[photo credit: Pasadena Heritage]
On Thursday evening, Pasadena Heritage will host “New Deal Legacies in the San Gabriel Valley: Schools, Parks, and Public Art in a Time of Crisis,” examining how Franklin Roosevelt’s programs fundamentally reshaped the region during the 1930s.
The timing was hardly coincidental. One month after the devastating March 10, 1933 Long Beach earthquake, California passed the Field Act, establishing strict seismic safety standards for school construction. New Deal funding provided the opportunity to rebuild better.
In Altadena, Civilian Conservation Corps workers began park improvements on December 15, 1933. By 1937-38, 100 Works Progress Administration workers built Farnsworth Park’s amphitheater, baseball diamond, and walkways. La Casita del Arroyo, designed by Myron Hunt as a 1933 public works project, used Arroyo boulders and recycled lumber from a bicycle track.
The crown jewel was the Arroyo Seco Parkway, dedicated December 30, 1940. “This, fellow citizens, is the first Freeway in the West. It is ONLY the first,” declared California Governor Culbert L. Olson at the ceremony.
Depression-era art also endures, like John Law Walker’s 1937 mural “The Stagecoach” at South Pasadena’s post office, created under the Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts.
The 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. presentation by Lauren Davies, a Cal State Long Beach graduate student and Living New Deal research assistant, highlights how these investments created a living laboratory of innovation still serving residents nearly a century later.
For information, contact Pasadena Heritage at (626) 441-6333.
“New Deal Legacies in the San Gabriel Valley: Schools, Parks, and Public Art in a Time of Crisis” will run on Thursday, Sept. 11 at 6:00 to 8:30 p.m. 177 S Arroyo Blvd Pasadena, CA 91105, USA. For more information, call (626) 441-6333 or visit https://www.pasadenaheritage.org/events-tours/new-deal-legacies-in-the-san-gabriel-valley-schools-parks-and-public-art-in-a-time-of-crisis. Ticket prices: $28-$35
