Homeless: Poverty and Place in Urban America

1: The Challenge of the Depression

C H A P T E R 1 THE CHALLENGE OF THE DEPRESSION DURING the 1920s, Urbain Ledoux opened “the Tub” on St. Mark’s Place on the Lower East Side. Known as “Mr. Zero,” the businessman turned philanthropist offered meals and lodging to New York’s homeless men. A Buddhist, Ledoux felt called to work among the poor. He had begun his efforts in New England, selling the unemployed at “slave auctions” on Boston Common. By March 1928, Ledoux reported lodging over 1,140 men nightly in steamer chairs while feeding 2,000 from a five-cent basement soup kitchen and a ground floor cafeteria.Espousing his own brand of radical politics , Ledoux proposed outlandish schemes such as auctioning the labor of the unemployed to Midwestern farmers, who might repay him in grain to use to feed the poor.1 As the Depression deepened, Ledoux used publicity creatively to highlight the plight of the Bowery’s homeless. Large Thanksgiving meals earned the Tub mention in the annual newspaper coverage of charitable holiday programs.In the spring, Ledoux led a contingent of homeless men marching in the famous Fifth Avenue Easter parade. The bedraggled marchers inspired journalists to contrast New York’s wealthy and its poor: “Mr. Zero and the ‘boys’ from the Tavern arrived in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral at noon and displayed what the unemployed man will wear this season. Their garb was traditional, in keeping with last year and the years before it—battered plug hats, lumberjackets, frayed trousers and shoes that had more than their share of walking the streets.”2 Ledoux’s colorful efforts reflected the collapse of the city’s relief system. By 1929, the existing network of charitable assistance and commercial lodgings, sufficient for decades, had strained and broken under the crushing tide of pov- The Challenge of the Depression 23 erty and homelessness. City officials and charity administrators looked on in horror as poor people spread across the urban landscape, squatting in shacks, lining up for bread, begging for cash, and marching in protest. Who should provide assistance to these crowds of people? Some were the established poor, who had been homeless even before the Depression had begun. Previously, they had been helped, as the poor of other cities had also been, by a network of ethnic and religious associations bolstered by a few public organizations. Now, as throngs of the newly poor—pushed out of the security of the middle- and working classes by the economic devastation brought on by the Depression— crowded into such institutions, the existing networks could not keep up with the demand. The dramatic increase in poverty during the late 1920s and early 1930s shocked city and state officials into action, prompting them to begin developing a new, increasingly publicly funded, philosophy of relief. Figure 7. In this iconic work for the Federal Arts Project, Berenice Abbott photographed the extensively detailed menu of inexpensive food served on the Bowery. “Blossom Restaurant, 103 Bowery, Manhattan,” 1935. Copyright The New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY. 24 Chapter 1 Life on the Bowery In the 1920s, a young white man without shelter might spend the night at the Bowery Branch YMCA on East Third Street. The organization promoted Protestant Christianity, but nearly half the residents were Roman Catholic. If admitted, he could attend lectures, discussion groups, and weekend trips to the country and the beach with other members, half of them under thirty. Most likely, though, he would find the casework approach of the YMCA invasive, and would continue looking for a facility offering him a bit more freedom.3 Leaving the YMCA and walking south down through the Bowery, he would encounter an array of establishments vying for his business. He might pause to read the menu painted in the windows of a corner restaurant. He might stop in at the Holy Name Mission for counsel or a place to rest. If he hoped for simple lodging and to be left alone, he might rent a room next door at the Arcade Hotel. Walking farther, he could see used suit jackets hanging in secondhand clothing shops, and might buy one for an upcoming job application . He could visit one of the many barber shops and barber schools that lined the street, their characteristic striped signs promising a discounted shave or haircut. Below Bleecker Street, flophouses and missions lined the streets. Between Houston and Delancey...