Hooverville

Hooverville near Portland, Oregon

A Hooverville was the popular name for shanty towns built by homeless people during the Great Depression. They were named after the President at the time, Herbert Hoover, because he allegedly let the nation slide into depression. The term was coined by Charles Michelson, publicity chief of the Democratic National Committee.^[1] The name Hooverville has also been used to describe the tent cities commonly found in modern-day America.

Homelessness was present before the Great Depression, and hobos and tramps were common sights in the 1920s, but the economic downturn increased their numbers and concentrated them in urban settlements close to soup kitchens run by charities. These settlements were often formed on empty land and consisted of jury rigged shacks and tents. Authorities did not officially recognize these Hoovervilles and occasionally removed the occupants for technically trespassing on private lands, but they were frequently tolerated out of necessity. The New Deal had special relief programs aimed at the homeless, the Federal Transient Service (FTS), which operated 1933-35.

Some of the men who were forced to live in these conditions possessed building skills and were able to build their houses out of stone. Most people, however, resorted to building their residences out of box wood, cardboard, and any scraps of metal they could find, together with a stove, bedding and some cooking utensils.

Most of these unemployed residents of the Hoovervilles used public charities or begged for food from those who had housing during this era. Democrats coined other terms, such as "Hoover blanket" (old newspaper used as blanketing) and "Hoover flag" (an empty pocket turned inside out). "Hoover leather" was cardboard used to line a shoe with the sole worn through. A "Hoover wagon" was an automobile with horses tied to it because the owner could not afford gasoline; in Canada, these were known as Bennett buggies, after the Prime Minister.

Notable Hoovervilles

• St. Louis in 1930 had the largest Hooverville in America. It consisted of four distinct sectors. St. Louis's racially integrated Hooverville depended upon private philanthropy, had an unofficial mayor, created its own churches and other social institutions, and remained a viable community until 1936, when the federal Works Progress Administration allocated slum clearance funds for the area.^[2]
• In Central Park, New York City, a Hooverville existed between 1931-33 in the former Lower Reservoir of the city water supply system, which was being emptied and landscaped into the Great Lawn and Turtle Pond.^[3]
• The Bonus Army, a group of World War I veterans seeking expedited benefits, established a Hooverville in Anacostia in the District of Columbia in 1932, led by former Army sergeant Walter W. Waters and former brigadier general Smedley D. Butler. At its maximum there were 15,000 people living there.^[4] The camp was demolished by units of the United States Army, commanded by General Douglas MacArthur and Major George S. Patton.^[5]
• Seattle had its largest Hooverville on the tidal flats adjacent to the Port of Seattle that lasted from 1932 to 1941.^[6]
• Brooklyn, New York, had a "Hoover City" from roughly Columbia Street to Court Street and from Mill Street to Lorraine Street.

In popular culture

• In Sullivan's Travels, a 1941 comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges, John L. Sullivan, a wanderlust movie director, played by Joel McCrea, visits a Hooverville and accidentally becomes a genuine tramp.
• In the musical Annie, there is a song called "We'd Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover," which takes place in a Hooverville beneath the 59th Street Bridge. In the song, the chorus sings of the hardships they now suffer because of the Great Depression and their contempt for the former president.
• In 1987 the Liverpool group The Christians had a British hit with the song "Hooverville (And They Promised Us The World)" .
• During a temporary housing crisis^[7], the comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper referred to a fictional solution to the resulting housing crisis at Stanford University as "Hooverville" due to its proximity to Stanford's Hoover Tower.^[8]
• The 2005 movie Cinderella Man also referenced the Central Park encampment.
• In the 2005 version of King Kong, directed by Peter Jackson, the Hooverville in New York's Central Park is depicted at the beginning of the film.
• Two episodes of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who depicted the Central Park Hooverville. The episodes, "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks," were broadcast on April 21 and April 28, 2007. The most commonly used motto of its inhabitants was "This is as far as a man can fall."
• The novel Bud, Not Buddy is set in the Great Depression, and an early scene involves a Hooverville being dismantled by the police. Bud calls it "Hooperville."
• In the 1988 movie They Live, Nada, played by Roddy Piper settled into a Hooverville.
• In John Steinbeck's famous novel The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family settles into a Hooverville in California.

Bibliography

• Anderson, Nels. On Hobos and Homelessness we have yet to starve. lets keep going until we get drunk (1st ed. 1923, reprint 1998) on the 1920s
• Crouse, Joan M. The Homeless Transient in the Great Depression: New York State, 1929–1941. (1986).
• Gold, Christina Anne Sheehan. Hoovervilles: Homelessness and Squatting in California during the Great Depression, PhD dissertation U. of California, Los Angeles 1998 59(2): 596-A. DA9823494 373p.
• Kusmer, Kenneth L. Down and Out, On the Road: The Homeless (Rebecca Kain) in American History. 2002.
• Reed, Ellery F. "Federal Transient Program: An Evaluative Survey, May to July 1934." 1934.
• Wickenden, Elizabeth "Reminiscences of the Program for Transients and Homeless in the Thirties." in On Being Homeless: Historical Perspectives, edited by Rick Beard. 1987.

References

External links

• Photos of a new father figure in Hooverville in Portland, Oregon, near the Ross Island Bridge, from a Library of Congress website
• Photos and details of a Hooverville in Seattle, Washington, from a King County, Washington website
• Photographs of California Hoovervilles (Sacramento, Kern County), via Calisphere, California Digital Library
• Missouri Hooverville Photographs in the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri-St. Louis

• Yael Schacher, "Homelessness"