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Sponsored by The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, American Express Company, and The Bay and Paul Foundations. Also supported by New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities

On Monday, October 28, 1929 the U.S. Stock Market crashed and the Great Depression of the 1930's began. For the next ten years, the United States would face the worst economic slump ever. Banks failed and people lost their life savings. Businesses closed and thousands were without jobs. Groups of desperate men began selling apples on street corners, traveling on railroad box cars and living in hastily constructed towns on the edges of garbage dumps.

Occurring between the first and second world wars, the Depression was a time of loss and despair. Everyone in the United States was affected by it. Farmers were plagued by the Dust Bowl and lost their farms. Cities were hard hit as homeless and jobless citizens were forced to live on the streets and in parks. Families were forced apart.

In 1933, the people elected Franklin D. Roosevelt President of the United States. Roosevelt pledged to give the county a "New Deal" and in his inaugural speech said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

One of the many projects started by the Roosevelt Administration to help the country's economy and its citizens was the Works Progress Administration (or WPA).

Men and women were given jobs from building roads to tending flower gardens in public parks. One WPA project put artists and writers to work. Murals were painted in post offices and public libraries. Photographers like Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) and Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) chronicled the times in thousands of pictures, and writers worked on community guides. In New York, Orson Welles and John Houseman headed up the Federal Theater Project. They presented the satirical musical The Cradle Will Rock in 1937. They also presented works by Shakespeare such as Macbeth with an all African-American cast and a Yiddish King Lear.

By 1939, the economy was doing better and more people were back to work. The country celebrated with a World's Fair in the borough of Queens. The former Corona dumps were transformed to a futurist city. Millions of people came to the fair to enjoy themselves and see the exhibits. Even the King and Queen of Great Britain made a visit.

The Great Depression did more than put people out of work; it affected their lives and their political and social ideals. The times had a great effect on the country's culture. Artists and writers created works that expressed not only the hardships of poverty and injustice but the hope and faith in democracy and the American dream.

