The Living New Deal

The centerpiece of the Living New Deal is a website that catalogs and maps the location of public works projects and artworks created from 1933 to 1943 under the aegis of the federal government during the administration of President Franklin D.

[2] The New Deal was a constellation of economic stimulus policies and social programs enacted to lift America out of the Great Depression, and it touched every state, county, and city, as well as thousands of small towns and reached deep into rural areas with its conservation works.

What is more, most New Deal public works - schools, roads, dams, waterworks, hospitals and more - continued to function for decades and tens of thousands still exist today.

The Living New Deal website was selected as one of the 10 best new sites on the web for 2014 by Slate Magazine,[5] and has been mentioned in the Boston Globe,[6] Vox,[7] the San Francisco Chronicle,[8] and other news outlets.

Its national advisory and research boards are made up of scholars such as New Deal historians William Leuchtenburg and Ira Katznelson, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and former Council of Economic Advisors Chair Christina Romer, and members of the Roosevelt family.

They upload their discoveries, such as photographs, historic documents, news articles, and commentary to the Living New Deal's website, for example, the site submission page or via an iOS app.

The Living New Deal began as an idea for a book by Gray Brechin in 2002, but the concept quickly proved too ambitious for a single researcher.

The stock market crash of 1929 led the implosion and the downturn continued for over three years as thousands of banks and businesses failed and millions of people lost their life savings, farms, and homes.

National output recovered to pre-Depression levels just before the outbreak of World War II, which absorbed the last of the mass unemployment of the era.

In less than ten years, the New Deal public works programs built and expanded a modern infrastructure that Americans still depend on, but that few are aware of.

Moreover, in the post-war years, a concerted effort by the New Deal's critics to erase its memory destroyed many identifying markers on New Deal-era buildings and removed public artwork commissioned by the FAP and Treasury Department.

The Living New Deal's New York City chapter worked for several years with the NYC Parks Department and succeeded in getting new signage on New Deal-funded pools.

A picture of the Living New Deal's interactive map, highlighting New Deal sites, structures, and works of art.
The WPA built this Community Club House in Cottonwood, Arizona, 1938-1939.
Navajo Indians in the Civilian Conservation Corps, Indian Wells, Arizona, 1941. 85,000 American Indians served in the CCC, working on roads, forestry, soil and water conservation, and more.
Workers in the National Youth Administration, building a Student Union Building at Compton Junior College, Los Angeles, ca. 1939.
Portion of Coit Tower mural (San Francisco), by Lucian Labaudt, featuring Eleanor Roosevelt. Created in the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project, 1934.
Cascade in the Morcom Amphitheater of Roses , Oakland, California. The garden was completed by the New Deal's Federal Emergency Relief Administration in 1934-1935.
A new school in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, constructed by the New Deal's Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, ca. 1938.
WPA bridge project, Prince George's County, Maryland, 1936.
PWA-financed Chemistry Building, Howard University, historically-Black college, Washington, D.C., 1936.
Millions of women were employed in New Deal work programs, in jobs related to historic preservation, museum services, healthcare, sewing, performing arts, food services, music, libraries, and more.