The Giant’s Vigor: An early exit from the Great Depression
- Thread starter King(Henry)George
- Start date
The army is getting more funds because there’s a larger CCC which is being administered by the army. FDR’s like yeah sure when MacArthur is asking for more officers to run camps and for the CCC to pay their salaries.
It comes out to around 50 million a year (total military budget was 700 million in 1934 otl) do you think this is insufficient for large scale training, not what they would spend the money on or just an unlikely appropriation so I should change the numbers?
No military training but administered by military officers who are being paid for, freeing up extra money in the rest of the army.
Do you think congress or someone else would reallocate the funding to the Air Force or navy? I’m happy to increase naval or air spending instead but I just want to make sure that’s what would happen in this scenario.
This is really fantastic well-crafted work King(Henry)George. Not often I can find someone referencing Scott Sumner or the role high/increasing wages played in worsening the Great Depression. Just really great, I'll be watching where you take this.
Correct me if I'm wrong but this feels akin to a progressive consumption tax?
Thanks for the kind words. Hopefully I can continue this level of quality but I know less about war than economics so there’s probably going to be semi frequent revisions.
Yep, it’s a progressive consumption tax. Fisher proposed it OTL in 1942 to fund the war.
Shouldn't this be (P-WI)? Wikipedia says he was part of the Wisconsin Progressive Party, not the Farmer-Labor Party.
Huge kudos for actually tackling the economics which is so often overlooked in timelines.
Also good to hear that the butterflies are flapping, an American recovery should help in general but successful policies being looked at is also very reasonable.
While you've also researched this far more than I have, my own light reading of the Great Depression era was very surprising to see how labour was treated, NIRA being a whole mess, etc.
Also good to hear that the butterflies are flapping, an American recovery should help in general but successful policies being looked at is also very reasonable.
While you've also researched this far more than I have, my own light reading of the Great Depression era was very surprising to see how labour was treated, NIRA being a whole mess, etc.
I agree on how surprising politics in the Great Depression were. My favorite example is the time the house voted something like 4 to 1 in favor of setting a 30 hour work week. FDR was just choosing lucky numbers to decide how much the price of gold should increase. Everyone was winging it in a very alien way to the present.
Chapter 8: Big Trouble in Little Europe
Chapter 8: Big Trouble in Little Europe
The United Kingdom
The British were in a much better position than their wayward son across the Atlantic. Their main depression had happened a decade ago, in 1920. They dropped from 46.2 to 40.6 jobs for every hundred people in just one year. From 1929 to 1932 it would only drop from 42.4 to 40.3. The mining towns might have been in very rough shape, heavily reliant on the dole after demand for the earth's bounty dried up, but the UK did not experience the deluge which afflicted the United States.
On May 30th, 1929, the Labour Party would win a plurality of the house of commons, 287 seats, with 37.1% of the vote. The Conservatives would win 260 seats with 38.1% of the vote while the Liberals would come in 3rd at 23.6% and 59 seats respectively. No party could form a government by themselves but Labour would lead a coalition under Ramsay MacDonald supported by the Liberals under Lloyd George.
Labour's Coalition would prove inadequate in dealing with the depression, eventually falling apart due to an inability to compromise on the degree to which unemployment benefits should be cut on August 24th, 1931. Arthur Henderson was unwilling to support the cuts while Chancellor of the Exchequer, Phillip Snowden and MacDonald would not support either deficit spending or even higher tariffs.
MacDonald had been convinced by King George V to not resign and instead lead the new government at least to the next election. British Labour unions howled at the Conservative turn and unwillingness to keep unemployment benefits, as such even the Labour Party would split into Labour under Henderson and National Labour under MacDonald. National Labour would form a coalition with the Conservatives and the Liberals which named themselves the National Government.
The October 27th elections would bring a tidal wave of support for the Conservatives who received 55.0% of the votes and 470 out of 615 seats in the House of Commons. Labour had fallen dramatically to only 52 seats and 30.6% of the vote. National Labour had split off from them and had 13 seats with 1.5% of the vote. If you treat the two as the same party, the Labour of 1930 had lost 222 seats and 5.0% of the vote, two diverging metrics due to the first past the post system in the UK.
