Margolis - Public Works and Economic Stability

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Cultural Infrastructure: The Legacy of New Deal Public Space Author(s): Robert D. Leighninger, Jr. Source: Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), Vol. 49, No. 4 (May, 1996), pp. 226-236Published by: on behalf of the Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Association of Collegiate Schools of

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Cultural Infrastructure: The Legacy of New Deal Public Space

ROBERT D. LEIGHNINGER, JR., Louisiana State University

The agencies of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration had an enormous and largely unrecog- nized role in defining the public space we now use. In a short period of ten years, the Public Works Administration, the Works Progress Admin- istration, and the Civilian Conservation Corps built facilities in practically every community in the country. Most are still providing service half a century later. It is time we recognized this legacy and attempted to comprehend its relationship to our contemporary situation.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE ROLE OF PUBLIC SPACES IN American life cannot afford to neglect the contribution made by the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. This brief but rich period of commitment to public building produced many of the works that define the public space we now use. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that there is hardly a community or a citizen in the country who has not benefited in some way from the facilities constructed during this time. In addition to the roads, bridges, schools, courthouses, hospitals, waterworks, and post offices-traditional infrastructure-that most people might think of when asked about the New Deal, there were also parks, museums, swimming pools, community centers, playgrounds, colise- ums, markets, fairgrounds, tennis courts, zoos, botanical gardens, auditoriums, water- fronts, city halls, gyms, university unions, and numerous other kinds of structures built across the country. Most are still in use. They constitute an immense legacy of what might be called a cultural infrastructure underlying our public space.

There were public works projects before the New Deal and since, but for scope and variety, there is nothing else like this in our history. Life magazine called it "the great- est public building program in the history of mankind."' My purpose here is to promote

awareness of this legacy and to begin a sys- tematic assessment of it. The circumstances that produced it may be unique, but architects and others concerned with public space and public life should at least know about the New Deal public works projects and how they changed our social and cultural landscape. The knowledge could provide us with a surer foundation for future plans.

The New Deal public works projects were a response to the massive unemployment of the Great Depression rather than a vision of a national need for public spaces. These projects were heavily influenced by cal- culations of the number of people who might be taken off relief rolls and of the possible stimuli to sectors of the economy producing building materials. Harry Hopkins, head of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), said bluntly, "The objective of this program as laid down by the President [is] taking 3,500,000 people off relief and putting them to work. The secondary objective is putting them to work on the best possible projects we can, but don't ever forget that first objective. '2 Nonetheless, there was an awareness at the time that a long-term investment in American society was being made. As Louisi- ana WPA Administrator James H. Crutcher observed, "It is true that thousands of Loui- sianians have been afforded work in these programs, but it is also true that residents of the state will enjoy for many years those new roads and streets and their children will be given added educational facilities provided by the men and women on the relief rolls of Louisiana."3 Some historians have even argued that a sense of need for public facilities was as least as strong a motivator as the desire to reduce unemployment. Jean B. Weir as- serts that "as the WPA grew and consolidated its policies, the social, rather than the economic outlook became more and more pro- nounced. It was social theory emphasizing the value of individual pride derived from

useful work and the need for cultural im- provement in American society which lent coherence and consistency to a program that seemed, and in large measure was, disorga- nized in its method of operation."4

The WPA was not the only, or even the most important, agency engaged in public works. The Works Progress Administra- tion (later called the Work Projects Administration) got the most attention and the most criticism at the time. It has come to stand in the public mind for all the New Deal public building programs-this synec- doche complicates research-but it was only one of several ingredients in Roosevelt's al- phabet soup.

The first program to embark on construction of public facilities was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Beginning in April 1933, it recruited young men between the ages of seventeen and twenty-eight to stop soil erosion, plant trees, fight forest fires, create parks, build or repair roads and bridges, and do other work in rural and sub- urban areas. The men were formed into companies of two hundred under military supervision and sent to camps throughout the country for basic conditioning and six months or more of labor.

