New Deal Civil Works Project Remembered in Berkeley

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-02-12/article/32215?headline=New-Deal-Civil-Works-Project-Remembered-in-Berkeley-

By Steven Finacom Special to the Planet
Wednesday February 11, 2009

In 1934, during the Great Depression, a group of Berkeley’s unemployed left a poignant message to the future in a local park.

Last Friday, Feb. 6, a group of locals gathered briefly during the lunch hour to honor that gift and contemplate what it means for past, present, and future, especially in our era that now echoes the mid-1930s with national recession, widening economic woe, and an energetic new president.

The message took the form of two small blocks of black stone, carved with “CWA” and “1934” and inset in a low wall adjoining the Codornices Park tennis courts, just north of the Berkeley Rose Garden.

Those who hand built the tennis courts during the winter of 1933-34 commissioned the simple memorial. Federal Civil Works Administration (CWA) workers pooled their “meagre income,” said the Berkeley Daily Gazette, to pay an unemployed stone carver to sandblast the inscription.


By Richard Brenneman
Harry Brill stands next to the stone carvings proclaiming the work of the Federal Civil Works Administration inset in a low wall adjoining the Codornices Park tennis courts, just north of the Berkeley Rose Garden.


“CWA workers will be remembered for many years through the medium of a cornerstone laid today,” the Berkeley Daily Gazette reported Feb. 6, 1934, 75 years to the day before last week’s gathering.

Berkeley Mayor Edward Ament attended the 1934 dedication along with Berkeley Park and Recreation commissioners and Alameda County CWA officials and “school children who will use the tennis courts.”

FULL story at link.

[dflprincess]

1. Another example for the Republicans to use in their campaign

to prove FDR's programs made the Depression worse. :sarcasm: