“A Scene in Shantytown, New York” appearing in the March 4, 1880 edition of the New York Daily Graphic, via Wikimedia Commons
August 4, 2021
The history of Central Park’s Hooverville, the Great Depression shanty town
Following the October stock market crash of 1929, there was an unprecedented number of people in the U.S. without homes or jobs. And as the Great Depression set in, demand grew and the overflow became far too overwhelming and unmanageable for government resources to manage. Homeless people in large cities began to build their own houses out of found materials, and some even built more permanent structures from brick. Small shanty towns—later named Hoovervilles after President Hoover—began to spring up in vacant lots, public land and empty alleys. Three of these pop-up villages were located in New York City, the largest of which was on what is now Central Park's Great Lawn.
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