United States. Works Progress Administration of Pennsylvania

The Philadelphia City Planning Commission (PCPC) had barely come into existence (April 1929) when the stock market crashed, marking the onset of the Great Depression. Declaring itself to be without funds in December 1933, the commission, under the direction of its secretary, Walter H. Thomas, and vice chairman, S. P. Wetherill, Jr., applied for a grant from the Pennsylvania Civil Works Administration to support the activities of the commission from mid-December 1933 through mid-February 1934. The PCPC requested federal funding, made possible through President Roosevelt’s New Deal work relief programs, to subsidize general administrative costs of PCPC and support the continuation of work on a master plan for the city of Philadelphia which had already begun. The agency also proposed to conduct a survey of central Philadelphia which would help address the problems of decaying older neighborhoods. Authorized as CWA Project No. 51-0081, this project became the first of a number of surveys conducted by PCPC under the auspices of federal relief programs during the Great Depression. From 1933 to 1939, the Commission employed hundreds of architects, engineers, social workers, and other professional and clerical staff in efforts to analyze the physical, economic, and social conditions of the city and to address these problems through a combined program of research, planning, and public advocacy.

The history of the PCPC during these years is significant because it illustrates the experiences of one municipal agency in channeling state and federal work relief funds to local communities during the 1930s. Although the immediate goal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal was to get working people back to work in the face of a national economic collapse, the provision of federal and state aid to agencies like the PCPC had other dimensions besides furnishing jobs. Indeed, the history of such programs provides a telling look at the political life and thought of the times and specific policy objectives in such areas as public housing, transportation, social welfare, and other relatively new professions which had emerged to cope with the challenges of an urbanized country.

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