Next into service was the Federal Emergency Administration for Public Works, known more commonly as the Public Works Administration (PWA). Under Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, the PWA was re- sponsible for the more traditional, large-scale public works projects: dams, tunnels, airports, and larger public buildings. It began in June 1933 and continued operation, with some interruption, until 1942.

It became clear almost immediately that the PWA would not have enough of an impact on unemployment soon enough to relieve the misery of the depression. This was in part because large projects required careful planning and in part because they

Journal ofArchitectural Education, pp. 226-236 ? 1996 ACSA, Inc.

May 1996 JAE 49/4 226


relied on skilled workers and heavy machin- ery. As the winter of 1933 approached, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) was created to employ more unskilled laborers in labor-intensive projects like road building. The CWA lasted only from November 1933 until March 1934, but it provided useful experience for the creation of the WPA the following spring. The WPA, led by Hopkins, operated from May 1935 until June 1943, by which time World War II had taken care of unemployment and di- verted resources from domestic construction to overseas destruction.

For students of cornerstones and plaques, it is worthwhile knowing that in July 1939, the PWA and the WPA were in- corporated under a single agency, the Fed- eral Works Administration (FWA). They maintained their separate missions and ad- ministrations, but the structures they built were identified with the umbrella agency and its head, John M. Carmody.

The accomplishments of all of these agencies were enormous. The Final Report on the WPA Program, 1935-43 claims 40,000 new and 85,000 improved buildings. This includes 5,900 new schools; 9,300 new auditoriums, gyms, and recreational buildings; 1,000 new libraries; 7,000 new dormitories; and 900 new armories, 400 of which were also community centers and recreational buildings (many of the rest have since been converted to such).' WPA workers built 2,302 stadiums, grandstands, and bleachers; 52 fairgrounds and rodeo grounds; 1,686 parks covering 75,152 acres; 3,085 playgrounds; 3,026 athletic fields; 805 swimming pools and 848 wading pools; 1,817 handball courts; 10,070 tennis courts; 2,261 horseshoe pits; 1,101 ice-skating areas; 228 band shells and 138 outdoor theaters; 254 golf courses; and 65 ski jumps.6

The final report of the PWA provides less specific totals (but, unlike the WPA, has

1. Central Park Zoo, New York City, PWA, 1934.

2. Conservatory Garden, Central Park, New York City, PWA, 1934. Quiet in winter, this is a favorite site for weddings in other seasons.

227 Leighninger


3. Chicago shoreline, WPA/PWA, 1938. To the north is a WPA beach house that looks like an ocean liner.

microfilm records on a project-by-project basis for those with the patience to view them). In addition to dams, airports, bridges, hospitals, and courthouses, this agency gave the nation 7,488 educational buildings, 103 auditoriums and armories, and 149 recreational buildings.7

The CCC developed more than eight hundred state parks. The "soil soldiers" restored 3,980 historic structures, built 204 lodges and museums, improved 5,000 miles of beaches, built 4,622 fish-rearing ponds, surveyed and mapped millions of acres and hundreds of lakes, and planted 3 billion trees.8 They refurbished and made more ac- cessible important historic sites like Gettysburg, Appomattox, Chickamauga, Mesa Verde, and Fort Frederick.

Many of the projects constructed by these agencies were modest. Others were spectacular, even by modern standards. The Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway, the Key West Overseas Highway, Mount Hood's Timberline Lodge, the Orange Bowl, the Chicago Waterfront, Washington National Airport, the naturalistic animal habitats at the Saint Louis Zoo, and the Lin- coln Tunnel are all very impressive, even monumental, undertakings. We view them with respect, but we also take them for

granted now. They are a fixed part of the landscape. We inherited them, it seems, from earlier ages of master building. How many of us realize that they and their thousands of less eye-catching companions did not accumulate slowly over a century or two but were all bequeathed to us in one short space of ten years by a (more or less) coor- dinated government program?

