Today, no trace remains of the temporary symbol of poverty and resolve that once stood in the shadows of Central Park West and 5th Avenue. Crossing Broadway. Sam Neubauer has lived full time on the Upper West Side for two years but has spent time in the neighborhood his whole life.
He graduated from Bates College in with a degree in English and Spanish and has been working in healthcare since. In his free time, Sam loves exploring restaurants off the beaten path, doing the crossword, and watching too many Mets games. Find Sam on LinkedIn. Related Posts. Tags: Central Park , history. In Seattle, Washington stood one of the largest, longest-lasting, and best documented Hoovervilles in the country, standing for ten years, between to Though there were several located about the city, this Hooverville was located on the tidal flats adjacent to the Port of Seattle.
The camp began when an unemployed lumberjack Spread over nine acres, it housed a population of up to 1, The camp began when an unemployed lumberjack named Jesse Jackson and 20 other men started building shacks on the land.
Within just a few days 50 shanties were made available to the homeless. However, the Health Department soon posted notices on every shack to vacate them within a week. When the residents refused, the shacks were burned down. But, they were immediately rebuilt, burned again, and rebuilt again, this time underground, with a roof made of tin or steel. With Jesse Jackson acting as a liaison between Hooverville residents and City Hall, the Health Department finally relented and allowed them to stay on the condition that they adhere to safety and sanitary rules.
Jackson became the de facto mayor of the shantytown, which also included its own form of community government. Ours is a sort of communistic government. We pool our interests and when the commissary shows signs of depletion, we appoint a committee to see what leavings the hotels have. Another large Hooverville was situated along the banks of the Mississippi River in St. Louis , Missouri. They too had an unofficial mayor by the name of Gus Smith, who was also a pastor. The community, which depended primarily on private donations and scavenging, created its own churches and other social institutions.
It remained a viable community until when the federal Works Progress Administration allocated slum clearance funds for the area. Between and , a hundred thousand businesses failed across the nation. Racial minorities, women, and the unskilled were the first to lose their jobs. Some unemployed became transients, searching for jobs and food. Families doubled up in apartments, others were evicted and built makeshift houses.
Groups of these dwellings for the homeless were called Hoovervilles. In Seattle, one of the largest cluster of homeless was located on the tide flats on the site of the former Skinner and Eddy Shipyard.
Its boundaries were the Port of Seattle, warehouses, and Railroad Avenue. A city of shacks, dwellings were fashioned from packing boxes and any other discarded materials the residents could find. Hundreds of men lived there. Other large cluster of shacks in Seattle were located in the southern industrial section and in Interbay. The Great Depression was the most severe and enduring economic collapse of the 20th century, and included abrupt declines in the supply and demand of goods and services along with a meteoric rise in unemployment.
Multiple factors led to the Great Depression, including the U. Additionally, although the s, also known as the Roaring Twenties, had been a decade of prosperity, income levels varied widely and numerous Americans lived beyond their means. Credit was extended to many so that they could enjoy the new inventions of the day, such as washing machines, refrigerators and automobiles.
As the optimism of the s gave way to fear and desperation, Americans looked to the federal government for relief. In his estimation, prosperity would return if people would simply help one another. And although private philanthropy increased during the early s, the amounts given were not enough to make a significant impact. Many Americans in need believed the resolution to their problems lay in government assistance, but Hoover resisted such a response throughout his presidency.
As the Depression worsened and millions of urban and rural families lost their jobs and depleted their savings, they also lost their homes. Desperate for shelter, homeless citizens built shantytowns in and around cities across the nation.
These camps came to be called Hoovervilles, after the president. Democratic National Committee publicity director and longtime newspaper reporter Charles Michelson is credited with coining the term, which first appeared in print in Hooverville shanties were constructed of cardboard, tar paper, glass, lumber, tin and whatever other materials people could salvage. Unemployed masons used cast-off stone and bricks and in some cases built structures that stood 20 feet high.
Most shanties, however, were distinctly less glamorous: Cardboard-box homes did not last long, and most dwellings were in a constant state of being rebuilt.
Some homes were not buildings at all, but deep holes dug in the ground with makeshift roofs laid over them to keep out inclement weather. Some of the homeless found shelter inside empty conduits and water mains.
No two Hoovervilles were quite alike, and the camps varied in population and size. Some were as small as a few hundred people while others, in bigger metropolitan areas such as Washington , D. Whenever possible, Hoovervilles were built near rivers for the convenience of a water source.
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