Louis Lozowick, Hooverville, 1932

Narrator: Louis Lozowick’s Hooverville depicts the shantytown that grew in Central Park during the Great Depression. Hundreds of homeless men lived in the camp, which was named for the president many people held responsible for the Depression. The encampment was on the site of an abandoned reservoir, which was later converted into the Great Lawn—one of the park’s grandest spaces. In this print, recently opened luxury apartment buildings rise above a man who seems to inhabit a space that is almost underground—stark reminders of the income inequality that characterized the Depression. In the lower right, a man lies on the ground—passed out or asleep.