One reason why we fail to recognize that these public spaces were all constructed during the same time period is that there was no attempt to impose a uniform style on them. Enough buildings followed the "starved classicism" or "Greco-Deco" style of Paul Cret to generate the label WPA Moderne. However, if that is all one is looking for, one misses the vast majority of WPA/PWA structures. Some are full-blown Art Deco, a few are modernist, some follow regional styles like pueblo adobe or New En- gland clapboard. Many were variations of Colonial Revival that are impossible to dif- ferentiate from other such buildings constructed before or long after the New Deal. Park structures may sometimes be identified as "government rustic,"' but most look to the average citizen like generic park structures. It is understandable that the scope of New Deal public works goes unnoticed.

Goals and Agendas

The stated goal of public building programs was to end the depression or, at least, allevi- ate its worst effects. Millions of people needed subsistence incomes. Work relief was preferred over public assistance (the dole) because it maintained self-respect, re- inforced the work ethic, and kept skills sharp. Employed people would spend their earnings, thus maintaining employment for merchants and producers of consumer goods. Building things would also stimulate that part of the economy that produced building materials. Enough of this pump- priming would, according to Keynesian theory, revive the whole economy.

There were unstated but politically useful fringe benefits of public buildings. Because most PWA and WPA projects were locally initiated, state and local politicians could take credit for these civic improve- ments and legitimize their power. They, in turn, would be indebted to the Roosevelt administration for this support. The jobs created by public projects were, themselves, a way of building support for both local and national leaders.

Those in Washington could use this largess to favor some local politicians and punish others. The prudence and delibera- tiveness of "Honest Harold" Ickes carried the PWA through this era with very little scandal, but the WPA was more heavily in- volved in local politics. Big city bosses like Edward Crump in Memphis, Edward J. Kelly in Chicago, Thomas J. Pendergast in Kansas City, and Frank Hague in Jersey City depended heavily on WPA projects.'0 It should be noted that this process was more carrot than stick. Roosevelt was completely unsuccessful in using the threat of denial of PWA funds to New York to get his old enemy Robert Moses fired. Huey Long worked to keep PWA funds out of

May 1996 JAE 49/4 228


Louisiana rather than have them controlled by others.

There was considerable contemporary criticism of the New Deal agenda from both left and right and from inside the administration as well as outside. Business leaders wanted no government intervention in the construction market and saw public works as socialistic or communistic. Labor leaders feared a further depression of prevailing wages. William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), called the CCC, with its one-dollar-a-day wage, "forced labor."" Ickes constantly had to protect his budget from raids by the WPA as Roosevelt's priorities moved back and forth from immediate unemployment relief to longer-range economic stimulus. It is not surprising that Ickes felt that Hopkins was spending money too quickly and without concern for the quality of the projects.12

Radical critics charged that an underlying purpose of public works projects was to counter the threat of any revolutionary action attempted by the poor and unem- ployed. Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, among others, have made this case. They believe that the Workers Alliance of America, the best organized radical force at the time, sold out to the WPA. However, they also quote Herbert Benjamin, one of the Workers Alliance leaders, who defends cooperation with the WPA as the best tac- tic to further the political education of workers.13 Other historians have argued that the WPA created protest rather than sup- pressed it, that most activism was to extend New Deal programs, and that "the Alliance owed its strength not to radicalism or grass- roots activity, but to its role as a trades union for WPA employees."'14

Diane Ghirardo has exposed in the rural programs of the New Deal a political agenda that she finds surprisingly similar to that behind Benito Mussolini's New Town

4. French Market, New Orleans, PWA, 1938, a combination of historic preservation and new construction.

program. Both were based on an ideology that a return to rural life would restore the virtue and stability (read: individualism and capitalism) being undermined by urban in- dustrialism. They both devoted considerable effort to reeducating and controlling the residents of their varied rural settle- ments.'5 Ghirardo also notes, however, that New Deal urban housing programs spent much less on education and supervision.'6 Furthermore, because most PWA and WPA projects were urban and locally controlled, neither the content nor the mechanics of this ideology seems to apply to them.

