Progress: An 84-year-old wrong righted
August 2020...
From 1934 to 1943, FDR's New Deal was responsible for at
least
1000 tangible creations in New York
City ranging from buildings, bridges, and tunnels to parks and playgrounds
to works of art; many of these are shown
below. But
in contrast to every other part of the USA,
almost none of New York City's
New Deal creations are identified by New
Deal
plaques,
cornerstones, or other markers for reasons
explained
here. Since 2013, New Yorkers
affiliated with the
Living New Deal
project at the University of California at Berkeley have been working to
have the missing markers mounted, and have just achieved their
first
success with NYC's eleven
massive
WPA
public swimming pools built in 1936. With the cooperation of the NYC
Parks Department,
medallions like the one shown are being mounted at
all eleven of these pools.
Hopefully the same medallions will also find their way to
other
New Deal Parks Department projects,
and ultimately to non-Parks projects as well: the many New Deal bridges,
tunnels, highways, government buildings, and schools throughout our city,
scaled as necessary (e.g. larger for, say, bridges).
See
story at Living New Deal.
See the medallion at Jackie Robinson Pool
and Play Center.
