, the landscapes we inhabit and our relationship to nature. She is the author of many books and articles on race and justice. She started and edits the People’s Guide series on American cities, published by the University of California Press, which highlights the hidden histories of popular communities’ struggles for justice. 

Our first webinar of the year, on January 7 brought together leading experts on the role of posters in social movements. Lincoln Cushing, an artist, archivist and author based in Berkeley, discussed the history of posters as tools of social change. Ennis Carter, founding director of Philadelphia-based DfSI/Social Impact Studios and author of Posters for the People, talked about posters of the WPA. She maintains an online archive  of thousands of posters created during the New Deal era. Max Slavkin, is co-founder and CEO of Creative Action Network, which runs crowdsourced, caused-based campaigns and an online marketplace for art with purpose. Max’s book, Posters for a Green New Deal, features 50 original pull-out posters by artists worldwide. Susan Ives, who directs the Living New Deal’s Communications, moderated the discussion. The webinar can be viewed on YouTube or at our Facebook page.
  The Living  New Deal-NYC will present our next webinar, “The Health of the Nation,” on public health programs during the New Deal and now. Monday, February 8, 2021, 8pm EST.

The New Deal commissioned more than 10,000 artworks, including 1,200 murals in post offices. Many are endangered by neglect, privatization and challenges to problematic images.  At least 16 murals in 12 states have recently been covered or removed by the US Postal Service (see the report by LND team member Evan Kalish).
We have developed recommendations for dealing with such controversies in a new Endangered Art  section of our website. It contains briefs on why New Deal art is important, racism in art, and practical advice for defending art, and it includes a growing list of imperiled New Deal works.
A recent example is the controversy over “Incidents in the History of Catonsville” by Avery Johnson. The post office mural depicting enslaved Black people pulling barrels of tobacco was hidden behind plastic sheeting last summer. Yet, Johnson seems to have intended an honest portrayal of local history with slave labor at the heart of the image, as described in an 1865 account of “the old method of getting tobacco to market,” found by Living New Deal Associate Will Cook.
This is an example of how controversial murals can have historical value and a point of view that offer opportunities for dialogue and education, as the Washington Post reports.  Such artworks must be defended against hasty, naïve and ahistorical attacks and should be debated and put to the larger community to decide on the artworks’ fate.
Our goal is to create a nationwide network of experts, preservationists and citizens to defend New Deal public art. If you are able to help fund this effort, contact Kurt Feichtmeir.

In mid-September the Living New Deal suffered a serious setback when tens of thousands of photographs and documents were deleted in what we believe was a politically motivated hack. Fortunately, the hack left all text and other data unscathed and we have backup for 95 percent of the lost photographs. Unfortunately, the worm ate through recent backups on the host server, so our staff and associates will need to spend hundreds of hours digging up lost photographs that were entered into the system over the summer.
All this is quite costly for us. In addition to restoring the photograph collection we hired a security firm to remove lingering code the hackers left behind and install more protective software and stronger security. In addition, we will need to change to a better defended server host and bring on board more IT expertise to support the hard work of our webmaster, Lisa Thompson. If you wish to help us defray these costs, please contact Kurt Feichtmeir.

When the Living New Deal began documenting the New Deal’s public works a decade ago, we never imagined what a vast undertaking it would be. To date, our online map features 16,000 New Deal sites but there are tens of thousands more sites still to be discovered.
The Living New Deal is looking for people to join our team of National Associates—volunteers of all ages and backgrounds who sleuth out what the New Deal left to their communities for the Living New Deal‘s growing website.
What our National Associates have in common is a wish to keep the New Deal legacy alive and as a model for public policy today. If you are interested in the history and the ideals of the New Deal, we invite you to get in touch about becoming a National Associate. Please write to [email protected]org.

National Associate David W. Gates Jr., Jr. of Crystal Lake, Illinois, has been photographing and writing about U.S. Post Offices for over 15 years. As founder of postofficefans.com, he has visited hundreds of post offices nationwide, many built by the New Deal during the Great Depression. Between 1934 and 1943 murals and other forms of art were commissioned and installed in public buildings under the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture, later renamed the Section of Fine Arts. Artists competed for the commissions. Gates estimates that between 1,100 and 1,400 works of art are in post offices nationwide. As the Postal Service sells off these historic buildings, the fate of the many murals and artworks is unknown. Some get moved to other public locations, while others are no longer accessible. David’s second guidebook to post office murals (the first covers Wisconsin) took him to Tennessee, where he documented 28 New Deal post offices and their murals. The guidebook can be downloaded to your mobile phone. For more on David’s work, visit http://www.davidwgatesjr.net

Wednesday, September 30, 6pm EDT
From the New Deal to the Green New Deal: Connecting the Dots Between the Past and the Future

The New York City branch of the Living New Deal will host a virtual panel discussion on the Green New Deal—the 1.0 version under FDR and the need for a 21st Century iteration to meet the social, economic and climate challenges of our time. Keynote speaker, Robert Kuttner—noted economist and editor of The American Prospect—will be joined by a multi-disciplinary panel including NYC Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver; visionary green architect Elisa Iturbe; historian Deborah Gardner; Green New Deal policy and design expert Billy Fleming and Julian Noisecat—writer, researcher and climate justice and indigenous sovereignty activist. Historian, journalist and novelist Kevin Baker will moderate the discussion. To reserve your spot on the call, please contact Peggy Crane. Watch for an e-vite later this month featuring speakers’ bios and a Zoom link to the event, along with the opportunity to submit your questions in advance.

In my elementary school in Highland Park, Illinois, were scenes of Robin Hood by Mildred Waltrip, a WPA painter. WPA murals hang in the library at my high school. I thought it was so cool when I later learned that these treasures were from a Depression-era government arts program. I happened upon a mimeographed list of New Deal murals and began scouting for them during my lunch hour. I looked in the phone book for artists on the list and visited their studios—remnants of Bohemian Chicago. They were delighted by my interest and shared their stories and photos with me. In 1976, I won a grant to make a documentary about the Illinois Art Project. “Silver Lining” features New Deal art and artists around the state. When I moved to San Francisco in 1984, exploring public art seemed a good way to get to know the city. I loved the murals at Coit Tower and the Beach Chalet, and Benny Bufano’s sculptures. My husband, John Tibbets, had the idea for a website with maps and photos and programmed the first iteration of the New Deal Art Registry in 2007, which led us to the Living New Deal and my becoming their Public Art Specialist. I wish government would hire photographers to take high-quality photos of all the New Deal murals for Americans to use. After all, they belong to all of us.

There are more than a thousand New Deal sites across New York City, but because most are unmarked their common connection to the New Deal goes unrecognized. The Living New Deal’s New York City branch is working to remedy that. Thanks to our partnership with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, red, white and blue medallions will soon be installed identifying the New Deal origins of the city’s eleven Olympic-sized pools, all built in 1936 by the Works Progress Administration.
During the Great Depression and for going on 84 summers since, New Yorkers flocked to Crotona Park Pool in the Bronx, Astoria Pool in Queens, and Highbridge Pool in Manhattan, among others.  If the Living New Deal has its way, medallions will be placed at many other sites to recognize what the New Deal left to the city.
The medallion was designed to commemorate all types of New Deal projects, from pools to schools, public housing to post offices, playgrounds, courthouses and more,” says Peggy Crane, the Living New Deal’s New York City branch coordinator.
Because of the coronavirus, the city’s pools have yet to open for the summer. Stay tuned for the official rollout.

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.

Despite the lockdown, the Living New Deal is fanning the flames of growing public interest in the New Deal. Mentions of the New Deal in both mainstream and alternative media are on the rise. Reporters turn to us as one of the best sources of information on the New Deal era.
Our new monthly online newsletter, The Fireside, features articles and commentary by leading writers and historians. Our website, livingnewdeal.org, surpassed a million visits last year. Thanks to our network of volunteers, our national map of New Deal public works has grown to over 16,000 sites and includes profiles of many people and programs that defined the New Deal.
History tells us that crises often create the conditions for fundamental change. The Great Depression allowed the New Deal to create Social Security, recognize unions, introduce food stamps and modernize the nation’s infrastructure.
In these uncertain times, we are demonstrating that the New Deal is a model of leadership, action and renewed hope that has valuable lessons for public policy today.
Twice each year we ask for your donations to keep us on the job. As our thank you for a gift of $100 or more, we’ll send you a set of notecards featuring images of WPA posters from the Library of Congress. We are most grateful for your interest and generosity!

The Living New Deal is hard at work fueling the growing public interest in the New Deal as a model of leadership, hope and action in troubled times. Our website is a searchable archive of New Deal artworks, buildings, vast public works and the people and programs that helped our nation recover from the Great Depression and thrive. Through talks, tours and special events we highlight what the New Deal achieved.

During the current crises, we’re focused on fanning the flames of an emerging national discussion about the New Deal. We’re regularly cited in the media; our new online journal, The Fireside, offers news and insights about the New Deal; and we’re about to publish our map and guide to the nation’s capital, making visible the New Deal‘s lasting imprint on Washington, DC. We’re counting on your donations to keep us going. Please support us if you can. For your gift of $100 or more, we’ll thank you with a set of notecards featuring WPA posters from the Library of Congress.

Please take a moment to share your feedback with us by taking our brief survey.

With thanks, always,
The Living New Deal

We are happy to announce new and improved features to our online national map of New Deal sites. We’ve switched over from Google maps to a new platform, Mapbox.
Visitors to livingnewdeal.org will find a more colorful map minus much of the commercial clutter found on Google maps. There are color-coded markers for every mapped site for the New Deal agency responsible for the project and icons to represent the project categories. The pop-up summary for each site is clearer, as are the search, filter and location functions. We will continue to add improvements to make the map more user friendly.
Thanks go to our webmaster, Lisa Thompson, for all her good work over the months it has taken to de-bug the new platform. Please try out the map on your computer or mobile phone. We welcome your questions and feedback.