The dust has now settled. It may still be useful to argue about why these things were built, but the fact that they were built is important in itself. It is time we attempted to comprehend what we have inherited, assessing how it has been used and continues to be used. I would like to suggest a few starting points.

Long-Term Investment

Architects, planners, and politicians can speculate on the value of a proposed project, but New Deal projects have a track record. Their contributions, whatever they are, ex-

tend over half a century. This should not only help us assess the effects of the public spaces provided by New Deal works on the quality of American life, but also make very clear to us that such projects are not just a short-term expense, but a long-term investment. This also means that the context of pork-barrel politics is too narrow for an adequate assessment: these structures are still in use long after the last pork-chopper was buried.

Terms of Analysis

We might begin with economic impact, because it was economic concerns that brought New Deal projects into being. The projects accomplished their primary purpose of providing employment for millions of people, but many continue to bring millions, even billions, of dollars into state and local economies as tourist attractions or local anchors for restaurants, hotels, shops, and services. Mount Mansfield's ski trails, built by the CCC, have brought billions in commerce and real estate to the little village of Stowe, Vermont.

These payoffs were not uppermost in the minds of New Deal planners. If calcula- tions of future economic impact were even

229 Leighninger


5. "Jewel Box," Forest Park, Saint Louis, PWA, 1937, home of flower and garden shows.

attempted, they would probably have been far short of the fifty-year reality. Thanks to the fact that these things were built, we have a baseline for comparing initial cost with long-term economic benefit.

We should also examine demograph- ics. Park, zoo, and museum managers can tell us how many thousands of people use their facilities every year. Multiplied by fifty or sixty years, those numbers will be impressive. That is just the beginning. How are these things used, by whom, and why? Art museums may attract high-income adults, whereas zoos serve a much broader socio- economic and age spectrum. What is the ratio of "active" and "passive" park users? Why is ice skating in Saint Louis's Forest Park a predominately white activity and roller skating on the same space predominately African-American?17 This work has already begun. For example, the studies by William H. Whyte on patterns of street and park behavior are a particularly creative guide to urban planning."8 The works of Donald Sexton in 1973 and of William Kornblum and Terry Williams in 1982 were relied upon heavily in the restoration and management of Central Park.19

Is it possible that there are building type biases in what was built and not built? Adolf Hitler had Albert Speer construct large spaces for political rallies. Did Roosevelt avoid politically charged spaces in favor of more neutral or distracting ones, such as zoos or gardens? It does not seem so. Gathering spaces like community centers and amphitheaters were common; some, like the Orange Bowl and the Cow Palace, are quite large. Yet when we have done a comprehensive inventory, there may be some biases to be found.

Public space is not just a matter of profits and popularity. In both calculable and incalculable ways, public facilities have an impact on the quality oflife. The contri-

May 1996 JAE 49/4 230


bution of recreation to health is well documented. The contribution of recreation programs to crime prevention is less well documented but generally recognized. Other benefits are less tangible. Educators make regular use of museums and zoos for formal instruction, just as families use them for informal instruction and relaxation. Family therapists and developmental psy- chologists testify to the importance of family outings. All of these things have consequences, but reckoning them in terms of family or public expenses would be purely speculative.

How do we reckon the value of being outdoors? What does the opportunity to "commune with nature" mean to us? In their classic study, The Quality ofAmerican Life, Angus Campbell and colleagues attempted to assess satisfaction with community. They included schools, streets and roads, parks and playgrounds, climate, services, and taxes in their ratings. Responses to parks and playgrounds were among the most stable and consensual of citizen per- ceptions, and they made a measurable contribution to community satisfaction.20

Before the New Deal, many states had no state parks. After "Roosevelt's Tree Army" went home, there were eight hundred of them. New York's Central Park had Frederick Law Olmsted's magnificent land- scaping, but no playgrounds. In its first years, the PWA added twenty-one of them, plus a permanent zoo and a conservatory garden. We can only guess what satisfaction with community and nation such spaces have produced.

