"Preliminary Study of Community & Administration Buildings Crossville Project, Crossville, Tenn."
"Preliminary Study of Community & Administration Buildings Crossville Project, Crossville, Tenn."
By an unknown draftsman, Special Plans Division, Resettlement Administration, August 12, 1936
Pencil on tracing paper
31 1/2" x 42"
National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Farmers Home Administration

New Deal Planned Communities: Cumberland Homesteads, Crossville, Tennessee
As part of the effort to assist some of those unemployed by the Great Depression, several federal agencies under President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal built experimental, planned communities, known as "new towns." The Resettlement Administration, another New Deal agency, planned a controversial set of "new towns" known as "subsistence homesteads." These planned rural communities gave housing, education, employment, and a fresh start to displaced farmers or unemployed industrial workers willing to relocate to the countryside. One of these, located near Crossville, Tennessee, was named Cumberland Homesteads. It was designed as a town for coal miners left "stranded" by mine shutdowns. The community and administration buildings depicted here were designed to give the town a definite hub and make it more than just another housing project. Advocates of the subsistence homesteads saw them as an opportunity to create the model communities of the future and stem the flow of migrants to the cities. Opponents saw them as wasteful social experiments.

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