Although Labour was in a rough spot, the Liberals had even bigger losses in popular support. They too had split, into the National Liberals with 35 seats and 3.7% of the vote, the Liberals with 33 seats and 6.5% of the vote and finally the Independent Liberals with 4 seats and 0.5% of the vote. Altogether, they would lose 12.9% of the electorate but win a total of 72 seats, a 13 seat gain.
The great irony of the National Government is that the UK had left the gold standard on September 18th, so the constraints that bound deficit spending were gone. Speculative attacks on the pound would improve Britain's trade position by making their exports more competitive. Right when balanced budgets became an albatross on Britain's neck, she doubled down on them.
MacDonald continued to be the leader even after the election with a cabinet now majority Conservative. Fights would continue as tariffs were debated to raise revenue. In the end 1933 would have a 32 million pound deficit (0.8% of gdp) followed by a 47 million pound deficit (1.0% of GDP) in 1934. Employment would begin to recover though not as fast as the Americans. There were 41.0 jobs per 100 Brits in 1933 and 42.2 per 100 in 1934. Within spitting distance of 1929 levels but far from 1920.
France
The winter I spent on the streets - the winter of '32-33 - was no milder nor harder than any other winter; the winter cold is like labour pains - whether it lasts for a longer or shorter period of time there is always the same amount of pain. That particular winter, it snowed and it froze; thousands of young men, forced out of their jobs by the crisis, struggled on to their last penny, to the end of their tether then, in despair, abandoned the fight... On street benches and at métro entrances, groups of exhausted and starving young men would be trying not to die. I don't know how many never came round. I can only say what I saw. In the rue Madame one day I saw a child drop a sweet which someone trod on, then the man behind bent down and picked it up, wiped it and ate it.
- Morvan LebesqueThe French were exceedingly proud of their economy with the newspaper Figaro saying "For our part let us rejoice in our timid yet prosperous economy as opposed to the presumptuousness and decadent economy of the Anglo-Saxon races".
France wasn't wholly immune. Private consumption might not have dropped but private investment halved. France's wholesale prices dropped 34% between 1929 and 1932 as the same international deflation found its way into the country due to the gold standard.
France too escaped most of the hardships the US faced in the Great Depression. Its real GDP peaked in 1930instead of 1929 like most countries and its decline would be much more gradual than the US or even the UK.Where the US real GDP fell 0 % from 1929 to 1932, French real GDP only fell 12%. In addition, Francewould see no drop in private consumption as all of the drop was in investment and French unemployment never exceeded 5%.
Instability in Government
Raymond Poincaré (AD), the leader of a center right coalition would resign in July 1929 due to his ill health.
Aristide Briand (PRS) would take over and lead a center left coalition in attempting to reconcile with the other European nations such as Germany. These actions were not supported and he resigned after losing parliamentary support.
André Tardieu (AD) led another center right coalition which fragmented due to opposition from left wing parties and internal coalition disagreements on how to respond to the Great Depression, labor rights and foreign policy. He was seen by some as overly authoritarian and unwilling to compromise, which alienated potential allies and exacerbated internal divisions. He ran into allegations of corruption and would resign in February 1930 after losing a vote of no confidence.
Camille Chautemps (PR) would try leading a center left coalition and would also fail to tame his coalition leading to him resigning after losing a vote of no confidence in March.
André Tardieu (AD) was back and tried a similar strategy as his first go. He would resign after his coalition failed to pass anything substantive and as the Great Depression came to France. He would once again lose a vote of no confidence in December.
Théodore Steeg (PR) would attempt to balance the budget through various austerity measures and would face criticism from both the left and right. He too would resign after losing a vote of no confidence in January 1931.
Pierre Laval (SP) would again try austerity measures along with improving relations with Italy and Germany. He would resign after losing the support of the chamber of deputies in February 1932 (good job lasting a year!)
André Tardieu (AD) hoped the third time was the charm. He was wrong. He would attempt to strengthen the power of executive and lose a vote of no confidence in June.
Édouard Herriot (PR) sought to address the crisis by funding public works projects. He lost support in the Chamber of Deputies before resigning in December.
