Help the Living New Deal Project Document Greenbelt's History

About Living New Deal

Living New Deal (LND) is a fast-growing collection of information about New Deal projects using crowd-sourcing to document projects – already 174 in Maryland – and add more information to projects already listed.

The mission of the project is threefold:

To create a database of New Deal project
To educate the young and old about the New Deal’s achievements (as well as its shortcomings).
Our third goal is to demonstrate that the New Deal’s programs, long-term investments, aid to working people and sense of social responsibility make it a vital model for public policy today.

Living New Deal started as a small volunteer project at the University of California Berkeley in 2005 with the goal of documenting New Deal projects in California. Over 1,000 of them were quickly mapped, in partnership with the California Historical Society. Funding was provided by foundation grants. Workshops were conducted to recruit volunteers from historical societies around the state.

Then in 2012, through the use of crowd-sourcing, the project went national. With the site and app in place, people could upload details about New Deal sites using GPS coordinates, so that users of the website can find all documented projects. Researchers around the country were recruited to assist in documenting ND sites, including regional associate Edward R. Landa MPH, PhD, a member of the U Maryland faculty.

During 2021 and 2022, the number of documented sites on our national map passed 17,500.

This Week – Federal Funding is Stopped

Yesterday the staff of LND posted this bad news to Instagram:

They go on to say:

Now more than ever, it is vital to understand what the New Deal created.
Public art, historic preservation, libraries, and archives all got a big boost in the 1930s – as did health, education, conservation, and many more.
The New Deal era showed what is possible when the federal government invests heavily in American communities and culture for all.
Our work tracing the footprints of American modernization under the New Deal – and safeguarding that knowledge as knowledge for all – is in service to our awareness and appreciation of the essential civic resources provided by federal government agencies, including those currently under threat – (NEA, GSA, IMLF, EPA, NPS, etc.)
Follow the National Humanities Alliance and the American Alliance of Museums to take action. The New Deal reminds us that even in the darkest times in our nation’s history, the voices of the people and collective mobilization can bring unprecedented renewal.
What will our legacy be in the future?

Greenbelters can ALSO help by contributing content to this important project – about Greenbelt as a planned community, individual projects within Greenbelt, and even about other New Deal projects in the D.C. area. Find out how below.

Greenbelt and Living New Deal

Greenbelt as a planned community was uploaded to LND’s website back in 2012 but it remains woefully incomplete. There are a few articles about Greenbelt by LND communications director Susan Ives, as well as a few articles submitted by Greenbelters. (They’re not yet on the main Greenbelt page but I found them by searching “Greenbelt” on the website.) They are:

The Greenbelt News Review’s fight for press freedom by Susan Gervasi.
A Forest a your doorstep by Owen Kelley.
The Utopia Film Festival Presenting a New Deal Spirit Award by Susan Gervasi.
A New Deal Town Fights for its Future about opposition to the maglev train by Susan Ives.
A review of the New Deal Utopias book by Jason Reblando, covering Greenbelt, Greenhills, OH and Greendale, WI. And the author’s donation of sales of his limited edition book to Living New Deal, by Susan Ives.
A petition to protect Old Greenbelt from development submitted by Aileen Kroll.

Above, screen shot of Frank Gervasi interviewing LND’s Susan Ives.

I enjoyed meeting LND communications director Susan Ives in this video of Frank Gervasi interviewing her outside the Community Center

How to Improve the Living New Deal’s Info about Greenbelt

I asked LND executive director Richard Walker how we can help improve the site’s information about Greenbelt and he responded: “I appreciate your interest in improving our Greenbelt entry(ies)!! This should have been done long ago, but we are a small staff and depend heavily on volunteers like you and other Greenbelters for help in building up our archive of New Deal sites.”

As to Greenbelt as a planned community, “We don’t know exactly what would be best to include, so I leave that up to you or whoever wants to tackle rewriting that one.” Here’s how to submit additional information about existing sites (Greenbelt as a planned community).

He also sees the need for new pages about some things IN Greenbelt – “the community center, school, theater, housing types and even humble infrastructure. they’ll then be linked to a new, expanded main page for greenbelt. We need original photos, historic photos and text, plus sources and specific location, for any additional sites. That information can be submitted through our Submissions page on the website. It’s quite easy. Photos should have source, photographer and date. And we do take short videos, as well! For individual ’sites’, like the Greenbelt school, I imagine that anyone there doing a submission has a firm grasp on the facts and sources, plus photos, and it will go into our map quickly…It takes a week or two for new submissions to show up on the map.”

Click here.for guidance in adding those individual projects. There’s more guidance in their “Guidelines for Making Site Submissions” and “Tips for New Deal Researchers.”

Walker also suggested that interested Greenbelters could become National Associates for LND. They are “volunteers who want to continue contributing site information they find and be a part of our overall project of sustaining the New Deal legacy. Their names go on our website, they get periodic updates from us, and they can participate in our staff meetings. No responsibilities other than wanting a sustained relationship, not just volunteering some info and then disappearing.”

So who’s interested? I’m no historian but it looks like amateurs can still help and I’d like to work with others to fully represent Greenbelt on the site. I may even submit a new “project” to the site – about Greenbelt’s iconic hedges and distinctive reversal of front and back yards (called “service-side” and “garden-side” yards).

Found on the LND Site – Murals and More

I explored the LND site and can recommend the article “Was the new deal racist? which provides some context for Greenbelt’s exclusion of African-Americans for its first several decades, except as workers.

I also enjoyed perusing the site’s collection of New Deal murals and hope that some day Greenbelt will have some to contribute!