That the Living New Deal has accomplished so much, so fast, is in no small part thanks to our volunteer sleuths, who submit their New Deal discoveries to us. Our website now features more than 16,000 unique sites. We’re looking for some social media ambassadors to help us fuel the national conversation about the New Deal. Please repost our content and “Like” us on Facebook, retweet and follow us on Twitter, and tag and follow us on Instagram. Our online publications, The Fireside and The Lowdown reach more than 4,000 readers a month. Forward them to your friends and colleagues and invite them to join our mailing list. Subscriptions are free. If you have suggestions for our social media team,  email us at [email protected]. We look forward to crossing virtual paths with you soon.

Few records exist of any coordinated attempt to sum up all that the New Deal built. That’s probably because the one agency that might have done it— the Historical Records Survey (HRS), established in 1935, was shut down in 1943 during the war.
The HRS was originally part of WPA’s Federal Writers Project. Its charge was surveying and indexing historically significant records in state, county and local archives. The official mission statement was the “discovery, preservation and listing of basic materials for research in the history of the United States.”
The HRS accomplished a great deal in its seven-and-a-half years. How many historians, scholars, lawyers, librarians, and genealogists realize they are standing on the shoulders of WPA workers— many of them women— who preserved and organized the records they are using some 80 years later? Had the HRS survived a few more years it could have done the grand summation that the Living New Deal is now attempting. But then we wouldn’t have the fun of doing it. Learn more.

Since 2013, Lisa Thompson has tended Livingnewdeal.org, adding to and troubleshooting our website as it has grown in content and complexity. Her latest upgrades have it humming faster and smoother than ever. Lisa added a glossary of New Deal terms to our site, deciphering the alphabet soup of agencies like SSA, TVA, CWA, NRA, CCC, WPA, PWA or SEC. (LOL!) She’s now working on a mobile app and YouTube page.
Lisa became interested in theater while in high school in Newport Beach, California. Nowadays she’s writing and performing for “Write Away!” an online improv troupe. She’s also taking part in Monday Night Playground, a prestigious program for emerging playwrights. Her original play, “Strike Home,” recently received a staged reading at Berkeley Repertory Theater. “24 Hour Plays—Stories from our zoomed-out, spaced-out, spread-out humanity,” a series of viral monologues that actors film and post from their phones while sheltered in place, inspired Lisa to record a story of her own. Watch her perform “Murmurations.”

We are thrilled to announce that the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) has awarded the Living New Deal a $5,000 grant to support the development and dissemination of our Map/Guide to the Art and Architecture of the New Deal for Washington, D.C. This is the third map in our series of guides to New Deal sites, which included San Francisco and New York City. The NTHP grant will enable us to organize multiple events around the launch of the DC map. Although the publication and launch of this new map have been postponed due to the current crisis, we are grateful to have an impressive group of partners in D.C., including the NTHP, who are eager, as we are, to resume plans to launch the new map, when the time is right.

Our annual Spring fundraising appeal will be delayed and happen differently this year. We are upgrading the way we process and keep track of donations with the implementation of a donor management technology platform, Neon CRM. The new system will streamline donor acknowledgements and improve record-keeping efficiency. As people become more comfortable with electronic transactions, we hope more of our Living New Deal supporters will choose the online giving option. One unanticipated impact of the COVID-19 crisis is the suspension of mail delivery on the UC Berkeley campus, which may delay our acknowledgment of your gift. We thank you in advance for your ongoing support during this challenging time.

Patriots’ Day is a cherished holiday in Massachusetts. It commemorates the American Revolution and the central role that the state, and Cambridge, played in the fight for independence. In observance of Patriots’ Day, our National Associate, Fern Nesson, published another essay in her Travels with the American Guide Series, this time about Cambridge and the Revolution. Reflecting on these historic events, Fern refers to the American Guide Series of the Federal Writers’ Project. The WPA writers described the significance of hallowed historic sites in Cambridge. Fern’s essay seeks to bring these events and places to life, especially since this year the residents of Massachusetts were not able to mark the date with the traditional commemorative events—Paul Revere’s ride, the reenactment of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and the famed (though unrelated) Boston Marathon. Read more about George Washington’s time in Cambridge and the Revolution in Fern’s new essay, “Cambridge, Massachusetts During the American Revolution.”

According to Glory-June Greiff, our Indiana National Associate, “nearly half of Indiana’s state parks, and all but two of its state forests were developed or improved by New Deal agencies.” Reporting from Ligonier, Indiana, where she gave a lecture a few months ago, Glory-June recounts her impressions and describes some of the New Deal sites she discovered in this small town, once a thriving manufacturing community. In 1935, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) created Woodlawn Park in Ligonier. The following year, it built multiple facilities—a stone shelter house, a large fieldstone flower bed that appears to have served as a fountain, a stone basin, and multiple stone platforms. Some of these structures are still standing today. Recreational facilities were a common type of project undertaken by the WPA. As Glory-June writes, WPA administrators found them especially well suited for creating employment opportunities where they were urgently needed, while also delivering public value for local residents. Read more about Glory-June’s site visit here.

“Art and Activism: From the New Deal to the Green New Deal,” our exhibit at the Canessa Gallery in San Francisco, was cut short due to the shelter-in-place order in the city. Now, thanks to our partners at the Creative Action Network, the public can view the exhibit highlights online. The exhibit features over 100 contemporary Green New Deal posters alongside vintage WPA Federal Art Project prints. The goal is to connect the Green New Deal to its New Deal roots, as well as show the inspirational quality of past and present poster art. An opening reception was well attended and featured talks and a protest song by members of the Sunrise Movement. During these difficult times, we hope these images will bring inspiration and hope for a path forward. The exhibit highlights can be viewed here and some of the art here and here.

The launch of the Living New Deal’s pocket map of New Deal Washington DC, planned for June, has been postponed due to the current epidemic. We will reschedule the launch with our partners at the Department of Interior and the Greenbelt Museum when that becomes possible again. Until then, we are working to complete the map and continue to improve our online database, which presently includes more than 380 New Deal sites in DC and many more in greater Washington. Like our New Deal maps of San Francisco and New York City, the Washington DC map will be of use to a wide array of visitors, tour guides, historians, teachers, students, and preservationists. The project has already attracted considerable interest around the nation’s capital, and a hard-working group of local volunteers is helping ensure its success.

More and more, the New Deal is being held up by opinion makers as a model to meet the economic crisis brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has brought the economy grinding to a halt. Reports say the U.S. will see a huge fall in GDP and millions unemployed, mostly blue-collar workers. This is an unprecedented crisis for which neither ‘relief’, ‘stimulus’ nor ‘war mobilization’ is appropriate. Yet the New Deal still provides important lessons. First, FDR provided the country strong leadership, backed by moral commitment to aid and give hope to a desperate nation; neither of which is currently in evidence. Second, the New Deal taxed the rich and tamped down financial speculation so the real economy could rebound; if today’s massive credit bubble bursts, things will only get worse. Third, the $2T in federal aid is temporary relief. A Depression will likely linger for months or years; soon the government must be ready with public works projects and millions of targeted jobs to speed the transition to a greener, fairer, and modernized economy.

Responding to a persistent public health crisis in the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built many portable huts to isolate and care for tuberculosis patients across the United States. Living New Deal Project Historian, Brent McKee, published a blog post, in which he describes the WPA’s swift response to the TB crisis. Drawing on sources from the National Archives, Brent notes that the huts were designed to quarantine patients who were wait listed for a hospital bed. The New Deal built many hospitals across the country, but the available beds were not sufficient to meet demand. The huts helped reserve hospital beds for those with acute symptoms, while ensuring that those with milder symptoms were properly quarantined. A 1942 article in the Index Journal highlights how this resource was deployed quickly and effectively, noting, “[t]he County Supervisor moves this hut on one of the county trucks wherever it is needed,” enabling families to care for the patients while the county nurse performed regular visits.

Opening March 6 at Canessa Gallery in San Francisco, “Art and Activism: From the New Deal to the Green New Deal,” and exhibit of WPA and contemporary posters, connects the Green New Deal to its New Deal roots.  As the Creative Action Network notes, “During the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal employed artists, graphic designers, and printers—many from the San Francisco Bay Area—to produce posters promoting public health, education, national parks, and the arts. Today, in response to the climate crisis, a new generation of activists turns to the power of poster to demand a Green New Deal.” the opening reception is on Friday, March 6. On Friday, March 13, the gallery will host the Living New Deal’s Gray Brechin, speaking about the New Deal, along with Max Slavin of the Creative Action Network. On Friday, March 20, a program featured the Sunrise Movement’s activism for a Green New Deal.  All events are at 7pm.  RSVP is requested. Find more details here and here, and RSVP here.

LND National Associate, Andrew Laverdiere, has made a fascinating archival discovery at the University of Maine Library: testimonials from women employed by the New Deal. Some examples include Dorris Isaacson, a woman journalist who became a member of the Federal Writers’ Project in Maine, and a WPA Sewing Project worker who offered a detailed description of the Sewing Project in Millinocket and a photograph of her women co-workers. These testimonials offer not only a snapshot of a time of great upheaval in American history, but they also help us understand the life of working women who needed to support themselves during the Great Depression. According to Dorris Isaacson, women working for the WPA had to contend with social stigma from peers who looked down upon relief work. But, as Isaacson notes, the WPA was an emancipatory force: “I would say that during this period that in Washington they liked women writers. They regarded them as colleagues.” Andrew is compiling some of these New Deal women’s stories for our New Deal Stories page.

Many of Evan Kalish’s New Deal history finds are chance discoveries, but few are sites as vast as the Jersey City Medical Center complex. While visiting friends who live in what is a now a modern apartment complex, Evan noticed some of the building’s early-century architectural details and fixtures. Naturally, he wondered whether there might be a New Deal connection, especially since the architectural motifs seemed to belong to the PWA/WPA Moderne style. After doing research in the local library and online, Evan confirmed his initial hunch. The complex was the work of the Public Works Administration (PWA) and had served as one of the most modern hospitals of its time. One of the buildings, the Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital, had one of the most famed maternity wards in the United States. Built in stages between 1928 and 1941, the facility has several buildings that were constructed with PWA funding during the Great Depression.