Joseph Paul-Boncour (PR) would also try austerity but had a stimulative streak in him. He also sought to maintain France's alliance system and international commitments. Paul-Boncour lost a vote of no confidence in January 1933.
Édouard Daladier (PR) tried to combat the rise of fascist leagues and maintain republican order. He faced opposition from the right and lost support in the Chamber of Deputies before resigning in October.
Albert Sarraut (PR) he too would seek to strengthen government authority and fight political extremism. He would face opposition from both the left and right before losing a vote of no confidence in November.
Camille Chautemps (PR) faced the Stavisky Affair, a major political scandal that undermined public confidence. Alexandre Stavisky was a Russian Jew who sold hundreds of millions of Francs worth of fake bonds, died under mysterious circumstances and was protected by Chautemps. He would resign in January 1934 among growing political pressure.
Édouard Daladier (PR) would take power following the extremely short Chautemps government.
On February 6th 1934, Paris would be wracked with riots. Leagues of Frenchmen from Action Française which sought a restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy to Francisme, a league of fascists to Croix-de-Feu a veterans association. These groups would head for the Place de la Concorde and overwhelm the police guarding the bridge over the Seine towards the Place. The Protestors would call for the resignation of much of Parliament and enter the Bourbon Palace, the meeting place of the National Assembly, near midnight. Shots were fired and 41 would end up dead with over 4000 wounded.
The next days meeting in the National Assmebly would see damage all over the interior and the various left wing parties excluding the PCF would rally around Daladier as he declared a state of emergency to deal with the insurrections. After arresting many of the leaders of these groups for their involvement in the attempted coup, Daladier would face increasing pressure to devalue the Franc to fight the US dollar's position which granted it advantages in export markets.
The Franc would officially leave the gold standard on June 4th, 1934 amid protests from the right. Although France would not face the dramatic recovery of the US, prices slowly began to rise as the Bank of France lowered interest rates and bought government bonds. The price increases had not been born of a contraction in supply but rather an increase in demand from the easier credit. Private investment would begin its march upwards from its 1933 lows and part time work faded in France as jobs became more plentiful.
Sorry for the late chapter, it's really hard keeping track of french political parties, especially when the english and french wikipedia pages disagree on who was part of what.
No Italy today because I didn't have enough time. I'll throw it in with the Soviet Union.
No Italy today because I didn't have enough time. I'll throw it in with the Soviet Union.
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Also, the main changes are that there is a very slightly faster British recovery and larger deficit. For France, the protests on the 6th are stronger and make it past the bridge. This leads to a rally round the flag effect for the French left as they fear the rise of fascism. They also exit the gold standard 2 years early.
Chapter 9: A Couple Guys with Guns
Chapter 9: A Couple Guys with Guns
Between 1918 and 1933 the United States produced only 35 tanks and no two of them the same model.
- The Big 'L'Specifically it lacked motorized equipment essential to rapid transportation of troops: the Army still moved almost entirely on foot. Its mechanized combat equipment was limited principally to tanks, and these (with the exception of a handful of test units) were the obsolete World War I stocks with a maximum speed of 4 to 5 miles per hour and highly vulnerable armor. The infantry rifle was still the Springfield 1903 bolt action model: as of 30 June 1934 the Army possessed only 80 semiautomatic rifles.
- R Elberton Smith, The Army and Economic Mobilization, Page 1241933 and 34 were slow years for the Army. Their officer corps was either running normal duties on a skeleton crew, organizing throngs of unemployed men to plant trees, dig ditches and build bridges or training as a new hire.
West point would increase its authorized strength to 2040 to cope with the new demand for officers though it wasn't the only academy to expand. The Army Industrial College's graduating class of 1925 might have had only had 9 graduates, but its numbers expanded to 43 by 1933 including Major Dwight Eisenhower the chief military aid of Douglass MacArthur. The College would continue to grow as 6,000 new officers were demanded by Roosevelt, reaching a size of 103 by 1935.
Despite their apparent increased budget, bickering in congress and elsewhere had siphoned most of the Army's new funding to the Navy. MacArthur would have his extra officers but there would be expansions in the regular army nor new equipment to buy.
