Sunday, February 19, 2017

New Deal Golf Courses: 1,419+ Projects

Above: "Aspects of Suburban Life: Golf," an oil painting by Paul Cadmus (1904-1999), created while he was in the New Deal's Treasury Relief Art Project, 1936. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Above: The description for this 1937 photograph, taken in Hartford, Connecticut, reads in part, "The Goodwin Park Golf Course - WPA has added an extra nine holes... and completed other renovations..." The Goodwin Park Golf Course is still in operation today. Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA worked on 632 golf course projects (Federal Works Agency, Final Report on the WPA Program, 1935-43, 1946, p. 131). And the WPA was not the only New Deal agency to work on golf courses. For example, jobless Americans funded through the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) worked on 345 golf course projects; and young Americans in the National Youth Administration worked on 442 golf course projects (statistics from their respective final reports). Photo courtesy of the National Archives.

Above: An information display at the Oakland Municipal Golf Course (Maryland). Some golf courses recognize and display their New Deal history, but I suspect that most do not. Photo by Brent McKee.

No comments:

Post a Comment