Sometimes as you travel around you like to have a theme to guide, or at least punctuate, your wandering. Churches – town halls – parks. How many can you spot? What can you learn about them?
“New Deal” construction, designed to put the unemployed to work during the Great Depression, was vital not just to turning the tide in the 1930s, but to boosting the economic boom of the 1950s. You may pass some of these every day, but not realize that they ARE from the New Deal. So here’s a little local cheat sheet.
School construction boomed in those years. We are still using New Deal schools in Avoca, Arkport, Dryden, Ovid, Interlaken, Canisteo, and Troupsburg, not to mention the Cuba, Jasper and Prattsburgh schools, which all got major expansions or renovations. Cohocton school has an octagonal tower, hinting at Cohocton’s Orson Squire Fowler, who popularized the octagon house. These schools are now almost 90 years old, so it’s both amazing and delightful that they’re still plugging away, doing their jobs! Bear in mind, though, that all of these schools have been expanded and altered since the 1930s – we’re not seeing them now as they were when new.
Howard school (now used for business) is in private hands, and so is Curtiss Memorial School, with its stunning Art Deco front, in Hammondsport.
Modern bridges seem to have been a New Deal priority – we weren’t in horse and buggy days any more! Clinton Street Bridge in Binghamton has an Art Deco design. Corning’s Chemung River Bridge (on Bridge Street) was the biggest New Deal project in the city. Bath V.A. got a sorely-needed new bridge too, plus a hospital and a nursing facility, all of them replacing predecessors from back as far as the 1870s, and all of them still in use.
Bath proper also got a new wing to join separate buildings at the old Bath Memorial Hospital (now Pro Action) on Steuben Street. (Republican U.S. Representative Sterling Cole made sure his district got good projects from the Democratic president!)
Like the V.A., post offices were federal facilities, so post office projects could be arranged pretty quickly. Remember how much of the nation’s business used to be carried on by mail? Modern post offices sped things up, and they appeared in Painted Post, Honeoye Falls, Waverly, and Watkins Glen. Geneva, Newark, Canandaigua and Cortland* post offices all got significant additions. The 1939 Horseheads post office is now home for Community Foundation of Elmira-Corning and the Finger Lakes.
Folks who thought that the government should not be spending money on such projects got REALLY riled up about paying for artwork! But artists had to eat too, so several of these post offices got murals. Painted Post has “Recording the Victory,” in which Native Americans celebrate having captured Revolutionary War soldiers. This painting was damaged in the 1972 flood, and afterward restored. Honeoye Falls has a more peaceful agricultural scene, “The Life of the Seneca.” Waverly’s mural is about the early days of White inhabitation. Geneva’s post office has a mural inside, and a set of five bas reliefs outside! Cortland has a striking and unusual wooden relief artwork, “The Valley of the Seven Hills.”
If you like the art side of things, you MUST visit the world’s largest collection of New Deal art, at Livingston County New Deal Gallery in Mount Morris. About 10% of the collection is on exhibit at any time.
There’s plenty more stuff around, as you can see by www.livingnewdeal.org. Much of the work was in tree planting, storm sewers, guard rails, and such, but what we’ve listed here are all easily findable, and visually interesting.
Two words of warning! First, folks get understandably antsy when they see people hanging around the school. Take a look, check it off on your list, and move on – if you want to take photos, go on Sunday.
Second, as far as I can tell it’s not permitted to photograph the post office murals. This is supposed to be a “homeland security” thing, which I suppose is actually not about the murals, but about photographing the interiors of federal buildings. If you want a picture ask, but be prepared to be turned down. Apart from those caveats, hit the road! And have a good time! “Happy days are here again!”