Where the Army was sullen, the Navy was ecstatic with their gains to do what they wished with.
US Navy Budget by year:
1928: $348,332,000
1929: $383,143,000
1930: $364,693,000
1931: $399,243,000
1932: $347,199,000
1933: $593,927,000
1934: $411,433,000
1935: $406,296,000
In 1933, the United States Navy found itself constrained by the limits imposed by the London Naval Treaty of 1930. The treaty, signed by the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, France, and Italy, set restrictions on the total tonnage and construction of warships in an effort to prevent a naval arms race.
Under the treaty, the United States was limited to the following tonnages:
Battleships: 525,000 tons: The US possessed 525,850 tons, slightly over the limit.
Aircraft carriers: 135,000 tons: The US had 76,800 tons of carriers, making it an area with room for significant build out which the Navy would make use of.
Heavy cruisers: 180,000 tons : With 149,753 tons the US was close to the limit but more ships could be constructed.
Light cruisers: 143,500 tons : 67,050 tons of light cruisers made it another area ripe for construction.
Destroyers: 150,000 tons: The US significantly exceeded the limit with 192,190 tons.
Submarines: 52,700 tons: The US slightly exceeded the submarine tonnage limit at 54,421 tons.
While the U.S. Navy was mostly compliant with the treaty limits, it was apparent that the fleet was aging and in need of modernization. Many of the battleships and cruisers dated back to World War I or earlier, and had lots of room to upgrade their means of propulsion and fire control systems among other things.
Traditional steam turbine designs would be replaced with geared turbines, high pressure steam plants and even diesel engines in the case of certain submarines and auxiliary ships. Some experiments were done with electric drive systems where electricity would be generated with a steam or diesel turbine and then used for the propellers but the technology would not be in wide use.
Mechanical computers such as the Mark I Fire Control Computer would be introduced to many of the Navy's ships. These Rangekeepers could predict the future position of a moving target based on its current speed and direction, allowing for more accurate gunfire. Optical rangefinders were upgraded, with longer baseline rangefinders being installed. These provided more accurate distance measurements, which were crucial for effective fire control. The incorporation of gyroscopic stabilization in fire control systems helped to counteract the effects of the ship's movement due to sea conditions. This stabilization ensured that the fire control solutions remained accurate even in rough seas.
Prior to the 1930s, individual gun turrets or batteries were often controlled locally by their own crews. Each turret would independently track and aim at targets based on their own observations and calculations. This method, while functional, led to inconsistencies and inefficiencies, especially when multiple turrets needed to engage the same target. The introduction of director control systems centralized the targeting process. A director is a specialized optical sighting device mounted in a high position on the ship, usually on the superstructure, providing an unobstructed view. The director would track the target and provide continuous updates on its position and movement.
In addition to general modernization the Navy would to engage in a massive carrier building program to approach the 135,000 ton limit laid down by the 1930 London Naval Treaty. In addition to the USS Yorktown and USS Enterprise which had been laid down in early 1934, the USS Wasp would begin construction in November and the USS Hornet in March of 1935.
Existing shipyards were expanded, and new ones were built to accommodate the construction of modern warships. This included the installation of new dry docks, cranes, and other heavy machinery to handle larger and more complex vessels. Shipyards were equipped with more advanced tools and technologies to improve efficiency and precision in shipbuilding and repairs. This included the introduction of welding techniques over traditional riveting, which allowed for stronger and lighter hulls.
Finally research and development efforts would have enough allocated to them that the Bureau of Ordnance would be able to test live torpedoes, if only a couple times a year. In October 1934, Robert Morris Page would create a device able to detect a plane a mile away over the Potomac following Albert H. Taylor's suggestion to Leo C. Young to pulse radio waves.
In 1935, the United States Army, flush from the return of its many officers in CCC camps, began an extensive set of training exercises during its summer season. 15,000 men would be shipped north of Yellowstone where they would participate in what was dubbed the Montana Maneuvers.
Beginning on July 10th, the Red and Blue Armies would face off with the goal of testing the impact of rough terrain on motorized logistics over longer periods of time. The use of trucks was quickly overshadowed as the temperature continuously climbed day after day. The 10th had a high of 83 degrees, the 11th 91, the 12th 97, the 13th 99 and the 14th would reach a blistering 108 forcing the maneuvers to be called a day early. The troops were thoroughly unprepared for such a high temperature in Montana and action died down even before the halt was called.
