THE NEW DEAL LEGACY PROJECT

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal during the Great Depression created a vast infrastructure for the nation that is now mostly invisible or taken for granted. We are now living in relatively affluent times off the work of people living during hard times. The purpose of the New Deal Legacy project is to show the forgotten legacy and lasting impact of the New Deal throughout California. The focus is on the built environment as a physical manifestation of the great ideals of the New Deal. The project hopes to show a model of good government from the past that could serve us again in the future.

Only five years separated Roosevelts inauguration in 1933 and the last New Deal measures in 1938. The New Dealers perceived that they had done more in those five years than had been done in any comparable period in American history, but they also saw that there was much still to be done. Reflecting on the accomplishments of the New Deal in 1939 Eleanor Roosevelt said, I believe in the things that have been done. They helped but did not solve the fundamental problemsI never believed the Federal government could solve the whole problem. It bought us time to think. The New Deal is now given credit for giving Americans hope, action and self-respect. People during the Depression began to see that government counts, and in the right hands, it can be made to work.

Taken as a whole this project is a prism with which to view the federal governments investment in the people and state of California in the 1930s. This investment helped end the Depression, aided the war effort during World War II and laid the groundwork for the post-war economic boom. It also vastly expanded the idea of a shared public domain. The idea of the commons has been under attack recently and this project will help us remember the lessons of when government worked.