Finally, we should consider the ideology that might have defined public space for the New Deal. We saw earlier the concerns for reviving a capitalist economy and maintaining civil order behind New Deal public building. We also noted the pragmatic aim of sustaining allies who might deliver votes

6. College of William and Mary stadium, Williamsburg, Virginia, PWA, 1936.

in the next election. Is there something else that might have motivated New Deal projects?

One of the things that public space can do is encourage the integration of all aspects of the community. Almost all of the projects that the PWA, WPA, and CCC undertook were places where people of all ages, classes, and races (in some places more than others, until segregation was made il- legal) might come together. Parks, playgrounds, fairgrounds, museums, zoos, and gardens offer something for almost everyone. They were available without admission prices or user fees. Roosevelt was leading a very diverse population during stressful times. He also headed a party that com- bined within its ranks many of the newer and more diverse elements of the population. Furthermore, the constituents of his party included the less educationally and economically privileged. National unity, or

at least urban party solidarity, might have been somewhere in his mind.

On the front of Kiel Auditorium in Saint Louis, a building not designed by the PWA but completed with PWA money, there is a quote from Woodrow Wilson: "Simple means should be found by which through an interchange of points of view we may get together. For the whole process of modern life is a process by which we must exclude misunderstandings, bring all men into counsel, and so discover what is the common interest." Harold Ickes believed that community institutions would revital- ize democracy.21 He thought that national parks and monuments were "unique and happy fortifications against unrest and war.))22 Roosevelt, in the dedication of Gla- cier National Park, stated that national parks would convey the message that "the country belongs to the people; that what it is and what it is in the process of making is

231 Leighninger


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7. John M. Parker Agricultural Center, Baton Rouge, WPA, 1937. The center is host to rodeos, 4-H Club conventions, and livestock and garden shows.

for the enrichment of the lives of all of us."23 These may be platitudes that speech writers produce for ceremonial occasions. However they were intended, it might be worth our while to take them seriously.

A prerequisite to establishing a public interest is a recognition of a common hu- manity. One aspect of this is feeling safe in the company of others. Two historians of Central Park conclude that in the period after World War II, "many New Yorkers ap- parently came to view Central Park as relatively safe as they grew more comfortable with people of different backgrounds and came to accept that black and Puerto Rican teenagers or gay men, as such, were not in- truders there."24 The causality of this relationship is open, but the correlation is important.

Recently, this democratic ideal of public life through the experience of public space has been eroded. As cities become

more economically and ethnically segre- gated, opportunities for interacting in public with others in the community diminish. We lose a sense of diversity and no longer practice our skills of civility.

The ideology of New Deal civility, as- suming it existed at all, is hard to find now. Both public and private builders have been focusing on other things. A book on Chicago public works that was published in 1973 devoted only fifteen of its 224 pages to public buildings and sixteen to "beautification" projects like pools, parks, and playgrounds.25 Convention centers, domed stadiums, and shopping malls are the major types of public spaces built in the postwar period. These places contribute to local economies and provide activities for citizens, but how do they compare in terms of health, education, and recreation with parks, museums, swimming pools, and historic sites?

Domes offer spectator sports rather than athletic participation-and only to those who can afford the increasingly expensive tickets. Shopping malls are among the few newly created places where people of all ages, classes, and races now come together. Besides spending money, the main activity afforded by the malls is walking and hanging out. These are not unimportant pastimes, but they are not high on the list of activities that might make our lives healthier and richer. Festival marketplaces have saved old buildings in in- ner cities, but they, too, are primarily venues for consumption. They offer a sense of the excitement and diversity that city centers used to embody, but in a way that is free from both threats and surprises.