Phase 2 would last from the 22nd to the 27th which was thankfully cooler. Lieutenant Colonel George Patton would lead the 3rd Squadron of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment along the Yellowstone River and up through Slough Creek in an effort to arrive behind Blue Army. Almost half the trucks taken with him had ran out of fuel or become stuck by the time they arrived due to excessive leakage from gasoline containers, improper planning and poor terrain. Trucks which were left behind would have their crew split in two, with most staying back for a possible refuel and defense while some would continue marching before the horses or even catch a ride on vehicles that remained, often hanging on the side.
Once they arrived, the hanger-ons would split off from the supply trucks and act as extra infantry to supplement the horse riders and the handful of mechanized troops. Despite causing much damage to the back ranks of Blue Army, Patton would be hampered by a lack of supply due to the harsh terrain and repeated fuel leaks. After action reports would note this fact and call attention to the poor quality of the US Army's fuel storage that required both a funnel and a wrench.
Though larger at 25,000 men, the Pine Camp Maneuvers would be overshadowed by the Montana Maneuvers for their innovative use of motorized dragoons pioneered by Patton two decades prior in the Pancho Villa expedition.
It wasn't only the Regular Army which heightened the size of its training. The California National Guard would hold the largest field maneuver in its history on July 14th, 1935.
The Northern Army, the "Blue Forces", led by General Wallace A. Mason of San Francisco clashed with the "Red Forces", under the command of Walter P. Story of Los Angeles. The objective of the Red Forces was to capture the River from the Blue Forces, and once captured, it was imperative that this strategic territory be held.
Even though one of the main military objectives of these maneuvers was to train the motor transport detachments in the moving of regiments, the more serious object of this practice war was to train the soldiers in military combat strategy both necessary skills of warfare.
Before leaving Camp San Luis, the troops and their commanders were warned to be especially careful not to do any damage to private property in the area, as there were no funds available to pay for damages. Any damages caused by the troops would have to be paid for from the organization's funds or assessed against the persons responsible.
The soldiers were also warned to take necessary precautions to avoid contact with poison oak and to watch out for rattlesnakes.
In all, 12 station wagons and 119 trucks were used to transport the troops to this great battle site on the river.
When the Blue Army finally dug in on the Mesa after a two-day forced march from Camp San Luis, the night was foggy and damp and the soldiers were simply worn out. The men of the Red Army, though, having been transported from Los Angeles by train, were filled with energy and able to quickly get into position after a relatively short walk to the battle site. Other Red Forces came from the San Joaquin Valley via Highway 166.
After spending the night formulating its plans, the Red Army was ready for the assault.
Just before the crack of dawn, when the attacking Reds made their assault on the exhausted Blues, the defending 184th men, dazed and still half asleep, were no match for the aggressive Reds.
Meanwhile, a drive was underway by the advancing infantry to capture Gen. Mason's headquarters in Los Beros. However, a successful counterattack by the 159th stopped the Red drive.
Meanwhile, Pvt. George Hayes of Company E, 160th infantry, one of the Red troops, almost upset the entire exercise by infiltrating enemy territory, and obtaining classified information. After being captured by the Blue he escaped.
To add insult to injury to the Blues, in the course of trying to make his escape, he casually walked up to a high-ranking Blues officer and asked directions. The officer, thinking that Hayes was on his side, gave him directions to the road. Hayes went on his way, but not before stealing the officer's plans and reports, and taking them to the Red Army headquarters.
Both sides fought valiantly but after two days of combat, the war was over. The Red Army was declared the winner when the Blue Army lost the river.
- Shirley Contreras, Santa Maria Times
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This one has more changes from OTL. The army officer corps is significantly larger than OTL and the Industrial College has double the number of grads. There will be no half hearted mobilization should the US be embroiled in another Great War. The Navy is pushing up the USS Wasp and the USS Hornet by a couple years due to its increased funding. In addition the Bureau of Ordnance is actually going to test their detonator. I don't think this is going to eliminate all the problems with US torpedoes but they're going to be moderately better due to the increased funding. Finally for the first half, pulsed radar is 2 months early.