Last time the Living New Deal reported on the woes of the New Deal-era Laguna Beach Digester, its fate seemed all but sealed: the Laguna Beach City Council was poised to vote for its demolition, an all too common fate for humble but essential facilities of historic merit. Much has changed since then. As the Laguna Beach Independent reports, “Laguna Beach’s historic sewer digester building will receive extensive restoration work, thanks to a unanimous City Council motion Tuesday that elicited applause from the audience.” The City approved spending $930,000, of which $200,000 will come from a gift pledged by filmmakers Barbara and Greg MacGillivray. The structure will continue to serve as a storage space for the Police Department and there are plans to remove the toxic sludge from the building. The community hopes to turn the digester into an active space, although an adaptive reuse project would necessitate additional funds.

On Mach 19, author Kathleen Duxbury is invited to speak at the Dunn Museum in Libertyville, IL. She will share the fascinating story of New Deal artist Reima Victor Ratti, who joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to support his struggling family. A self-taught artist from Waukegan, Ratti was assigned to CCC Co. # 1699, SP-5 in Milwaukee from 1935 to 1937. Duxbury has authored a book titled, CCC Art – Reima Victor Ratti: Artists of the Civilian Conservation Corps, in which she tells the story of the artist whose work documented everyday life in the camp. The exhibit, which is open between January 25 and April 12, will showcase the artist’s work. Duxbury’s talk will offer precious insights on the story behind the artwork. See details here.

When constructed in 1935 by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as part of Camp Conner, the present day CCC museum served as the camp office and officers’ quarters. Evan Kalish, our Researcher at Large, traveled to the CCC Museum in Stafford CT to photograph the site. The rich collection of photos he shared with us shows the tools and equipment enrollees used, numerous historic photographs and artifacts, information about the enrollees and their everyday life at the camp, and fascinating memorabilia from the former Camp Conner and 21 other camps in Connecticut. The site is home to the last standing CCC barracks in Connecticut and is a fitting site for an homage to the hard work of the recruits working in CCC camps all across the nation.

What does it take to identify over 16,000 sites? A lot of hard work by the LND National Associates and others. This year, Elliott Medrich, our National Associates Coordinator, has led the effort to support the National Associates by regularly providing them with information and feedback that helps them with their site identifications and submissions. Medrich sums it up this way: “Our National Associates are fulfilling a passion. All I do is provide assistance when they ask. Otherwise I try to stay out of the way and let them do their work. It’s gratifyIng to see how much they’ve accomplished this past year, and I’m sure 2020 will be even more successful.” Thank you, Elliott for your fantastic outreach work!

The Living New Deal map now features more than 16,000 sites. We are continuing to expand the number of sites for each state, in an effort to increase the comprehensiveness of our database. California has reached 2,057 sites, Massachusetts now has 836, Mississippi has 386, New York State has 1,746, Texas has 910 sites. While the New Deal transformed every state, not all states have expansive records of New Deal projects. We are trying to fill these gaps by enlisting the help of our National Associates. Nevada now has 121 sites, Puerto Rico has 135, the Virgin Islands has 135, West Virginia has 258. We are grateful to our National Associates and numerous contributors who have made this possible.

Our National Associate Frank da Cruz has long had an interest in the built legacy of the New Deal in New York City. Much of this legacy, he argues, has been obscured by the misattribution of many public works projects to Robert Moses. Not only were projects not credited to the New Deal agencies that built them, but many of the architects who designed them remained anonymous. Frank has written about one such example—the work of Aymar Embury II, the New York City Parks Department’s chief architect from 1934 until the end of the Great Depression. Embury started his career by designing homes for the wealthy, but during the Depression he dedicated his career to public service. In an essay about Embury’s work, Frank refers to him as the “unsung hero of the New York City New Deal,” given the breadth of the architect’s work. His projects range from small park facilities to large infrastructural projects, such as the Triborough Bridge or the Orchard Beach Bathhouse and Pavilion. Find more details about Embury’s story here.

Living New Deal National Associate David W. Gates Jr. has been photographing and writing about U.S. post offices for 15 years. He is the founder of postofficefans.com, documenting post office buildings and their artworks nationwide. David visited hundreds of post offices in the course of writing his new book, “Wisconsin Post Office Murals.” It features 130 color photos, a state map locating the post offices, and the histories of the art they contain, many depicting the history, character, and industry of the towns where they were installed. David’s book comes on the heels of his visitor guidebook to Wisconsin post office murals. The federal government commissioned more than 1,100 works of art for post offices during the Depression years. The Postal Service is now selling off historic post office buildings, and the artworks therein are disappearing from public view. David has been sounding the alarm about these endangered public assets and the need to preserve the American culture and art they represent. For more on David’s work, visit http://www.davidwgatesjr.net

While traveling through Puerto Rico, our Researcher at Large, Evan Kalish, made a rare find: a living, breathing plaque for an administration most people haven’t heard of—the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA). During the Great Depression, the agency carried out most of the relief work in Puerto Rico. The plaque Evan found is part of a 1893 monument commemorating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s landing in Puerto Rico, at the very site where he landed in 1493. According to the plaque, the monument is “Reconstructed by the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration in the Year 1937.” PRRA also made improvements to the surrounding park called Colón Park, located in an area that lies just inside Municipio de Aguada. See more details and the plaque here.

Our longtime National Associate and contributor, Mississippi-based scholar Susan C. Allen, has created more than 100 new entries for our map this year. Susan is one of our most prized team members. A Professor of Social Work at the University of Mississippi, she has focused her research on murals and other New Deal sites in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Susan writes a regular column for a Mississippi historic preservation blog under the pen name Suzassippi. Susan’s work on Living New Deal entries always starts with archival research, where she finds rare sources on New Deal sites and histories. This summer, she plans to head to Atlanta and Washington DC to spend time in the stacks searching for New Deal archival treasures. Thank you, Susan for helping us grow our project!

On October 30, Living New Deal Director Richard A Walker, will speak about the Green New Deal at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. In 1932, at a Commonwealth Club address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced his vision for a radical transformation of American politics and for a New Deal for the American people. Looking at the decade that followed, Professor Walker makes the case that “A Green New Deal is possible because we have done it before.” In his writings, he has argued for looking to the original New Deal for guiding principlesthat can inform how the Green New Deal can achieve the transition to a low carbon economy and bring equitable growth. His talk examines how during the most devastating depression in U.S. history, the New Deal brought radical change in environmental conservation and public health, worker rights, income and regional equality, and public investment. The New Deal, he argues, offers a roadmap for how the Green New Deal can tackle the critical challenges the United States faces today. The talk will begin at 6:00 p.m. at the Max Thelen Boardroom. Find tickets and details here.

Residents of Fort Lee, NJ and have been mobilizing to save their cherished historic Main Street Post Office from demolition. The USPS will close and relocate the post office in a newparking garage and the New Deal structure will be demolished, as part of the city’s downtown redevelopment plan. Built in 1938, the post office building houses a valuable example of New Dealartwork. The four post office murals were commissioned by the Department of the Treasury’s Section of Fine Arts and painted by Henry Schnakenberg. The residents have written to the Mayor, arguing that the building should be converted to an educational center for the community. The Main Street post office is an important landmark for Fort Lee residents. In a letter to the Mayor, Michael Joseph Puma argues that there are few historic buildings left in Fort Lee, and this one provides a “critical link with the town’s history.” The Fort Lee Office of Culture & Heritage Affairs and the Fort Lee Historical Society are attempting to save the murals.

New York-based writer and activist, Peggy Crane, is a valued team member of the Living New Deal. For the past year and a half, Peggy Crane, our New York Branch Coordinator, has teamed up with Grace (“Jinx”) Roosevelt in an effort to build the Living New Deal’s NYC project. Under their leadership, our NYC branch has sought to revive the legacy of the New Deal across the city. Earlier this year, they organized a distinguished panel on the New Deal at the Center for Architecture. In spring, they plan to organize a panel on the Green New Deal in collaboration with Columbia University. Peggy and Jinx have worked together to create a working group made of dedicated people drawn from diverse fields including academia, architecture, urban planning, public policy, and the arts. The group meets monthly at Roosevelt House and is working on creating signage and gaining the cooperation of public officials to mark a series of New Deal sites. Peggy and the NY team are moving toward that goal, having created a prototype for the sign. They will start with the 11 public swimming pools built in the summer of 1936.

Postlandia, the brainchild of our Researcher at Large, Evan Kalish, is an expansive project focused on documenting post offices across the United States. Evan’s research has taken him to all corners of the nation—from small communities in rural America with post offices no larger than a toll booth to global cities with monumental post office buildings. His work is particularly valuable as he has documented post offices and murals that have disappeared, or are threatened with demolition. This month, Evan brings our attention to a Virginia Beach post office mural by John H. R. Pickett, now on display at the Princess Anne post office. Its original location, the Atlantic Station post office, was demolished in 2009 after being purchased by Walgreens. Despite an opposition campaign mounted by local officials, businesses and citizen groups, the structure was razed and the site was redeveloped. Many post offices across the nation face a similar fate as the United States Postal Service continues to face budget shortfalls and little support from Congress.

The Living New Deal welcomes Kurt Feichtmeir who will serve as our new  Development Director. Prior to joining the Living New Deal, Kurt was Director of Extended Learning for the San Francisco Exploratorium. His work with the Exploratorium spanned more than three decades, during which time he led the museum’s publishing program, and developed education programs for learners of all ages. He has lived and worked in Colombia and has a background in international business. At the Living New Deal, he will be working to improve our planning, expand our funding base, and widen our audience across the United States. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Kurt currently lives in Portland OR.

On Thursday, Oct. 17, 5:30 – 8:30 PM, the Specs Bar in San Francisco will host an event in support of the preservation of the embattled George Washington High School Murals. The event is free and donations are welcome. The fight to save the murals has been widely covered in the media, with many prominent voices calling for preservation, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, former mayor Willie Brown, and actor Danny Glover. Robin D.G. Kelley, a major African-American scholar and critic of racism, argued for using the murals as an educational tool about white supremacy and democracy, instead of wasting precious school funds on covering the murals. Please consider joining our campaign to save the murals and come to the Oct. 17 event.

