The WPA & the Golden Age · The Public Good
Planned housing fights disease
New York City Housing Authority, 1938
What it is
A WPA Federal Art Project silkscreen poster made for the New York City Housing Authority, dated by the Library of Congress to between 1936 and 1938. It blows microorganisms up to poster scale and names planned housing as the remedy.
Why it matters
This is Depression-era public health argued as architecture: build better buildings and you prevent the disease that breeds in the tenement. The Federal Art Project put artists to work in screen shops turning out this kind of civic advocacy, and the Housing Authority commissioned it to make the case for the new public housing on the very streets it meant to clear.
What to notice
Look at how the design pushes invisible contagion up to a scale a passerby could actually read - microbes enlarged until they crowd the frame.
The thing you cannot see, made big enough to fear.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- Political poster
- Poster published
- New York City Housing Authority, 1938
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · 98518564
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. government program work (WPA Federal Art Project), any year. Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 18x24" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
