City Auditorium murals, Monument Creek wall are part of New Deal's legacy

Colorado Springs has a reputation as a place that favors small government and limited public spending, but 75 years ago the city was a hub for projects funded by the government's New Deal.

Without those projects, Rampart Range Road wouldn't snake into the mountains, Garden of the Gods wouldn't be studded with juniper trees, Monument Creek might still flood its banks and some of the city's most visible public art wouldn't exist.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the New Deal, a series of programs that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt pushed through as his "stimulus package" to help the country weather the Great Depression. The government job-creation program began in 1933, employing more than 4 million Americans at its peak, in skills as varied as painting and bridge-building. It fizzled out by 1942, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor thrust the nation into World War II.

Whether one views the New Deal as a boon or a boondoggle, it was a remarkable period in the nation's history. The anniversary is being marked locally by the New Deal for the New Deal, a community group that's kicking off a yearlong series of events Thursday night at the City Auditorium.

"People didn't want handouts; they wanted an opportunity for gainful employment, and we've benefitted," said Judith Rice-Jones, art and social sciences librarian at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and a board member of New Deal for the New Deal. "We're just very fortunate to have this wonderful legacy."

The City Auditorium showcases two New Deal murals that face each other in the curved walls above the ticket counters, and explain the early dichotomy of the city.

Archie Musick's "Hardrock Miners" tells the story of the mine laborers who helped create the wealth that flowed down the mountains into Colorado Springs, while Tabor Utley's "The Arts" expresses the city founders' vision of a "Newport in the Rockies," peopled by refined citizens.

That same dichotomy between hard labor and the arts defined Colorado Springs during the New Deal era.

Ten Civilian Conservation Corps camps sprouted up around the region, attacking drainage projects in the parks, planting trees at Garden of the Gods, and building the massive stonework wall that has contained Monument Creek ever since a 1935 flood washed away three bridges and killed four people.

Just as robust was the New Deal art program that sprung up in Colorado Springs. For a few years, the city was a center of artistic influence for the nation.

One of a dozen regional supervisors for the massive national arts initiative was Boardman Robinson of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (once the Broadmoor Art Academy). Robinson oversaw art projects in several Western states, and sent local artists to create murals across the country, from the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., to a post office in Red Cloud, Neb.

A hallmark of the New Deal era was a blurring of the difference between artist and laborer. Both a stonemason working in Monument Valley Park and an artist painting a mural were paid a standard wage for doing what they were good at.

"(Boardman) Robinson's first resolve was to take the preciousness out of painting and make it an honest trade," wrote Musick, creator of the "Hardrock Miners" mural at the City Auditorium, as well as the mural inside the Manitou Springs Post Office. "No more fat salaries for instructors, no more fabulous prices on paintings. The Depression was on and everyone should put his shoulder to the wheel for the love of art."

The artistic energy created in Colorado Springs during the New Deal served the community in the years to follow.

"The Depression made artists think about putting art not just in museums, but in public places," said Colorado Springs muralist Eric Bransby, 91, who got his first job in art working for the Works Progress Administration. "Almost all artists engaged in a mural or two."

The legacy of the New Deal is twofold, said Matt Mayberry, cultural services manager for the city of Colorado Springs: the employment it provided at the time and the artifacts that are left to history.

"What the newspaper was focusing on at that time was the effect on the local economy, and giving people work so they could get off the unemployment rolls," he said. "If the only thing we had remaining were the murals at the City Auditorium, that would be significant. But we have the beautiful stonework in Monument Valley Park, the drainage control projects that happened, projects on top of Pikes Peak by the CCC - things we take for granted now."

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0226 or bill.reed@gazette.com

IF YOU GO

WHAT: New Deal for the New Deal, 75th anniversary of FDR's New Deal program

WHERE: City Auditorium, 221 E. Kiowa St.

WHEN: 5:30 p.m. Thursday

RSVP: Today to aprice@springsgov.com

Program details: An actor will perform as FDR; Kathy Flynn, executive director of the National New Deal Preservation Association, will speak; awards will be given to WPA and CCC alumni