Evan Kalish, the Living New Deal’s Researcher at Large, has traveled to Pennsylvania in search of more New Deal sites. He has discovered a fascinating New Deal vestige: a beautifully restored fragment of the Bangor PA Municipal Pool. Built by the Works Progress Administration, the pool was one of the few above-ground public pools built in the United States. The Art Deco, cement plaster architectural elements with brick insets are unique for this area and more commonly encountered in the Western and Southwestern United States. The above-ground design with bathhouses underneath was developed by Wesley Bintz of Lansing, MI. This configuration offered a cost savings of 25% to 40%, which made it an attractive solution for small cities impacted by the Great Depression. Construction started in 1936 and the pool opened on May 27, 1939. The pool was in service until the 1990s, when it was closed due to structural deterioration. The pool was demolished in 1996, but a wall segment that used to serve as the original entrance was preserved along with the original WPA plaque.

A group of Laguna Beach residents have brought to our attention that the city’s New Deal era, sewage digester building at the Laguna Beach Treatment Plant could be demolished. The Laguna Beach City Council has announced that it will not allocate funds to rehabilitate the deteriorating 1930s structure, and that demolition is the probable outcome. Located at the entrance to town, the Spanish Revival building has become an unlikely landmark and part of the city’s identity. The structure is listed on Laguna’s historic register because of its architectural significance. Many residents are supporting its renovation and adaptive reuse and are urging City Council members to convert the building into a facility that can be rented to a small business. However, council members voted in favor of demolition due to insufficient funding. The city plans to use the lot for parking. Many New Deal structures across the United States are threatened with demolition, either due to lack of public funding for upkeep or due to intensified pressure for development.

A new travel series featured on our website and authored by Fern L. Nesson, our Massachusetts National Associate, will take us on a tour of 1930s America. Titled “Travels with the American Guide Series, A WPA Federal Writers’ Project,”Fern L. Nesson’s series is a collection of essays and photographs that use the WPA’s American Guide Series as a contemporary guide. A writer and photographer with a distinguished career in law, Fern has exhibited her photography work in the United States and Europe, most recently in Arles and Provence. The travel essays showcase her spectacular photography work and engaging storytelling. Fern is the first author to reflect on the cultural landscapes of present-day America through the eyes of the federal authors writing in service of the New Deal. Following the north-south itinerary suggested by the American Guide Series, Fern has begun her journey in Maine, traveling toward Massachusetts on scenic Route One. In the upcoming weeks, we will be launching an entirely new website section titled “On the Road with the New Deal” that will feature Fern’s travel series as well as New Deal travel posts from our regular contributors.

While the San Francisco School Board plans to paint over Victor Arnautoff’s “Life of Washington” mural, the Richmond Museum of History seeks to restore another one of the artist’s New Deal era works. Titled “Richmond Industrial City,” the mural had been missing for decades. Between 1941 to 1976, it was on display at the Richmond Post Office. The mural was removed and stored due to renovations, but soon after that, the crate in which it was stored went missing. Earlier this year, it was rediscovered, and the art will be unveiled at a gala on September 12 organized by the Richmond Museum of History. The event has a dual purpose—to raise funds to restore art while also celebrating the work of the artist. “Richmond Industrial City,” captures everyday life in 1930s Richmond, depicting a diverse, blue-collar community. Painted in the Social Realism style that characterized much of New Deal art, the mural is one of 11 public artworks created by Victor Arnautoff in the San Francisco Bay Area during the Great Depression. Donations to restore the mural and gala tickets are available here.

This month, we visit San Juan, Puerto Rico, focusing on the barrio of San Juan Antiguo/Isleta de San Juan. Old San Juan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is chock-full of history, with massive structures dating to early 16th century Spanish settlements. Multiple New Deal agencies were involved with the renovation and restoration of many historic fortresses and buildings, including much of what would later become San Juan National Historic Site. Additional buildings on the Isleta de San Juan were built during the Depression era as part of New Deal efforts, and Evan photographed several locations earlier this year: the distinctive Jose V. Toledo Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, which dates to 1914 but received a six-story addition in 1938-40; the American Red Cross (Cruz Roja Americana) Building, built by the Puerto Rico Emergency Relief Administration, an arm of Federal Emergency Relief Administration; and El Falansterio, a Deco public housing complex built by the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, a New Deal agency unique to the territory.

The National Park Service plans to remove part of the Tupelo Homesteads, a Mississippi New Deal resettlement community completed in 1936. One of the few remaining “subsistence colonies” built by the Roosevelt Administration, the 35-unit Tupelo Homesteads is currently used as National Park Service offices. The structures are on the National Register, but due to the lack of funding, the Park Service plans to remove the structures and keep only 11 homesteads. Despite a call for proposals, no solutions to save the property came forth. Resettlement communities across the United States offered a new beginning to workers displaced by the Great Depression. A few acres of land, 30 cents an hour for construction work, and credit for buying a house was the assistance given to the hundreds of households that settled in Tygart Valley Homesteads, Arthurdale, and Eleanor in West Virginia. With the onset of World War II, these communities disbanded as owners sold their homesteads and returned to industrial work. Few New Deal communities survive and, just like Tupelo Homesteads, some of those that remain are threatened.

In the wake of the recent San Francisco School Board decision to destroy the New Deal murals at the George Washington High School(GWHS), the Living New Deal has agreed to join the campaign to save this magnificent public artwork. You can help in two ways. One is to write a letter to the School Board to express your concern. Another is to donate to the SAVE THE MURALS FUND, the GWHS Alumni Association’s campaign to save Victor Arnautoff’s frescoes from destruction. Despite public opposition, the Board voted unanimously on June 27 to paint over the murals. The “Life of Washington” has been the object of controversy for its unvarnished illustration of the violence that marked early American history. Those supporting conservation—preservation groups, the George Washington High Alumni Association, and numerous members of the public—have argued that the artist’s intent was to criticize and make visible controversial moments in American history. The destruction of the 1,600-sq-ft New Deal-era murals would cost at least $600,000.

LND Founder Gray Brechin and Project Advisor Harvey Smith will lead several events at the San Francisco 26th LaborFest, July 2-July 31. Titled, “Labor on the edge: Dystopia or a future for workers,” the month-long celebration of labor history will mark the 85^th anniversary of the 1934 General Strike. The Strike tuned San Francisco and the Bay Area into an important union hub. LaborFest will include tours, boat trips, and lectures that will bring the focus on pressing contemporary issues such as the increased automation of labor, the rise of the gig economy, the impact of outsourcing on collective bargaining, and more. Some of the events organized by Gray Brechin and Harvey Smith include, “Coit Tower Mural Walk,” “WPA Berkeley Walk,” “Labor Maritime History Boat Tour,” “Treasure Island: Build It and They Will Come – Organized Labor at the Golden Gate International Exposition,” and “Beyond the Controversy: The George Washington High School Murals and the Removal of Public Art.” Find the program and more details here and here.

The Greendale Historical Society has purchased a Greendale WI original home located at 5597 Apple Court and plans to transform it into a 1930s-era museum. Renovations are to begin soon. Greendale was a planned community that was part of the New Deal’s ‘Greenbelt Towns.’The program sought to create affordable housing for low-income workers. Built on approximately 3,400 acres of farmland, the community welcomed its first residents on April 30, 1938. Today, Greendale holds National Historic Landmark status. The house provides valuable insight into the New Deal’s resettlement programs of the 1930s. The museum will bring this history to life by showcasing the everyday life of the working families that built the community. According to the Greendale Historical Society, the house is the second one built in the early days of the settlement. The structure retains many of its original features. Some of the finishes include wood-beam ceilings, metal kitchen cabinetry, hardwood floors, and clay tile roofs. To fund the renovations and museum furnishings, the Greendale Historical Society has started afundraising campaign.

This month, Evan draws our attention to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Driving to this summer destination means you take one of two massive Public Works Administration bridges spanning the Cape Cod Canal (which was also widened with New Deal funds). Nearby, Joint Base Cape Cod (originally Camp Edwards and Otis Field) was the largest Works Progress Administration (WPA) construction project in Massachusetts. If you are flying in for your vacation, then you’ll pass through the Barnstable Airport, which was also dramatically enlarged with WPA funds. You can visit two classic New Deal post offices on Cape Cod—replete with artwork—in Falmouth and Hyannis. Other New Deal projects on the island include the development of Nickerson State Park by the Civilian Conservation Corps; the WPA restoration of theOld Windmill in Eastham; and the 1934 murals in the Provincetown Town Hall completed with the support of the Public Works of Art Project. Lastly, the New Deal supported environmental work, such as reforestation of the Province Lands and clam reseeding in Provincetown Harbor by the WPA.

“The New Deal Worked” is a new section of our website that seeks to counter popular and journalistic narratives portraying the New Deal as a failure or at best well-meaning but ineffective. Conservative commentators have long argued that the public programs of the New Deal were not the engine of the economic recovery (it was World War II) and failed to aid the common people. These myths are easily countered by readily available data and new scholarly research. The New Deal put the financial system back on its feet and gave the economy a big boost through relief employment and public works spending; as a result, output grew smartly from 1933 until 1942 except for one down year. Employment, wages and income all picked up, pulling households and governments out of debt. New Deal programs also modernized US infrastructure, expanded education and health care, and improved the everyday well-being of Americans. Topics covered include banking, output, employment, saving, productivity, government debt, and more.

The LND has created a new chapter in New York City, an exciting effort to reacquaint New Yorkers with the legacy of the New Deal in the city through signage, tours, and educational events. This new initiative was launched on May 7, as two hundred New Yorkers gathered for a symposium at the Center for Architecture. The keynote speaker was journalist and author Kevin Baker, whose April cover story in Harper’s Magazine, “We Can Do It Again,” showed that the New Deal can serve as a model for a Green New Deal. Phoebe Roosevelt, great-granddaughter of Franklin and Eleanor, welcomed the audience and spoke about the achievements of those who spearheaded the “great experiment we call the New Deal.” How the New Deal transformed the city and what today’s policy-makers can learn from that achievement were some of the topics covered by a panel that included author Nick Taylor, LND founder Gray Brechin, professor Marta Gutman of the City College of New York, and New York City Deputy Mayor Phillip Thompson. Find more details here.

