As part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s, schools, hospitals, parks, roads, sewers, airports, and other facilities were constructed by a half dozen federal agencies to lift the country out of the Great Depression. Americans have been enjoying and prospering from this legacy ever since.
Dr. Gray Brechin, a UC Berkeley geographer, will focus on these projects, which he believes are “poorly documented” and usually underappreciated, in his “Living New Deal Project” on Saturday, July 23 at 3pm at the Historical Society of Long Beach (HSLB), 4260 Atlantic Ave. His talk will be presented in conjunction with HSLB’s current exhibit “Rebuilding for the Future: A New Deal for Long Beach, 1933—1942.”
According to Brechin’s website livingnewdeal.berkeley.edu, California’s Living New Deal Project is an unprecedented collective effort to inventory and interpret the impact of New Deal public works projects on the Golden State.
During his presentation, Brechin will use the HSLB exhibit to point out examples of projects that have been demolished or otherwise lost. The HSLB’s role, in these cases, has been to preserve images and other materials that document these lost projects. The majority of the exhibit focuses on projects that remain to enhance our community. Brechin will discuss his work to collect images and other information about projects like this throughout California and the website he created to make this information available to the public.
His goal is to identify and document buildings, art works and other things created by federally sponsored construction and enhancement programs during the Great Depression, and he makes the point that a similar approach could be taken to answer some of the country’s current issues such as high unemployment and aging infrastructure.
Entrance to the exhibit is free and the show runs through Dec. 31. Exhibition hours are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays 1pm to 5pm and Thursdays and Saturdays 11am to 5pm. Special programs are presented on first Fridays through November.
For more information, call (562) 424-2220 or visithslb.org.
