If Central Park had any real estate to offer today, it would likely house the upper crust: New York City’s wealthiest and most-privileged residents.
But back in the 1930s, Central Park’s Great Lawn was once a dilapidated shantytown called “Hooverville,” a place where homeless squatters found refuge during the Great Depression.
The park’s first shanty, which was made out of wooden planks, cardboard boxes, and other scrap materials, popped up on October 16th, 1930. Soon thereafter, the Great Lawn became an encampment for people who had lost their jobs during the economic downturn: former bricklayers, masons, and other blue-collar workers that had held trade occupations before the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
How “Hoovervilles” Got Their Name
Hooverville settlements were named after then-President Herbert Hoover, whose single term in office was not only dwarfed by the Great Depression. It was consumed by it.
The stock market crash of 1929 marked one of the bleakest periods in U.S. history. During the Great Depression, the nation’s economy went to the dogs and unemployment rose astronomically. New York City was hit particularly hard, as it hosted much of the nation’s workforce.
By 1932, one-third of workers in NYC, or approximately 640,000 people, were suddenly unemployed, forced to make ends meet. And to make matters worse, more than nine million Americans across the U.S. were out of work.
Some historians believed that Central Park’s Hooverville could have been prevented. They criticized President Hoover’s handling (or mishandling) of the economic downturn, arguing that he did little to ease the suffering of those affected by it.
President Hoover’s successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, would eventually instate several financial reforms and social welfare programs designed to revive the economy.
But this series of programs called “The New Deal” wouldn’t start until 1933. Till then, Hoovervilles were appearing not only in New York City but all over the U.S.
Notable ones included the Hoovervilles in Seattle and St. Louis. Seattle had eight of them during the 1930s. St. Louis, on the other hand, was home to the largest Hooverville in the nation: a shantytown with approximately 1,000 residents who tried to make the most of their despondency. For example, St. Louis’ Hooverville had churches and other gathering spaces that promoted a social atmosphere. Not to mention an unofficial mayor to oversee it all.
Central Park’s Hooverville: A Shantytown for the Homeless
New York City’s Hooverville wasn’t as big as St. Louis’, but it was significant for several reasons.
First, Central Park’s Hooverville was surrounded by soaring towers that housed the wealthy. This juxtaposition between the rich and the poor was in itself noteworthy. As one headline from the New York Daily News put it: “From their windows, the ‘Haves’ may look on the humble houses of the ‘Have Nots’.”
Second, despite its ramshackle appearance, the homeless population of Central Park’s Hooverville did their best to keep the shantytown looking clean and respectable. In December of 1930, about two months after the first shanty was built, a New York Times article reported on the conditions of the Hooverville in Central Park, counting nine men occupying six shacks. “We work hard to keep it clean because that is important,” one man was quoted.
But no matter how clean the shantytown was, then-New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker was against them from the get-go. He threatened to evict Hooverville’s settlers and their families at one point, calling them “a dangerous crowd.”
Later in December, NYPD officers began arresting the Hooverville’s transient residents and knocking down their shanties. But the homeless were back again by January, building more shacks out of wood and tin.
Then, in July of 1931, 22 unemployed men who were sleeping in the park were taken into custody. But as the Great Depression raged on, public sentiment toward the encampment had softened. The judge presiding over the men’s cases ruled against sentencing them and gave each man two dollars from his own pocket, according to news reports.
How Central Park’s Hooverville Became The Great Lawn
Before the shantytown was established, today’s Great Lawn was once a body of water. It was called the Lower Reservoir for its position south of the main one. The main reservoir, sometimes called the Central Park Reservoir, would be named officially for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1994.
In 1890, the Lower Reservoir was made obsolete when a new aqueduct system supplied New York City with over 300 million gallons of water per day.
Shortly after the reservoir was drained, plans for a vast green lawn in the city’s biggest park were underway, but they halted at the onset of World War I. A decade later, as the park’s core slowly transformed from a wide-open space to a slum city, many of the squatters that lived in Central Park’s Hooverville were war veterans looking for work.
One local newspaper reported: “Central Park, this splendidly kept stretch of rolling greensward surrounded by buildings and frequented by thousands upon thousands of people of all shades and classes, has been a shocking example of public neglect.”
It’s not clear how many people resided in Central Park’s Hooverville, but estimates suggest that at least 100 transients passed through what is now the Great Lawn; a place where concerts, picnics, and other events are held today.
The End of Central Park’s Hooverville
The central tension that kept the Hooverville in Central Park going was the battle between those who wanted to preserve the shantytown as a place of last resort for the unemployed and those who thought it was a disgrace.
Among the latter group was Robert Moses, who, as head of New York City’s Parks Department, would eventually make the final decision to end Central Park’s Hooverville.
Despite the threat of eviction looming large over their heads, the Hooverville occupants did what they could to keep their shantytown intact. But acts of goodwill wouldn’t stop the eviction process forever.
And so it was, in the summer of 1934, when Moses and his crew tore down most of Central Park’s Hooverville to make way for today’s Great Lawn. According to some sources, including the New York Daily News, city officials helped relocate the homeless population to another Hooverville. But other sources claimed that the Central Park settlers were evicted without any advanced notice.
Whatever occurred, it’s clear that the Hooverville in Central Park did exist, and that the city’s efforts to erase all traces of it had failed. Photographs of the shantytown between 1930 and 1934 aren’t just historical evidence of the transient encampment. They are symbols of hope and change that can be found in a place like Central Park.