The Living New Deal catalogues projects from all over the United States, and U.S. territories are no different. We have more than 100 projects for Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Alaska culled from archival documents. When our Researcher-at-Large Evan Kalish read an article detailing the restoration of New Deal murals at the only FDR-era post office in the U.S. Virgin Islands (following damage caused by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017), he knew he had to see them in person. The striking yellow Emancipation Gardens (a.k.a. Alvardo de Lugo) Post Office in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, was built in 1937-38, and features two Section of Fine Arts murals: “The Virgin Islands, U.S. – The Outer World Significance” and “The Virgin Islands, U.S. – The Leisurely Native Tempo.” They were completed by Stevan Dohanos in 1941 and, thanks to USPS’s recent efforts, are in great condition today. Evan has more finds in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, which we’ll feature in a future LowDown.

More than eighty years ago, the original New Deal put forward an ambitious plan to mobilize the country’s people and resources to bring the country back from the brink of economic calamity. Today, as millions of Americans find themselves excluded from participating in the country’s economic recovery, the Green New Deal has provided a much-needed vision to put America back to work in service of the public good. There is much work to do. Transitioning to a green economy, creating equitable growth, restoring damaged ecosystems are just some of the goals of the Green New Deal. At the Living New Deal, we have drawn from the lessons of the original New Deal to argue that the Green New Deal could do even more. We believe that a large-scale plan focused on climate alone, and absent a plan to tackle the country’s massive inequality, will fail to bring economic recovery. In order to succeed, the Green New Deal must resonate with the vast majority of Americans in a polarized political environment. That’s just what the Roosevelt administration accomplished.

A new exhibit co-sponsored by the Living New Deal and presented by the Jo Mora Trust will be showcasing artist Jo Mora’s works June 7–June 27, 2019 at the Canessa Galley in San Francisco. A prolific California artist, actor, author, and cartoonist, Joseph Jacinto Mora (1876-1947) worked in a variety of media—sculpture, painting, watercolor, illustration. Some of his most notable works are the bas-relief panels he created for the Monterey Courthouse and the King City High School Auditorium under the auspices of the New Deal’s Federal Art Project. His sculptures and bas reliefs can also be seen at the San Francisco’s Mining Exchange building, Bohemian Club, and Golden Gate Park. The Jo Mora exhibit reception on June 7 (6-9 PM) will feature presentations by Peter Hiller, curator of the Jo Mora Trust. The proceeds from the exhibit will benefit the Living New Deal.

The Armory Community Project needs urgent help to save the WPA-built Sheboygan Armory from demolition. Located in in Sheboygan WI, the 1941 structure served as a community center for decades, but is now slated for demolition to make way for housing development. For the past year, local community groups have mobilized in an effort to preserve the armory and find ways to integrate it in the new private development. The Sheboygan Common Council voted to demolish it, but the Historic Preservation Committee voted to place a 90-day hold on the demolition. The Armory Community Project is trying to raise funds within the next month, or the common council will most certainly vote again to demolish. The community group, which prepared a comprehensive proposal for redevelopment, has raised about $1 million. They also need your support for a referendum that would allow the community to decide the fate of the Armory. To help them preserve this historically significant public asset, consider donating to their Gofundme page.

The U.S. Postal Service is commemorating the artistic legacy of the New Deal via a new set of stamps. Five historic New Deal murals are featured on a new sheet of 10 U.S. postage stamps. Called “Post Office Murals,” the sheets are now available for sale nationwide. The stamps were formally introduced at a ceremony in front of the post office in Piggott, Arkansas on April 10th. An image of the stamp featured at the ceremony is shown here. Other communities whose artwork is represented are: Anadarko, Oklahoma; Deming, New Mexico; Florence, Colorado; and Rockville, Maryland. Our Researcher-At-Large Evan Kalish drove from New York to Piggott for the occasion, which was fitting tribute to the New Deal’s immense art programs. Along the way, he found a rich trove of New Deal sites in Kentucky and Arkansas, on which he will report in a future Low-Down issue.

At a time when the Green New Deal is galvanizing public attention, The Living New Deal’s New York Chapter has made it its mission to familiarize fellow New Yorkers with the original New Deal: what it achieved, how it transformed the city and the country, and what today’s policy-makers can learn from its example. On Tuesday, May 7, at the Center for Architecture, the LND NYC Chapter is hosting an event titled “A New Deal for New York City: Looking Back, Looking Forward,” featuring Kevin Baker as keynote speaker and a panel of commentators that will include: Gray Brechin, Marta Gutman, professor at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York, Steven Atewell, who teaches public policy at CUNY’s School for Labor and Urban Studies, and Phoebe Roosevelt, FDR’s great granddaughter. See event details here.

This month, we have co-organized several exciting events. Eighty years ago, San Franciscans, with the help of the Works Project Administration, realized a decades-old dream: building a palace for the people on the City’s northern waterfront. On Friday and Saturday, April 12-13, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, Friends of the Maritime Museum, and the Living New Deal salute that legacy with music and special events in the historic Aquatic Park Bathhouse (Maritime Museum). Find more about the Friday night gala here, and about Saturday events here. Earlier this month, the Living New Deal organized a table at the SF History Days, a weekend-long event paying tribute to the city’s heritage. LND Founder Gray Brechin held a talk at the event about the WPA model of San Francisco and the need for a city museum to give it a permanent home.

A heated controversy surrounds the WPA murals in the lobby of the George Washington High School in San Francisco. Thirteen fresco panels of the life of George Washington were painted in 1935 by renowned artist Victor Arnautoff, one of the muralists for Coit Tower. The murals have come under fire because two panels show George Washington with his slaves at Mount Vernon and Washington pointing pioneers westward over the ghostly bodies of Native Americans. Some parents have complained that these depictions traumatize African American and Native American students. Art historians have countered that the artist’s intent was, in fact, critical of national mythology. Unfortunately, the SFUSD Reflection and Action Group recommended to the Superintendent of Schools and Board of Education to paint over all the murals (which cannot be moved)—a flagrant act of destruction rather than careful historical revision.  Find more details here.

During the 1930s, the Michigan State Police modernized many of their posts with the help of New Deal funds. Evan Kalish, our Researcher at Large, traveled to Michigan recently to research several of these stations. Spurred by a major, state-wide departmental building program, these posts were built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The brick buildings were constructed according to a standardized layout that allowed them to be completed efficiently and at lower cost. Evan’s extensive inventory shows that the structures were almost identical across Michigan. The Seventh District Headquarters, the Gaylord Post, the Traverse City Post, the Cheboygan Post, the Alpena Post, the Cadillac Post show the use of the same prototype design. Such cost-saving measures might have allowed for the application of more elaborate design elements and for modern features such as radio broadcasting stations. See Evan’s inventory here.

In response to the remarkable rise of the Green New Deal to the top of the national political agenda, we have created a new section of the Living New Deal website to feature proposals and debates on the topic. Today, as the nation faces critical challenges on three fronts—environmental, political, and economic—the Green New Deal has emerged as a path to lead the nation out of a profound crisis. It represents a major, long-term commitment to national renewal and reconstruction. But if such a program is to succeed, it needs to draw on the key lessons of the original New Deal. This is where the Living New Deal can help. At the nadir of the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration responded by launching dozens of programs to rebuild the nation, create millions of jobs, provide economic security, and give the people hope of a better future. In the process, the New Deal revolutionized American politics, modernized the economy and public infrastructure, and transformed government and civil society. We believe the Living New Deal can provide sound advice to a new generation of national leaders and policy-makers based on our extensive historical research into how the New Deal operated and why it succeeded.

A series of events centered on the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Model of San Francisco will bring into focus spatial and social change in the city’s neighborhoods since the 1930s. On March 3, a talk by Gray Brechin and Stella Lochman will take place at the SF History Days. Titled, “The WPA City Model: Its Return to the Public and the Take Part Project,” the talk is scheduled at 11:45 am at the Old U.S. Mint. More than 100 events related to the SF WPA model will take place under the auspices of Public Knowledge and Take Part, the San Francisco Public Library’s partnership with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The 1,500 sq. ft. model of San Francisco built by the WPA is on display at all 29 branches of the San Francisco Public Library. How the city’s neighborhoods have changed since the 1930s is the focus of the “Reading the Model at Main,” a Take Part event scheduled on February 16 at the Skylight Galley at Main Library. The event will bring together residents and special guests for a conversation about the city’s past and its future development. “Modeling the City: Building on Toxic Land” is another Take Part event focused on the environmental threats that have emerged as San Francisco has expanded over time.

A new oral history project recently came to life through a collaboration between the Public History Program at the University of Cincinnati and the Greenhills (OH) Historical Society. Seven students set out to interview early Greenhills residents with the goal of recording details about everyday life in resettlement communities built by the New Deal. The greenbelt town was part of a larger experiment of the Resettlement Administration (RA), a New Deal agency that worked to rehouse and provide relief for displaced farmers. With the help of the Works Progress Administration, construction broke ground on Greenhills in 1935. By 1937, more than 5,000 people had settled in the new village, which featured single- and multi-family housing, modern infrastructure and community facilities. This unique government effort to improve the life of low-income Americans came to an abrupt halt with the dismantling of the RA. How residents experienced this unique moment in American history is the focus of the 20 interviews archived at New Deal Neighbors. The town is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Current efforts are underway to preserve Greenhills and prevent the demolition of its New Deal-built housing. Photo: John-Vachon.

Many historic border inspection stations built with New Deal support still mark the border between the United States and Canada. The facilities that Evan Kalish, our Researcher at Large, documented during a recent research trip to Vermont and Maine were built with Treasury Department funds. In the 1920s, fast-growing, cross-border vehicular traffic and transportation of goods rendered existing port of entry facilities inadequate for monitoring illegal crossing and trafficking. The US Government moved to design and build these stations between 1933 and 1943 as the need to enforce customs and immigration law increased. These combined Customs and Immigration Inspection stations represented a novel federal facility typology for that time. The Architect of the Treasury planned three types of border stations, which ranged from basic offices to mixed-use facilities with living quarters. Despite the need for standardization, the buildings were designed and built with attention to regional architecture. Colonial Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival, and Pueblo Revival are some of the many styles local architects applied to the basic plans. Many of these New Deal-built facilities are still in service today.

The Living New Deal, in collaboration with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and artists Bik Van Der Pol, has worked to restore and reassemble a 1,500 sq. ft. model of San Francisco built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Sections of the model will be on display this Winter at all 29 branches of the San Francisco Public Library. WPA workers built the model in 1940 at a time when the city was creating its first Planning Department. It was intended as a visualization tool for urban planners as new infrastructure began to take shape—a subway along Market Street and freeways connecting the city with its suburbs. The model took three years to complete. After a brief period on display at City Hall, it was removed and stored in a warehouse at the University of California, Berkeley. It is here that LND founder and project scholar Gray Brechin started a restoration effort that spanned multiple institutions and involved many volunteers. The model will be made available to the public after almost 80 years. See our Fall 2018 Newsletter for more details.

LND Project Historian Brent McKee recently traveled to Washington DC to document the legacy of New Deal public works around the city. Brent’s research is laying the groundwork for a forthcoming pocket map and guide to New Deal Washington DC. The map will span multiple categories of projects: major New Deal public works, notable New Deal murals, walkable sites near the Washington Monument, CCC work sites in the District, and other prominent sites farther out. Over the past few years, Brent has carried out extensive research about the New Deal at the National Archives, and thousands of entries to our New Deal database and map draw from the sources he has uncovered. The New Deal map of Washington DC will bring these primary sources together and provide a guided tour of the most prominent New Deal sites. Like our previous maps of New York City and San Francisco, the Washington DC map will provide insights for citizens, visitors, historians, preservationists, teachers and students. You can find more details about Brent’s recent trip to Washington DC here.

This month, LND Researcher-at-Large Evan Kalish brings us to the heart of the Palmetto State. Just steps from the capitol in Columbia resides the stately campus of the University of South Carolina (USC), which undertook an extensive development program in the 1930s courtesy of a substantial influx of New Deal funds. At a time when its budget had contracted by more than half, funding and labor provided by the New Deal’s Civil Works Administration, Public Works Administration, and Works Progress Administration allowed USC to improve and expand its facilities at an unprecedented rate. The McKissick Museum, multiple dormitory buildings, and the World War Memorial Building (which Evan documented here) are just a part of the New Deal legacy on the campus. The Roosevelt Administration supported public higher education and had an enlightened policy of putting millions of unemployed Americans back to work. Contrast this with the plight of so many public universities after the 2008 financial crisis, when tuitions were raised, faculty salaries were cut, and scholarships were suspended.

Starting December 15, the San Francisco History Center at the city’s Main Public Library will host an exhibition showcasing photographs of the WPA murals in the Mothers Building at the San Francisco Zoo. Richard Rothman’s photographs offer a glimpse of this important set of murals, which are currently under restoration. The Mothers Building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has been closed to the public since 2002 due to structural deterioration. It is the only building in San Francisco featuring New Deal-funded art created by an all-women group of artists. Helen Forbes and Dorothy W. Pucinelli painted four murals representing the story of Noah and the Ark. Sisters Helen, Margaret and Ester Bruton created two mosaics located outside of the building. The exhibition will be open from December 15, 2018 to March 15, 2019. Richard Rothman will give tours of the exhibit and offer information about the Mothers Building restoration on Saturday, January 12 and Saturday, February 9, from 1:00-3:00 pm.

Videos and photographs from the “Women and the Spirit of the New Deal” conference are now posted on our YouTube channel and website. The event featured leading writers, scholars, public figures, and activists, highlighted by a talk by Professor Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and author of Saving Capitalism. Reich was honored with the Intelligence and Courage Award presented by the Frances Perkins Center. The conference filled a significant gap in understanding the crucial role of women in building New Deal institutions and programs. The National New Deal Preservation Assocation gave awards to several Bay Area organizations embodying the spirit of the New Deal. You can find photos of participants here and videos of talks here.

The Canessa Gallery in San Francisco’s North Beach will host a new exhibition, “When Government Worked—New Deal Picture Stories by Arthur Rothstein,” co-sponsored by the Living New Deal and organized by National Associate Ann Rothstein-Segan. Renowned documentary photographer Arthur Rothstein photographed everyday life during the Great Depression. His work captured the struggle for survival of ordinary folk and highlighted how New Deal programs became a lifeline for many. The exhibition will include black and white, archival-quality digital prints matted and framed, as well as unframed photographs. The opening reception will be held at Canessa Gallery on Dec. 7, 6-9 PM. The last day of the exhibition will be Dec. 27th. Find more details here.

While researching New Deal sites in Oklahoma, the Living New Deal’s Evan Kalish discovered an astounding collection of Works Progress Administration (WPA) structures along State Route 325. This remote stretch of road crosses more than 20 culverts marked with WPA stamps. Evan came across them by chance, traveling from Boise City to Kenton. Such markers are reliable sources tying a site to the New Deal, but they are typically difficult to spot.  Because systematic records of New Deal public works are scarce, and rarely include exact locations, field research is often the only way to be sure of finding sites. Evan’s discovery and his meticulous recording of the markers’ coordinates is helping us build the most comprehensive database of New Deal-built infrastructure ever done.

The New Deal Legacy Calendar is the first of its kind.  The photographs show twelve New Deal public works projects from across the country, spanning several states, different New Deal agencies, and various types of projects. The idea of the New Deal Legacy 2019 calendar is to highlight the accomplishments of FDR’s many programs to revive and reconstruct America in the 1930s. Designed and assembled by our Researcher-at-Large, Evan Kalish, the calendar includes snippets of New Deal history, contemporary and historic photos of New Deal sites from the Grand Canyon to New England, and achievements of such agencies as the Works Progress Administration, Public Works Administration, and Civilian Conservation Corps. You can preview and purchase the calendar here.

The New Deal did a great deal of good in overcoming the exclusion of neglected, oppressed and marginalized people in American life. The New Dealers were faced with a daunting task of overcoming long-established patterns of discrimination and social hierarchy, and they could only do so much; yet, the accomplishments of the era’s progressive policies were substantial.  Because both friends and critics of the New Deal have often noted its failures with regard to race, gender, and religion in American life, we felt the need to rise to the defense; so we created a new section on our website, called “New Deal Inclusion,” to document the many ways the Roosevelt Administration aided the elderly, women and people of color, as well as the disabled and refugees. For more information and photographs, see our new New Deal Inclusion page.

This week the University of California, Berkeley is hosting the Living New Deal’s  “Women and the Spirit of the New Deal” conference. The 2-day event will feature leading authors, scholars, activists, and public figures discussing women’s role in the New Deal and in political change today.  John Roosevelt Boettiger, grandson of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, will speak at the conference opening. Former Secretary of Labor, Professor Robert Reich will receive the Frances Perkins Award for public service Friday evening. On Saturday, a ceremony will be held at the Berkeley Rose Garden, where the Kathryn Flynn Preservation Award will recognize outstanding efforts in education and activism for the preservation of the New Deal legacy. For further details, see the conference program and registration page here.

Traces of the New Deal’s lasting impact on our communities can be difficult to find. Fortunately, in some parts of the country projects undertaken by New Deal agencies were specifically “marked” by the agency that completed it. Such is the case in Colfax, California, a small mountain city on I-80 east of Sacramento. Evan stopped to photograph its striking WPA-built community center (formerly Colfax Grammar School) last summer. While the building itself bore no visible indication of New Deal involvement, Evan was stunned to find no fewer than five imprint “stamps” on the retaining walls and sidewalks surrounding the grounds, each attributing the work to the WPA. The “stamps” included one shield-shaped imprint that has been heavily damaged and painted over. Thanks to Evan, each of these “stamps” was photographed, documented with precise geographic coordinates, and posted to the Living New Deal map for the historical record. See them all here.

Living New Deal National Associate Andrew Laverdiere has been an invaluable member of our team for several years. A political activist and history buff, Andrew became a Living New Deal contributor while working as a taxi driver in Los Angeles. He has traveled far and wide through California and his native Maine, interviewing locals, librarians, and Historical Society staffs. Today he lives near Yosemite and gives New Deal tours of the park. Andrew has added hundreds of New Deal sites to our New Deal map. His research always starts with primary sources. At local archives, he has uncovered hundreds of written records on New Deal projects, which he has digitized for the Living New Deal. With his help, we have made available to educators and the general public data as sweeping as WPA project expenditure records and details as small as menus of school lunches funded by the CWA. Thank you, Andrew, for helping us grow our New Deal national database.

Professor, author, and public figure Dr. Robert Reich will be honored on Friday, October 5, at 6:30-8pm, at the Women’s Faculty Club at UC Berkeley as part of the “Women and the Spirit of the New Deal” conference. The former U.S. Secretary of Labor will receive the Intelligence and Courage Award from the Frances Perkins Center, named for Frances Perkins, whom FDR appointed as the first female cabinet member. It was Perkins who said, “[…] a government should aim to give all of the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life.” The award and Reich’s remarks are a highlight of the 2-day conference, which features leading authors, scholars, historians, activists, and those in public life. The public is invited to attend for a donation to the Living New Deal. See more information and register here.

The LND’s Researcher-at-Large, Evan Kalish, was traveling across Ohio looking for New Deal public works when he came across the beautiful Toledo Main Library. The Public Works Administration (PWA) and Work Projects Administration (WPA) were involved in the construction of this magnificent 1939-40 library, which features a breathtaking frieze around the entire atrium. The six-foot-tall artwork was created by inlaying hand-cut glass pieces on panels of colored Vitrolite. This spectacular mural was designed by New York-based artist John Benson. Artist Frank Sohn designed the “Philosophy” panel. The PWA supplied the funding for the project, while the WPA supplied the labor. The building was dedicated in 1940 and is still in service today as the city’s public library.