Time Line

• 1929
  The U.S. Stock Market crashed.
  The political satirical musical Strike Up the Band opens in New York.
  The Marx Brothers comedy Coconuts is a popular film.
• 1930
  The Bank of Manhattan loses its battle to be the tallest building in the world to William Van Allen's Chrysler Building.
  MGM's musical The Broadway Melody staring Bessie Love wins the Academy Award as the first talking motion picture.
  The Daily News Building defines the Art Deco Style in New York City.
  The Civic Repertory Theater presents a Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Alison's House by Susan Glaspell. The Depression forces actress/ producer Eva LeGallenne to close her repertory company in 1936.
  American dancer/chorographer Martha Graham creates a modern dance entitled Lamentations.
• 1931
  The Empire State Building by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon becomes the tallest building in the world at 102 stories. In 1933 Hollywood hero King Kong climbs its walls.
  The McGraw Hill Building in New York City merges Art Deco with touches of the International style.
  George and Ira Gershwin's musical "Of Thee I Sing" hits Broadway. The musical wins the Pulitzer Prize the following year, the first musical to ever do so.
  Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg start the Group Theater in New York City. They base it on the famous Moscow Arts Theatre.
• 1932
  John D. Rockefeller Jr. begins his massive complex Rockefeller Center on 5th Avenue in New York City. Designed by Raymond Hood and other architects, the complex has artwork by artists Isamu Noguchi and Georgia O'Keeffe. However, murals by Diego Rivera are destroyed when the artist refused to delete his portrait of the Soviet leader Lenin.
  New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt enters the presidential race, with the campaign song Happy Days are Here Again.
  Author James T. Farrell's series Studs Lonigan about the working class living in Chicago begins.
  The Museum of Modern Art hosts an exhibit created by Philip Johnson and Henry Russell Hitchcock on the International Style of architecture.
• 1933
  Adolph Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany.
  British Playwright Noel Coward stars with his friends, actor Alfred Lunt and his wife actress Lynn Fontanne in Design for Living, a sexual comedy he wrote for the three of them.
  Actor Paul Muni stars in the realistic motion picture drama, I'm A Fugitive from a Chain Gang based on a real life experience.
• 1934
  Criminal John Dillinger is killed by law enforcement officers in an alley outside the Biograph Theatre.
  Bank robbers and folk heroes Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are killed. 33 years later Hollywood would make them popular again in a motion picture.
  African-American poet Langston Hughes writes The Ways of White Folks.
  Actress Bette Davis makes movie history for her realistic portrayal of Mildred in Of Human Bondage.
  At the age of six, child star Shirley Temple is the most popular and successful movie personally of the Depression years.
• 1935
  Playwright Maxwell Anderson's Winterset, about the Sacco-Vanzetti case wins the first New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. The plays stage set makes theater history.
  Directors Frank Capra's comedy It Happened One Night wins the top five Academy Awards for a motion picture and sets an Oscar record.
  Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess is completed.
  Amelia Earhart becomes the first person to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean,
  from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Oakland, California.
  Robert E. Sherwood's play, The Petrified Forest, starring Humphrey Bogart and Leslie Howard, opens at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York City.
  The novel They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy is published.
  American Actress Helen Hayes tours in Victoria Regina her great success.
  Composer Irving Berlin teams with dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on the RKO film Top Hat.
• 1936
  New Jersey mother Mabel Eaton loses custody of her children due to her affiliation with the Communist Party.
  Bruno Richard Hauptmann is executed for kidnapping and killing the Lindbergh baby.
  First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt hosts a White House garden party for black female students of Washington's National Industrial School. School principal praises Mrs. Roosevelt while Southern newspapers denounce her.
  George Kaufman and Moss Hart write the Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy You Can't Take it With You.
  The Hoover Dam on Colorado River is completed, creating Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S.
  The American playwright Eugene O'Neill is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
  King Edward VIII of Great Briton abdicates his throne to marry the American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson.
• 1937
  The Great General Motors Strike starts and spreads to six states pulling 45,000 men off production lines.
  John D. Rockefeller appoints William S. Farish president and CEO of Standard Oil of New Jersey.
  The Great Flood of 1937 swamps areas along the Ohio River.
  Joseph Kennedy, Sr., is named U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. His son John works as an international reporter for his father.
  The first claims under Title II of the Social Security Act were adjudicated and forwarded to the Social Security Board.
  The Hindenburg explodes at Lakehurst, N.J., killing 36 people.
  Hitler formally abrogates the Treaty of Versailles.
  Cary Grant and Irene Dunne star in the classic screwball comedy The Awful Truth.
  Hollywood diva Great Garbo stars in the tragedy Camille, her greatest role.
• 1938
  Playwright Thornton Wilder's Our Town about life in early 20th century New England wins a Pulitzer Prize for drama.
  Author John Dos Possos completes his trilogy U.S.A.
  Orson Welles' radio broadcast War of the Worlds creates a public panic that Martians are invading the earth.
  Howard Hughes flies around world in record time in a Lockheed Vega: 3 days, 19 hours, 8 minutes, and 10 seconds.
  FDR presides over the groundbreaking ceremonies for the Jefferson Memorial. Architect John Russell Pope designs not only the memorial he also designs the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives and many government offices building that change the look of Washington D.C.
  Swing band leader Benny Goodman plays jazz at Carnegie Hall.
• 1939
  Architect Frank Lloyd Wright designs the Johnson Wax Company Administration Building in Racine Wisconsin.
  With actors Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh as Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, Hollywood's motion picture of Gone with the Wind is a milestone in movie history.
  Actress Tallulah Bankhead stars in playwright Lillian Hellman's drama The Little Foxes on Broadway.
  The first regular transatlantic passenger air service begins when PanAm flies 22 passengers from New York to Portugal.
  President Roosevelt entertains King George VI and Queen Elizabeth as his house guests at Hyde Park.
  Nylon stockings are first sold in the U.S.
  American poet Robert Frost publishes his Collected Poems.
  France and Great Britain declare war on Nazi Germany after the Germans invade Poland.
  World War II begins.