In terms of the second half, I have created a fictionalized Montana Maneuvers set just north of Yellowstone. All those temperatures are OTL for Billings Montana at the dates mentioned. I don't think there's going to be an early jerry can but the US is certainly going to be more amenable to Paul Pleiss' descriptions.
In terms of the second half, I have created a fictionalized Montana Maneuvers set just north of Yellowstone. All those temperatures are OTL for Billings Montana at the dates mentioned. I don't think there's going to be an early jerry can but the US is certainly going to be more amenable to Paul Pleiss' descriptions.
Chapter 10: Party in the USA
Chapter 10: Party in the USA
As 1933 rolled into 1934, the energy in the white house was ecstatic. The recovery was preceding at a prodigious clip and each day would bring news of another factory removing its shutters, another train ARC could put on the tracks, another mine back at full capacity, a new building in New York and another complaint from France about their weak currency. America was getting back on its feet and it was all because of them.However, industrial recovery was slowing. There's only so many factories you can restore to full production before you run out of factories. Construction of new buildings would restart but inflating the currency was no infinite growth machine, only a decade ago Germany had collapsed under the weight of their inflation and look where it got them. No, it must be a controlled return to the price level of the 1920s and to that end the federal reserve would raise their discount rate back to 2% in March and 2.5% in September.
Unemployment still remained highly elevated, at 15% in July but progress would continue and by November it would be down to 13% just in time for the election. 9 million people had been put back to work and millions more had their hours restored to previous levels. Stocks were much flatter in 1934 than 1933, going from 202 to 237, but they were still 6 times higher than they had been when Roosevelt took office. The wealthy had benefited just as much, if not even more than the average american had under Roosevelt's tenure. At the ballot box a consensus had been reached: the democrats had promised relief and they had provided relief; they promised recovery and they had provided recovery; they promised reform and and they had provided reform; now it was the voters turn to provide them the power they needed to continue.
As the results poured in, Roosevelt was jubilant. The Senate would continue its transformation into a Democratic Party club as the Democrats flipped 13 seats, bringing their new total to 75 compared to the Republican 19.353 Democratic Representatives would also take to the chamber compared to the 69 Republicans left. America happily danced to his tune. When what was left of the Republican Party talked about the upcoming 1936 presidential election, they would debate who to put forward as their "sacrifice".
1935 would continue at a slightly slower pace than 1934 with inflation edging down to 6.7% from 9.2% in1934 and 10.1% in 1933. Industrial production would continue to increase reaching . Industrial production would end the year at 119.5 and GDP at 108.7 billion nominal dollars and 113.2 billion 1929 dollars. It had finally surpassed 1929’s GDP of 104.6 billion.
American Construction — 1933-1935
In the 1930s, just as ornament was starting to decline, transport costs were vertiginously cut again, this time by the development of modern trucking.
Manufacturers naturally took full advantage of this, developing an extensive system of factory production for these methods. For example, the market for architectural terracotta in the United States came to be dominated by just a few huge firms, each of which apparently commanded a near monopoly over thousands of miles. Almost the entire Pacific market was served by a firm called Gladding McBean, whose factory was in Lincoln, California; the Midwest was dominated by a Chicago firm confusingly called the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company; the East Coast was dominated by a New Jersey firm called, more intuitively, the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company. This state of affairs would have been unthinkable just decades earlier, when freight could be carried overland only by carts and pack animals.
- Samuel Hughes, Works in Progress, “The Beauty of Concrete”
America entered the Roosevelt Presidency with a greatly depressed construction sector. Why build a new factory when you're closing down 20 existing ones? Why build a new house when millions of Americans were foreclosing on their homes? From 1929 to 1932, private investment would fall from 7.8 billion dollars to 1.4 billion dollars each year. Starting in 1933, the federal government picked up much of the slack with the National Reconstruction Administration which spent 2.5 billion dollars on public works alone in fiscal year 1934 and a further 1.9 billion in 1935 as the budget was amended by congress and prices rose. Including redevelopment and excluding acquisition of existing properties, the federal government would spend 6.2 billion over 1934 and 1935 in emergency construction. Not enough to close the gap in investment but big enough that large majorities of structure investment would be controlled by the government.