A prominent artist who made contributions to the California Scene Painting movement and had his work displayed at the White House, Milford Zornes worked on several commissions funded through the New Deal. Under the auspices of the Treasury Relief Art Project and the Public Works of Art Project, Zornes created works such as the Claremont Post Office Mural and the Chaffey College Library Paintings. The artist’s daughter, Maria (Zornes) Baker, and his biographer, Hal Baker, have donated some of his notes and documents to the Living New Deal. The materials are part of a larger collection, the Zornes Papers that the trust is donating to the Zornes Archive at Pomona College. The papers include commentary on fellow artists Maynard and Edith Dixon; notes on their house and studio in Utah; and details about collaborating with Dixon and Buck Weaver on the Palomino Horses mural at the Canoga Park Post Office.

The Living New Deal has published photographs showing artist Jo Mora at work on architectural ornaments at the Monterey Courthouse and theKing City High School Auditorium. The WPA commissioned Mora to create bas-relief panels for the two structures designed by architect Robert A. Stanton. Donated by the Jo Mora Trust Collection and curated by Peter Hiller, the photographs show the artist in his studio along with Stanton, posing with one of the Monterey Courthouse column capitals. The collection includes images of the artist at work on the courthouse fountains, the Monterey Courthouse under construction, work in progress on the bas-relief panels, and blueprints of the architectural ornaments. Some of these images have never been published and will be part of a forthcoming Jo Mora biography by Peter Hiller to be published by the Book Club of California. Find more details on Mora here and here.

This month, LND’s Researcher-at-Large Evan Kalish highlights New Deal efforts at a unique site in Georgia—the Ocmulgee National Monument outside Macon. This monument protects a pre-Columbian native settlement dating back millennia. Many New Deal agencies had an impact on the development of this site, including the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Civil Works Administration, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and the Works Progress Administration. One legacy of their work is the only Art Moderne visitors’ building in the national park system. The site is centered around the 1,000-year-old Earthlodge, which was renovated by the CCC. Ocmulgee was established as a National Monument by FDR.

Unfortunately, there is no single, systematic source of data on what New Deal public works agencies accomplished. The long-term goal of the Living New Deal is to fill that gap.  In the meantime, our Project Historian, Brent McKee, has compiled a list of what the various agencies left behind in terms of self-documentation. Some did final reports, others did not; some of the reporting was very good, some was sketchy. Poor reporting is understandable given that most New Deal agencies were closed down quickly with the onset of the Second World War – or due to hostility from conservative members of Congress.  We will continue to expand the list as more archival sources come to light.

Although they contributed significantly to the social welfare of the nation, the women who guided the New Deal’s far-reaching programs are largely overlooked. This fall, the Living New Deal, in collaboration with the Frances Perkins Center and the National New Deal Preservation Association, will host a conference at UC Berkeley to recognize the women who shaped the New Deal and those carrying on the spirit of the New Deal today. Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Professor Robert Reich will receive the Intelligence and Courage Award from the Perkins Center for his efforts to illuminate the causes of and answers to growing economic inequality. Find more information and register for the conference here: https://lndconference.eventbrite.com.

Part of a New Deal mural installation at the DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx was recently covered with paint during building renovations. The mural, entitled “Constellations,” decorated the ceiling of the school’s third floor and depicted the night sky. It was painted in 1936 by Alfred Floegel, under the Federal Art Project, along with his immense “History of the World,” on the walls below.  LND’s Gray Brechin, Frank da Cruz, and Harvey Smith spoke to the Associated Press and CNN about the significance of the mural. The media attention was a valuable reminder to the American public that public art was a vital New Deal program to help struggling artists and beautiful public spaces. The New York Department of Education said that it is considering restoring the mural.

This month, LND Researcher-at-Large Evan Kalish brings us a unique memorial from the high desert of Nevada. The Rock Creek Fire Monument was erected to honor five members of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Company 1212, Paradise Camp F-5, who gave their lives “for the conservation of Nevada’s natural resources.” The men were fighting fires in the hills outside the community of Orovada on July 28, 1939, when weather conditions turned against them.

Nevada was among the later states to reach 100 projects posted to The Living New Deal; Evan first learned of the monument as part of a personal research effort to reach that milestone. Evan writes: “I originally read a story about the monument and posted it in Jan. 2015. At the time there was only one tiny image of the memorial online, and location details were limited. So it was fortuitous that last summer [2017], during a 1,600-mile drive visiting remote post offices across northern Nevada, I spotted this stone structure at a rest stop, thought ‘something about this feels familiar,’ pulled over… and there it was! I was ridiculously excited to have rediscovered this piece of history. The project is now precisely mapped on LND.”

Dozens of the 121 New Deal projects in Nevada presently posted to our website document the conservation and development activities undertaken by the men of the CCC across the lonely landscapes of the Silver State.

The Park Slope Gallery in Brooklyn and the Leon Bibel Trust have generously provided the Living New Deal with images of previously unpublished artworks by Works Progress Administration (WPA) artist Leon Bibel.  Bibel was a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollee in 1933 and the materials published on the LND website include Bibel’s 1933 pen and ink drawings of daily life in his CCC camp.  They also include his CCC Certificate of Discharge from Fort Winfield Scott in San Francisco.  After serving in the CCC, Bibel went on to become a Federal Arts Project muralist and a WPA Arts Project administrator.  A later drawing of Bibel depicts mural artist Bernard Zakhim at work on his famous Coit Tower mural “Library.”

The Living New Deal welcomes new National Associate Ernest Everett Blevins, MFA, to its research team.  He is a structural historian working in Review & Compliance for the West Virginia State Historic Preservation Office.  Ernest has recorded and updated more than 80 LND sites in West Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina.  He has developed useful research strategies for locating sites.  Using old airport listings from Google Books, he located the abandoned Jellico Airport in Tennessee.  He also discovered that CCC camps were often listed on the enumeration maps prepared for the 1940 census.  His largest submission was based on an old newspaper article listing 48 WPA projects.  In recognition of his LND work, Ernest joined the 2018 class of West Virginia History Heroes.

Please mark your calendars for October 5-6, 2018.  We are organizing a conference on “Women and the New Deal” to be held on the UC Berkeley campus that weekend. The conference will look at the contribution of women to the New Deal and the mobilization of women today to work for the public good in the spirit of the New Deal.  Speakers include Kirsten Downey, Susan Quinn, Dyanna Taylor and Susan DeMasi, and Robert Reich will be honored by the Frances Perkins Center, our partner for this conference.  The National New Deal Preservation Association, another partner organization, will also give out awards for public service.

On Thursday, April 26 at 6:00 pm, LND’s Gray Brechin will speak at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Together with Abad Ocubillo, a senior planner from the SF Planning Department, Gray will discuss what the landscape tells us about urban history, how planning initiatives reveal the city’s power structure, and in what ways the face of the city is changing today. He will also mention the exciting news that an enormous WPA scale model of San Francisco, long gathering dust in storage, will be cleaned and reassembled as an SFMOMA public art project. The event is in the Koret Education Center on the museum’s second floor. Admission is free. Click here for more information.

Evan Kalish recently returned from New York, where the Living New Deal has catalogued more than 100 school buildings financed in part by the Public Works Administration. LND identified most of these buildings using PWA documents, newspaper articles, and other materials from the era. There are historical photos of more than 30 of these projects, including many scanned at the National Archives. These often-Colonial Revival-style schools are plentiful throughout the northeast, and Evan has photographed nearly two dozen of them in Upstate New York. Fortunately, Evan found that most of these buildings confirm their pedigree with a cornerstone or PWA plaque. Visit the site for more information about these projects.

The Living New Deal recently added a new Texas National Associate to its team . Eveline Evans is a native of Nebraska but has lived in Central Texas for over 45 years. She became interested in the New Deal when she first stumbled upon a WPA mural in a post office. She started researching and found many other types of New Deal projects that interested her. When she travels, she checks the Living New Deal website to see if there are any sites she can visit. If she finds one that has not yet been listed, she documents it so that others can enjoy the New Deal legacy. The Living New Deal now has forty-seven National Associates, all of whom are volunteers willing to help us document the New Deal in their region. Eveline, thank you for your efforts and welcome to the team!

The Living New Deal website has now surpassed 15,000 distinct, mapped sites across the United States and its territories. Several states and cities also recently hit milestones:
New York State: 1,600 sites
New York City: 800 sites
Texas: 700 sites
Pennsylvania: 500 sites
New Jersey: 500 sites
Ohio: 300 sites
Maine: 250 sites
Washington State: 250 sites
West Virginia: 225 sites
Vermont: 150 sites
New Hampshire: 150 sites
Thank you to all our contributors.
Onward to 16,000!

The Works Progress Administration built Emerson’s Borough Hall in 1938-39. The Federal Art Project employed two artists, including Albert C. Haring and one unknown artist, to create murals in Borough Hall. The building has seven murals in its basement. Emerson is considering renovating, or outright replacing, Borough Hall. While the Borough Council acknowledges the importance of potentially preserving the murals, it is not committed to preserving the front of the building, despite its historical significance. Emerson’s mayor stated that “As far as the front of the building, again, we will listen to the architect’s recommendation and decide accordingly.” Read more about the battle to save the building and its murals. You can also contact Jill McGuire of the Emerson Historic Preservation Committee at [email protected].

Evan Kalish recently traveled to New Mexico where he documented dozens of New Deal projects. Here is his summary – I love exploring New Mexico: the sunsets are beautiful, the spaces are wide-open, and the New Deal is everywhere. Melrose, N.M., population 650, has several stone WPA structures in town, and fortunately most of them are identified as New Deal. The school in Melrose bears a 1942 WPA plaque and the wall surrounding the grounds is imprinted with a WPA stamp. These are great, though when it comes to identifying its maker another Melrose project takes the cake: look closely at this wall surrounding a park and former senior center in Melrose, and you’ll find giant stone patterns spelling out “WPA” in lettering around two feet tall. He’d
almost completely missed this; fortunately the current owner was available to point it out to him! Evan also explored northeast New Mexico towns of Tucumcari, Clovis, Portales , Clayton , Raton.