John Chase has summarized this ideo- logical shift: "The importance of voluntary and obligatory participation in civic life has been usurped by the consciousness of the ar- bitrary nature of assigned cultural meanings and by the increasingly important role that consumption of goods and services plays in the formation of individual identity."26 With all of this space currently devoted to consumption, it is difficult to think of any other way to arrange public life. Perhaps an awareness of New Deal public space as a vast cor- pus can provide a counterpoint that reminds us of what we are missing in much of the public space constructed since then.

An Example

One of the more unusual and multifaceted public spaces to be constructed with the help of the New Deal is San Antonio's Paseo del Rio, or River Walk. The San An- tonio River snakes through the heart of the city. During the early years of the century, it had become a sewer and was, moreover, a constant threat to life and property. A flood in 1921 killed fifty people and caused $50

May 1996 JAE 49/4 232


million in property damage. Plans for di- verting the river and filling in the old channel were discussed.

In 1929, Robert H.H. Hugman, a local architect inspired by the survival of the French Quarter in New Orleans as a conviv- ial space, drew sketches of a clean, land- scaped river with walks, stairs, bridges, shops, and food stalls. Floods would be controlled with a bypass channel with gates at both ends. In 1938, a local hotel owner became interested in the plan and mustered some financial support, but the City Coun- cil refused to match the donations. Maury Maverick, a New Deal supporter, was elected mayor in 1939 and quickly arranged a WPA grant of $325,000 to add to the $75,000 raised by river property owners. The final project cost a total of $442,900, of which property owners paid $82,700.

River Walk offers one and three-quarter miles (twenty-two city blocks) of land- scaped walkways connecting thirty rock and brick stairways (and one made of cedar) with twenty-one bridges. It includes the Arneson River Theater, which has amphi- theater seating for one thousand on one bank and a stage and dressing room on the other. The theater connects with La Villita, a complex of buildings that was the city center before the Alamo battle. La Villita was restored by the National Youth Administra- tion, yet another New Deal agency.27

River Walk has had ups and downs since its completion. It was described as "San Antonio's major tourist attraction" in 1948.28 Guidebooks were attracting tourists and conventioneers to take boat rides. River Walk fell into neglect in the late fifties but was revived for the HemisFair in 1968. In 1984, it was awarded a Distinguished Achievement citation by the American In- stitute of Architects.

In addition to the shops and restaurants that line River Walk, a three-story, en-

8. River Walk, San Antonio, WPA, 1939-1941. Architect Robert Hugman's office. Despite his role as creator of River Walk, he was fired from his supervisory position in 1940 over questions raised about the allocation of WPA funds.

233 Leighninger


9. Arneson Theater seating. The stage is on the other side of the river.

10. Bridge and people on the River Walk.

closed shopping mall and convention center now connects with the river. The current commercial contribution to city wealth is considerable. The Texas Department of Commerce estimates that total tourist expen- ditures in San Antonio in 1992 were $1.8 billion. Tourism employs thirty-five thousand people and is the second largest and fastest-growing industry in the city.29

Consumption has not completely eclipsed the other functions of this space. Downtown workers during the day and families at night and on weekends can enjoy the sun and flowers without an entrance fee. An estimated 10 million people use it every year.30 Arneson Theater hosts everything from opera to flamenco concerts. River Walk is an integral part of civic festivals and community rituals. The King of the Festival of San Jacinto, which began in 1891, rides a barge through the city, and the Battle of the Flowers has river-borne as well as street- level processions. La Villita is a focus of the fiesta, as it is in other celebrations, such as Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day. There are two annual art fairs on the riverbanks. At Christmas, luminarias line the river as Mary and Joseph lead the posadas procession in search of shelter for the birth of Jesus.

