2/17/2010

To whom it may concern:


The National New Deal Preservation Association strongly urges the 4J to save Civic Stadium. It is part of an invisible network of socially beneficial structures and landscapes created by the Works Progress Administration and other New Deal agencies during the Great Depression to jump start the U.S. economy by employing millions of people. To that end, those agencies were effective, buoying up the economy from below as well as from above. But projects such as Civic Stadium have immeasurably enriched the lives of generations of Americans since the Great Depression without their knowledge or expressed gratitude for the veterans of our forgotten peace time armies.

Public amphitheaters, stadiums, and ball parks such as Civic Stadium were intended to bring Americans together in public spaces expressive of a democratic government. But they served another, more immediate purpose as relevant today as it was during the last depression President Roosevelt and his aides understood the danger to social order posed by vast numbers of young men with few or no job prospects. In order to short circuit juvenile delinquency and the cost of prisons, the WPA built innumerable recreational facilities and employed coaches and other recreational employees. You are tonight deciding the fate of one such crime alleviator.

We at California’s Living New Deal Project and others at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library and Museum in Hyde Park, NY are mapping the invisible landscape of public works created by the New Deal. Your stadium constitutes an important part of that landscape in Oregon, as do the more famous Timberline Lodge, coastal highway, and State Capitol. We urge you to save it.

Sincerely,

Dr. Gray Brechin
Vice President, National New Deal Preservation Association
Project Scholar and Founder, California’s Living New Deal Project
U.C. Berkeley Department of Geography