In 1936, the town of Lawrence, on Long Island in New York, undertook a $825,000 project to build a high school. The town completed the project thanks to funds from the Public Works Administration. The town recently restored the building’s cupola and clock tower. The structures had been in decline for decades. With the advent of smart phones, many cities and school districts discard clock towers because of the diminished need but to Lawrence officials, the structures are important to restore – “part of combating the Depression, to put people to work.” The building is now a middle school and its new cupola and clock tower are powered by LED and smartphone technology. Read more about the project here.

The Living New Deal has now surpassed 14,000 mapped sites on its website (https://livingnewdeal.org/map/) and is rapidly approaching the 15,000 benchmark, with almost 14,500 sites mapped. We have also reached impressive milestones in a number of individual states: Massachusetts now has 800 sites, New Mexico has 300, Connecticut has 250, and Montana and Utah each have 200. We are grateful to our entire team – including the “Core Team,” our National Associates , and every individual who has taken the time to contribute sites, add information to existing sites, and spread the word about our project. Thank you for your interest and for making the Living New Deal a success. Please continue to contribute sites and information to help build on our accomplishments.

Preservationists in the Village of Greenhills, Ohio are working to save the town’s New Deal legacy. Located near Mill Creek Valley, the village was one of the three New Deal greenbelt towns built by the Resettlement Administration’s Division of Suburban Resettlement. The design of Greenhills resulted from the collaboration of town planners and principal architects Roland Want and F. Frank Cordner. A team of more than 150 people created the village. In 1950, the federal government divested itself of the property. Despite being designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016, the village has demolished multiple structures, accounting for 26 townhomes. Rumors are the village has more demolition planned. For more information contact [email protected]

Together with the Canessa Gallery in San Francisco, the Living New Deal will host an exhibit and conversation about the intersection of the public domain and private interests. The event will discuss efforts to preserve the American Commons, including two local efforts in Berkeley and Point Reyes Station. It will also feature the work of artists Daniel Dietrich, Jos Sances, Art Hazelwood, and Doug Minkler. The event will take place at the Canessa Gallery in San Francisco (708 Montgomery St.) on Saturday, January 19 from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm. The general public is welcome and the exhibit is free.

We set up an Instagram feed to share some of our trove of photographs of New Deal public works and public art. It will feature black and white photos from the archives alongside current color photos taken by Living New Deal volunteers. The idea is to share the beauty of New Deal art, architecture and landscapes, as well as showing their ubiquity around the country and provide insight into the many New Deal service programs almost completely forgotten today. Please follow us @livingnewdealproject and stay tuned for more developments. You can visit our Instagram page here but you will need to join Instagram, which is easy to do here.

Evan Kalish, The Living New Deal’s Researcher at Large, is often traveling the nation in pursuit of uncovering New Deal treasures. Just in the last year, Evan has motored around New England, the Upper Midwest and the Southeast. A new, recurring eBlast feature will update us on Evan’s adventures. He recently traveled to Mackinac Island in Michigan, where WPA engravers hand-carved detailed, two-sided oak signs showing scenes of the island’s heritage. After decades of decay, a local carpenter rescued seven signs from disposal and undertook a multiyear effort to restore them. Each sign is about 3.5 feet tall, 2.5 feet wide, and weighs almost 300 pounds. Read the full story and see images here.

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. While contacting the National Archives may seem daunting, this page makes the process easy and approachable. It’s an exciting way for people to discovery whether they have relatives who were employed in one or more of the various New Deal programs, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), or the National Youth Administration (NYA).

Brent McKee, The Living New Deal’s Project Historian, recently reviewed John W. Jeffries’ A Third Term For FDR: The Election Of 1940 (University Press of Kansas, 2017). The book is particularly relevant because the bitterness of the recent 2016 election echoed the tension of the 1940 election between Roosevelt and Wendell Wilkie. McKee notes that the book “has the right mix of interesting, often humorous stories, and academic & statistical analysis.” According to McKee, Jeffries found that “voter satisfaction with the New Deal was still high enough in 1940 to have a significant impact on the election and help secure a third victory for FDR.” McKee’s full review is on The Living New Deal website.

The Living New Deal now has at least 100 sites for every state and territory. With over 13,000 sites in total, some states have far more than 100 sites. However, it has long been our goal to cross the “100” threshold in every state and territory. The milestone represents a lot of hard work by our team – promotion and gathering of resources for the organization; detective skills in locating, researching and mapping sites; and dissecting obscure state-level government reports and publications. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, we are indebted to our contributors across the country who submit sites and information to our website. Thank you and congratulations!

Gray Brechin, founder and Project Scholar of the Living New Deal, is giving two talks in the Bay Area in early December. First, on December 5 from 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm, he will be the featured speaker at the Exhibition Program for the Victor Arnautoff exhibit at San Francisco State’s J. Paul Leonard Library. Arnautoff was a leading artist in San Francisco in the 1930s, whose best known work is the mural “City Life” located at Coit Tower. Then, on December 6 at 12:00 pm, Brechin will speak at the San Jose Museum of Art. He will discuss how the New Deal left behind an enormous legacy of art because of Roosevelt’s belief that the arts were fundamental to any civilization worthy of the name.

The Postal Service announced plans to close and sell the College Station Post Office in Harlem. The College Station Post Office was funded by the Public Works Administration and built by the Treasury Department in 1937. The Postal Service is looking to relocate to a new facility on Striver’s Row on 138th Street. The Postal Service has attempted to sell the College Station location since 2009 but the community successfully blocked the attempts. Community members and the New York Metro Area Postal Union are fighting the most recent effort. The Postal Service has closed post offices nationwide due to insufficient funding from Congress, excluding the public from many fine New Deal buildings and murals. Public comment period is open until November 10, 2017. Email [email protected] for details.

Gray Brechin, the Living New Deal’s founder and Project Scholar, will be speaking in New York City at a public program hosted by the National Jobs for All Coalition: “A New ‘New Deal’ for NYC and the USA.” He will join other New Deal scholars and speakers at The New School (Theresa Lang Auditorium) on Friday, October 27, 5-8 pm. On Saturday, October 28, Columbia Law School will host a strategic planning session for a new New Deal from 10 am to 4 pm. Visit NJFAC.eventbrite.com for more details. Gray will also be speaking at the Gotham Center at CUNY on Thursday, October 26 from 6:30 pm-8:00 pm. He will discuss how federal spending on public works transformed New York City during the Great Depression and how it could again. Visit the Gotham Center for more detail.

Brent McKee, the Living New Deal’s Project Historian, recently undertook a massive research effort at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington DC, resulting in a trove of New Deal discoveries. He scanned over 8,000 photographs, which will result in approximately 1,200 new sites being added to our online map. Brent also estimates that he found over 2,000 new photographs to add to existing sites on our website that either had no photograph or would benefit from supplemental images. The images have also been used for our recently created New Deal Smiles and Working Together pages and will be useful for future projects such as news stories, presentations, and museum exhibits. We are grateful to Brent for his diligence in uncovering these invaluable resources.

We have been hard at work upgrading The LivingNew Deal website to make it more comprehensive and user-friendly. To that end, you can now use your computer or phone’s location settings to connect to our online map to view New Deal sites near you. To use this feature, go to the map and click on the “Nearby” button on the right side of the screen.  This feature will enable users to discover New Dealsites on-the-go, in your backyard and when traveling to new destinations. Similarly, the website can now generate a list of New Dealsites for particular cities as well as states. The site catalogs approximately 14,000 sites with newsites added daily through our submissions page. Check-out the new features and enjoy the website’s expanded access to New Deal history.  

The Living New Deal has a new Project Manager, Erin Reding.  Erin attended UC Berkeley, where she graduated in 2004 with Highest Honors, Phi Beta Kappa and best student in Geography.  She finished Law School in 2007, then worked for the County of Alameda as Deputy County Counsel and as an attorney with Moscone, Emblidge & Otis in San Francisco. The Manager’s job has grown along with the LND and Erin has the skills to help us grow and prosper in the coming years.

Among the most interesting New Deal public works we have ever documented are the Alaska totem poles restored or recarved by Native craftsmen enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Drawing on materials uncovered at the National Archives, we have mapped over 100 totem pole sites. A fascinating primary source is Linn Forrest (1905-1986), the architect who oversaw the restoration under a joint program with the Forest Service. Forrest’s photographs and audio tapes reveal the difficult process of salvaging totem poles from abandoned villages, reviving the art of carving, and preserving Native cultural assets. Thanks to Brent McKee and Elena Ion for their work on this amazing trove of CCC projects.

Residents of Greenbelt, MD have created a petition to save their beloved town from changes in the Prince George’s County zoning ordinance that would weaken protections against ill-considered urban development. Greenbelt is the only one of the three New Deal Greenbelt Towns that retains most of its original features and is a National Historic Landmark. If the current Residential Planned Community Zone is eliminated without replacing it with a Neighborhood Conservation Overlay Zone, the unique character of Old Greenbelt could be impacted by incompatible development. Petitioners are looking for an outpouring of support to protect the town. For more information, contact Molly Lester at [email protected]. change.org/p/ejordan-greenbeltmd-gov-protect-old-greenbelt

This summer our longtime Project Manager, Gabe Milner, moved on to a new job and a new life. Gabe had been a pillar of the Living New Deal team for three years, keeping the operation running and organized down to the last detail. Always cheerful and ready to help, he was a model of efficiency and good will. Gabe is now teaching AP US and African American History at the Episcopal School of Los Angeles, a diverse school drawing students from around greater L.A. Gabe was the author of many blurbs for “Living New Dealer of the Month” and now it’s his turn. Thank you again, Gabe, for all you did for us!