Conclusion

We may conclude that there are benefits to public spaces that are healthful, educational, or recreational, that encourage the skills of civility, and that are free and open to all. That, however, does not mean that such things are still viable. We must reckon with the forces, in addition to consumerism, that undermined these kinds of places. Our current environment encourages people to stay at home. The decay of public transporta- tion, the fear of crime in public spaces, and

May 1996 JAE 49/4 234


the convenience of in-home entertainment have taken a heavy toll on public life. The situation is not helped by the fact that public bodies have lost the resources to main- tain non-revenue-producing public space-New Deal and otherwise. What are the prospects for New Deal-style cultural infrastructure?

It is possible that new political movements will help us rediscover a commitment to public life and that further work by environmental criminologists will show us how to make public spaces safe,31 or it may be that we are better off looking for community in cyberspace. Computer networks don't know the race, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, or national origin of their users. Only education and access to a computer with a modem limit the interac- tion. Perhaps architects and planners should find ways to provide these kinds of spaces to everyone. Of course, there's not much fresh air or exercise in cyberspace.

Henry Luce's Life magazine was not a particular friend of the New Deal. There- fore, its assessment of the PWA is particularly interesting. "Time alone can tell whether the nation could afford to spend four billion dollars for PWA's 34,000 projects. But nobody can look at a represen- tative sample of those projects and deny that they are, in themselves, useful and good."32 Well, we did afford it. That investment stifled neither labor nor capital. We moved on to a period of prosperity in which we could have built on this investment. In- stead, it seems, we chose to live on the dividends for the next half century. In San Antonio, "the parks, libraries, and cultural facilities that constituted a major part of bond proposals in the 1930s had all but dis- appeared" in the following decades.33 In many cities, we have not only not enhanced our inheritance, but we have allowed the principal to erode scandalously. The amaz-

ing thing is that the quality of building was such that dividends are still being paid.

Why were we able to convince ourselves that we could "afford" to make this investment in a time of economic depression? Perhaps because we defined it primarily not as an investment in our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but as a way of feeding ourselves and our children. Long- term investment is politically difficult in the best of times. Instead, the focus is on an immediate payoff. This is increasingly the case in economic life as well. Selling assets or fir- ing workers to make this year's budget look good is much easier than investing in new equipment or training. As long as we see the world only in the short run, we cannot "afford" public works. It takes a crisis like a depression, a war, or a natural disaster to put into perspective what we can afford to do and what we cannot afford not to do.

In architectural criticism, says Diane Ghirardo, "the fundamental questions ad- dress what is built for whom."34 The PWA, WPA, and CCC built an incredible number of things, and more than most of what has been built since, they built for all of us. Until the abolition of segregation, not all of us had equal access to all of these facilities, but they were still there to be used once that injustice was corrected. This legacy is not just the varied public facilities, now into their second half century of use. It is not just in the subtle ways that they have enriched our lives-some measurable, some beyond measure. It is also in the reminder that we once found that we could afford to build a public life of variety and quality.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to J. Michael Desmond and an anonymous reviewer for comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1. "PWA Has Changed Face of U.S.," Life, Apr. 1, 1940:61.

2. Quoted in Lois Craig and the Staff of the Federal Architecture Project, The Federal Presence: Ar- chitecture, Politics, and Symbols in United States Gov- ernment Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977), p. 355.

3. "WPA Issues Report," New Orleans Item- Tribune, Apr. 1, 1939.

4. Jean B. Weir, A WPA Experiment in Archi- tecture and Crafts: Timberline Lodge (unpublished dis- sertation, University of Michigan, 1977), pp. viii-ix.

5. Federal Works Administration, FinalReport on the WPA Program, 1935-1943 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1946), p. 52.

6. Ibid., p. 131. 7. Public Works Administration, America

Builds: The Record of PWA (Washington, DC: Gov- ernment Printing Office, 1939), pp. 288-91.

8. National Association of Civilian Conserva- tion Corps Alumni (NACCCA), Did You Know? pho- tocopied handout (St. Louis: NACCCA, n.d.).

