Re: Hooverville in a time warp

On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 14:23:17 +0100, FishFood <dont@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
maffster wrote:
On Apr 22, 9:13 am, Phil Randal <p...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Martha reads the date of November 1, 1930 from the newspaper and then
they toddle off to Central Park's Hooverville, which, according to
Wikipedia, existed "existed between 1931-33".

Explain.

According to "The Park and the People: A History of Central Park" by
Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar (Cornell University Press,
1992), by late 1930 a few homeless people had set up an informal camp
at the reservoir site, but were evicted by the police.


At what point does an informal name become common currency? The name
Hooverville could have been local to the city, an informal handle used
by the local press much earlier than history records.

Then there's a story line which needs to converge with the completion
date of the Empire State Building. According to Wikipedia, this was
May 1, 1931. However this isn't the whole story. I found the following
on the Empire State Building...

The demolition of the hotel was begun in November 1929 (16,000
truckloads of debris), pouring of the 210 foundation piers in
March 1930, work on the steel framework on April 7, 1930, topping
out on November 21, 1930 and the building was completed on
April 11, 1931.

http://www.greatgridlock.net/NYC/nyc2a.html#31

Since the story centers on the topping out date, it makes sense to
have the drama placed a few weeks before. As the construction foreman
said "were on schedule, another month and we'll be done."

I was looking for some greater significance in the date November 1, 1930,
but this seems to be answered with the need to converge with the Empire
State. Call it artistic license. ;)

Also, I'm fairly sure the Statue of Liberty was wrong: the torch
looked gilded, which I think was part of the remodeling they did when
the statue was extensively repaired and spruced up in the early 90s.


.

Relevant Pages

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