The NRA would create a standard catalog of houses ranging from small detached rural farm houses to urban apartment complexes stretching 10 stories into the air (what larger buildings were constructed would be designed on an ad hoc basis). Neighborhood styles would also be classified and chosen at the outset for geographically larger projects. They could either have little green space (a barely used option mostly picked near existing large parks), large lot sizes and winding roads with private green space (used in lower density settings), medium lots with front private green space for future road expansion, row houses with small front setbacks and large back setbacks sometimes containing alleys or walking paths and finally high density buildings set in generous public gardens or leisure space (used extensively in New York and other large cities).
Where much of the NRA was mostly about putting people to work, whether that be erecting individual schools, building new roads or painting murals, its large projects were much more focused on results. Dams and railroads were willing to make extensive use of labor saving technology and spend significant amounts on materials rather than labor. The large housing projects would fall into this latter category with extensive cost control through standardization of designs and materials. 11 classes of ornamentation were created with the molds designed and distributed to the few architectural terracotta firms left. Facades and ornaments would be constructed in central factories, shipped by train to a close location by the American Railroad Corporation with trucks crossing the final distance to the work site. Although there was significant variation within a project, they would constitute a fairly narrow and coherent style visible across the US from Tucson, Arizona to Portland, Maine.
Colors were usually light and muted though they could be anywhere from white to red, green or blue. The underlying structure of large buildings would be simple and blocky shapes usually looking like one to 6 rectangular prisms attached together. Most detail work would be focused on the cornice and band courses but windows would often possess moderate amounts of head casing.
With high pressure from ARC, many urban housing projects located near rail lines, light or heavy, would be fairly hostile to cars in order to create a captive consumer base for their transportation services. Streets, where they existed, were often narrow with little on street parking nor extensive parking lots. Residents who owned a car would have to park it quite far from their home in often expensive lots. Streetcars on the other hand would be given traffic free right of ways on promenades with frequent statues, trees, parks and commercial buildings to further help ailing lines.
Despite New York being the originator of the NRA, Chicago would prove to be the biggest recipient of its new architecture. A massive 1320 acre project would be undertaken following North Clark Street to W Irving Park Road which would house 130,000 people and cost 112 million dollars when it was completed in 1937. It would be paid for through a mix of private and public funding with public funding more involved at the start in acquiring all of the land. Sales would recoup 93 million despite the government retaining half of the housing stock.
As can be seen from the entrance of private funding into the North Clark Street Project, private investment had begun to return to housing. In 1932, only 450 million dollars were spent on nonfarm residential construction, by 1935 that had exploded to 2100 million, not quite at the level of 3000 million in 1929 or the peak of 4960 in 1926, but it was a strong showing. New skyscrapers would begin construction in New York and across the US, cities would continue to build upwards. Things for looking up for the builders.
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This implies defeat of the OTL Bauhaus takeover of American architecture. Is there a role for Frank Lloyd Wright in this?
Bauhaus isn’t fully defeated and will exist with private construction though to a lesser extent. Government architecture is sticking with ornamentation as iirc Bauhaus really comes to America after they get shut down in Germany. Many private investors are just going to copy the government designs because the factories have the molds ready and under mass production while construction workers now have plenty of experience with them.
Frank Lloyd Wright is going to have plenty of his normal work due to the increased private construction. He’s still going to be thought of as a great architect and design a lot of buildings.
The main effect of this is that regardless of what post war architecture looks like, there’s a giant housing boom in the 30s that didn’t exist OTL. A lot of 1950s suburbanization was due to a housing shortage caused by the Great Depression/WW2 and exacerbated by subsidized mortgages. Postwar, other countries might want to copy the American model as they rebuild.
I see you're trying to kill suburbanisation and car-centric culture before it gets going.
I approve.
I approve.
I’m gunning for a non territorial America-wank here. There’s still going to be suburbanization because it’s a reasonable preference to have and fulfill, but there’s not going to be the stars aligning for it like there was OTL.
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