9. Phoebe Cutler, The Public Landscape of the New Deal (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 77.

10. Lyle W. Dorsett, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the City Bosses (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1977), pp. 45-47, 73-76, 88-89, 103-5.

11. Page Smith, Redeeming the Time: A People's History of the 1920s and the New Deal (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), p. 440.

12. Harold Ickes, "My Twelve Years with FDR," Saturday Evening Post, June 12, 1948:111-13.

13. Francis Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail(New York: Random House 1977), pp. 80-92.

14. Anthony J. Badger, The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-40 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), p. 203.

15. Diane Ghirardo, Building New Communi- ties: New Deal America and Fascist Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).

16. Ibid., pp. 6-7. 17. Caroline Loughlin and Catherine Ander-

son, Forest Park (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1986), p. 210.

18. William H. Whyte, City: Rediscovering the Center (New York: Doubleday, 1988).

19. Reported in Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Re- building Central Park: A Management and Restoration Plan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), pp. 23-31.

235 Leighninger


20. Angus Campbell, Phillip E. Converse, and Willard L. Rogers. The Quality ofAmerican Life (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1976), pp. 231-238.

21. Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 459.

22. Quoted in Cutler, The Public Landscape of the New Deal, p. 76.

23. Ibid., p. 90. 24. Rosenzweig and Blackmar, The Park and

the People, p. 481. 25. Department of Public Works, Chicago

Public Works: A History of Chicago (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1973).

26. John Chase, "The Garret, the Boardroom, and the Amusement Park," JAE47/2 (Nov. 1993):75.

27. Louis Lomax, San Antonio River (San An- tonio: Naylor, 1948); Green Peyton, San Antonio: City in the Sun (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1946), pp. 188- 89, 194-202; and Charles Ramsdell, San Antonio: A Historical and Pictorial Guide (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958).

28. Lomax, San Antonio River, p. 77. 29. San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bu-

reau, personal communication, June 13, 1994. 30. Richard Hurd, River Operations, San An-

tonio Department of Parks and Recreation, personal communication, June 13, 1994.

31. Amitai Etzioni, The Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Communitarian Agenda (New York: Crown, 1993). See Oscar Newman, De- fensible Space (New York: Macmillan, 1972) and Com-

munity of Interest (New York: Doubleday, 1982); Albert J. Reins, Jr., and Michael Tonry, eds., Commu- nities and Crime (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); and Paul J. Brantingham and Patricia L. Brantingham, eds., Environmental Criminology (Pros- pect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1991).

32. "PWA Has Changed Face of U.S.," p. 62. 33. Heywood T. Sanders, "Building a New

Urban Infrastructure: The Creation of Postwar San Antonio," in Char Miller and Heywood T. Sanders, eds., Urban Texas: Politics and Development (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1990), pp. 154-73.

34. Diane Ghirardo, ed., Out of Site: A Social Criticism ofArchitecture (Seattle: Bay Press, 1991), p. 15.

May 1996 JAE 49/4 236


Article Contentsp. 226p. 227p. 228p. 229p. 230p. 231p. 232p. 233p. 234p. 235p. 236

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of Architectural Education, Vol. 49, No. 4 (May, 1996), pp. 209-274Front Matter [pp. 209-209]The Frontier Is Our Home [pp. 210-225]Cultural Infrastructure: The Legacy of New Deal Public Space [pp. 226-236]Cultural Identity in Modern Native American Architecture: A Case Study [pp. 237-245]Architecture in a Changing World: The New Rhetoric of Form [pp. 246-258]Review EssayReview: Race and the City [pp. 259-263]

Book ReviewsReview: untitled [p. 264]Review: untitled [pp. 264-266]Review: untitled [pp. 266-268]

Op ArchForm Follows Information? [pp. 269-271]

Back Matter [pp. 272-274]

Margolis - Public Works and Economic Stability

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