New Deal treasures

<p>During the depth of the Great Depression, the unemployed were put to work in Sonoma County and elsewhere building city halls, hospitals, fire stations, post offices, parks, bridges and roads.</p><p>It was the 1930s, the New Deal era, when the federal government commissioned projects to create jobs during a period of massive unemployment, said Gray Brechin, a UC Berkeley geography professor.</p><p>"Of all the states, California was fifth in expenditures," said Brechin, who will make a presentation next week in Santa Rosa on New Deal building projects, many of which still remain in use.</p><p>"There were quite a few projects in Sonoma County," he said. "It was pretty needy at the time; it was an agriculture county, and agriculture was on its back."</p><p>From the stately Analy Hall classroom building at Santa Rosa Junior College to the utilitarian Sebastopol post office, many of the structures have survived, a testament to the work of the laborers.</p><p>Cloverdale City Hall, which also once housed the police department and fire station, is a 1930s project that has been renovated over the years.</p><p>"It is a plain-Jane building, barely adequate for today's needs, but it's a pretty sturdy building," said Bob Crabb, the city's superintendent of public works.</p><p>Like Cloverdale City Hall, many of these buildings are used daily, while their origins are clouded by time.</p><p>"I am a geographer and I am interested in landscapes, particularly the landscapes that we don't see, these invisible landscapes that we use all the time," Brechin said. "It is like discovering a lost civilization."</p><p>Brechin will talk about "The Living New Deal" at noon and 7 p.m. Monday at Santa Rosa Junior College's Newman Auditorium.</p><p>The projects, built by the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps, included runways for a now defunct Santa Rosa airport, Analy High and Sonoma County's Community Hospital.</p><p>Workers in the 1930s also rebuilt Waugh School in Petaluma, which was used as a school until 17 years ago, when it was sold to a private individual who is restoring it, said Scott Mahoney, the Waugh district superintendent.</p><p>"It's cool to see the plaque on the front . . . it still says Waugh School as you drive up to it," Mahoney said.</p><p>At Santa Rosa Junior College, projects included the Luther Burbank Theater and the Jesse Peters Museum.</p><p>There was a Mission Revival-style Valley of the Moon fire station, now demolished; buildings at the Sonoma Developmental Center at Glen Ellen; the amphitheater at Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve; and Juilliard Park in Santa Rosa, Brechin said.</p><p>New Deal workers plastered the Sonoma Mission and rebuilt the Vallejo home in Sonoma, built Annapolis Road and constructed early flood-control, sewage and water systems, Brechin said.</p><p>"It was putting people to productive work. This was a long-range investment that we have been profiting from ever since," Brechin said.</p><p>Machinery was deliberately ignored so more people could be put to work, which contributed to the finished projects' life span, Brechin said.</p><p>Boulders were winched into place and buried at the amphitheater on Marin County's Mount Tamalpais, then finished smooth to provide seating.</p><p>"It will be there thousands of years. It was built as well as a real Greek theater," Brechin said.</p><p>"Trails in the Sierra are so good they are still in use 70 years later," Brechin said. "The rangers up there are trying to figure out how they were built."</p><p>The public works program ended with the start of World War II, the records largely scattered and lost, making it nearly impossible to catalog all the projects, though the impact was unmistakable, Brechin said.</p><p>"The United States had been transformed in a few years, brought into the 20th century. People have no idea anymore what it was like to drive over dirt roads, which we mostly had at that time, or drink unsafe water," Brechin said.</p><p>SRJC history teacher Martin Bennett said the New Deal's impact was felt by the workers as well.</p><p>"It was people who were unemployed. The dignity and the sense of self-worth, of not being on the dole and having a job and making a contribution to the community, cannot be underestimated," Bennett said. "That was the enduring worth of the New Deal, the faith that a better day would come."</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer</p><p>Bob Norberg at 521-5206 or bob.norberg@pressdemocrat.com.</p>