The Deleted Scenes - Old School, New Deal
Here’s today’s building, outside the tiny town of Painter, Virginia, on that state’s Eastern Shore: You can probably guess what this is/was, and about when it was built. That isn’t what’s interesting about it to me. (High school, early 1930s, art deco style, with an addition funded by the New Deal.) What’s interesting is where exactly it’s located: Where did the money come from for a building like that in a place like this? Can you imagine the level of civic investment that it signifies happening here today? There is a proximate explanation other than the New Deal. I posted about this school on Twitter, asking this question, and a professional planner who knew the area said, “Before the Bridge/tunnel [the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel] these were self reliant agricultural communities with great ports and a direct train line to Philadelphia.” That was the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad, which at one time took you from Cape Charles, Virginia—almost 30 miles south of Painter—to Philadelphia. That is roughly this: I really find this kind of astounding. This detail too: “The town of Cape Charles was planned and built as part of the construction of the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad.” This all makes me think of something I wrote when I road-tripped down U.S. Route 11 in Virginia, from Winchester to Natural Bridge, and I could see that development here had begun and then abruptly stopped:
You cannot believe in “overdevelopment” if you look at the trajectory of places like the Virginia Eastern Shore—today the state’s poorest region along with the far southwest. And here’s a fascinating bit from a scholarly article about the Eastern Shore’s culture amid technological transformation:
That kind of plucky boosterism—remote small towns aspiring to compete with global cities—and that solid art deco public high school; they are today artifacts of a previous world. Bonus: the school building, vacant for years, might be saved and repurposed! Related Reading: How Far to the City That’s Not on the Map? Thank you for reading! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekly subscribers-only post, plus full access to the archive: over 600 posts and growing. And you’ll help ensure more material like this! You're currently a free subscriber to The Deleted Scenes. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |
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