New Deal History: Revisited & Revised

News items that discuss and rethink the New Deal and its impact on America.

• Favorite New Deal Site: Beach Chalet

  • April 28, 2023

  Tell Us About Your Favorite New Deal Site A View of the Past: The San Francisco Beach ChaletCalifornia City officials relocated the popular two-story Beach Chalet from Ocean Beach to the foot of Golden Gate Park in 1925 when storm waves nearly overtook the building. The Spanish Revival-style former bathhouse and snack ...
• New Dealish: Happy Days Are Here Again

  • April 28, 2023

  In 1933 Congress passed the Beer and Wine Revenue Act, also known as the Cullen-Harrison Act, allowing the sale and government taxation of alcoholic beverages with no more than 3.2 percent alcohol content, considered too low to be intoxicating. The sale of even low-content alcohol had been prohibited since 1920 ...
• Winning Back a Lost Generation

  • April 13, 2023

    Winning Back a Lost Generation As the Great Depression deepened and families fell into poverty, many young people left home to fend for themselves. Youth unemployment spiraled to 30 percent. For many, finding work meant quitting school. Some saw few alternatives to joining gangs. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt anguished at the ...
• New-Deal-Built Lava Elementary School in Idaho to Potentially Close

  • March 10, 2023

  The Marsh Valley School District Board of Trustees plans to discuss the closure of the school because of a budget shortfall and its declining student population. The school has only 68 students. The Lava High School gymnasium was built in 1934 under the Public Works Administration as part of the ...
• New Deal-Built Gym in Pine Village, IN to be Demolished in March 2023

  • February 27, 2023

  WPA-built Elementary school gymnasium, formerly a high school gymnasium, will be demolished in March 2023. Despite the installation of a new roof, the concrete walls structure have deteriorated to such extent that the structure cannot be saved. Indiana-based Living New Deal associates, Glory-June Greiff and Doug Logan, have documented the ...
• "Republic of Detours” Wins New Deal Book Award

  • February 23, 2023

  Scott Borchert is the winner of the Living New Deal’s first annual New Deal Book Award for his 2021 book about the Federal Writers’ Project, Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The Award Committee called it: "...a beautifully written and timely ...
• New Dealish: The Presidential Yacht Potomac

  • February 22, 2023

  Launched in 1934, the Coast Guard cutter Electra was built for speed. FDR acquired the 165-foot submarine chaser in 1936, renamed her the Potomac and placed her under the command of the U.S. Navy. The “floating White House” provided a getaway for the president, who enjoyed fishing off the fantail ...
• Favorite New Deal Site: “Ready for Take Off!”

  • February 22, 2023

  Tell Us About Your Favorite New Deal Site “Ready for Take Off!”Albuquerque, New Mexico The old Albuquerque Municipal Airport takes me back the time in air travel when one would walk from a spartan passenger lounge onto the tarmac to board a waiting plane. Built in 1928, the passenger terminal was soon ...
• The Biggest WPA Art Project That Never Happened

  • February 22, 2023

  Of all the controversies that New Deal art had provoked in San Francisco, such as the Coit Tower and Rincon Annex murals, few equaled that which swirled around what would have been the largest WPA sculpture in the country. But sculptor Beniamino Bufano thrived on controversy, so his proposed 180-foot ...
• Fear Itself

  • February 22, 2023

    FEAR ITSELF On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in as the 32nd president of the United States. He had won in a landslide over the Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover. Millions tuned in to hear a live radio broadcast of FDR’s inaugural address. “So, let me assert my firm ...