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Art For The Millions: A Pictorial History Of The Wpa Art Project In S.F., Warren Hinckle, Steven M. Gelber, Richard O'Hanlon

History

On the whole, the New Deal was a good deal for California, and San Francisco got the best of the bargain. While some of the more steadfast members of the Pacific Union Club sat around hissing at the very sound of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's voice resonating from their mahogany radio cabinets, the braintrusters of FDR's famous Works Progress Administration (WPA) were busy scouting Coit Tower as the site for the first federally assisted artist's project in American history. Coit Tower was but the first - and the first controversial - of an impressive, unprecedented public art-public works program that put …