Vintage photos from the Great Depression in N.J. – NJ.com

Greg Hatala/For NJ Advance Media

Vintage photos from the Great Depression in N.J.

Defined by History.com as “the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world,” when the Great Depression reached its lowest point in 1933, “some 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half the country’s banks had failed.”

For many, it wasn’t an “economic downturn,” it was a time of basic survival. People in both urban and rural areas were subject to the same conditions  — subsistence meals, substandard shelter and little to no opportunity to climb out from under the hardships.

Yet people persevered. Whether through the assistance of New Deal programs like the Works Progress Administration or the sheer will to survive, the country pulled through.

Here’s  a gallery of vintage photos from a period of tremendous struggle and hardship for vast numbers of people in New Jersey. If you have vintage photos you’d like to see in our slide shows, send them in an email to greghatalagalleries@gmail.com.

Courtesy of the New Jersey Historical Society

WPA workers build a chicken coop in Livingston in this photo from 1933. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was an employment and infrastructure program created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935. Over its eight years of existence, the WPA put 8.5 million Americans to work on jobs ranging from public works projects to projects in the arts.

Courtesy of nj.gov

This photo was taken by the Farm Security Administration, Resettlement Administration in June 1936 and shows workers from Delaware working in the berry fields of southern New Jersey.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

An unemployed women’s camp near the Palisades. A controversial program developed by Eleanor Roosevelt as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps, these women worked mainly on wilderness conservation projects. Many men felt women shouldn’t be involved in such work.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

In the 1930s, the 10-member DeMarco family lived in this one-room shack in southern New Jersey during cranberry picking season.

Courtesy of the Morrstown and Morris Township Public Library

This photo from the 1930s shows the Market Street Mission in Morristown. The location still serves as a thrift shop and site for assistance to those in need.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Representative of the housing for New Jersey farm workers during the Great Depression, this photo was taken near Cedarville in 1938.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

A squatters camp in Newark appears in a photo taken in 1939. Called, sarcastically, “The Jersey Meadows” by its inhabitants, it was located on a city dump.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

After picking crops all day, laborers often returned to a patch of land where they grew their own vegetables for sustenance. This vacant lot garden was located in Glassboro and photographed in 1938.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

A 1936 photo of the shanty homes of textile workers on the outskirts of Paterson.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Female farm laborers are shown with bags of onions in a field in New Jersey in 1938.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

An unidentified worker eats his lunch at Eighty Acres in Glassboro in 1938. According to the Library of Congress, Eighty Acres was a development for African-American farm workers.

Courtesy of the Newark Evening News

The WPA used the South Mountain Reservation in Essex County as a location for many depression-era projects to provide work for unemployed men; these men are shown clearing trees in the late 1930s.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Mill workers in Millville used this abandoned truck body as a home in 1938. A makeshift outhouse can be seen to the left.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

L.H. Adams and his wife are shown being presented with a check for $5,000 in Burlington in 1938. Adams was the first farmer in the region to receive a loan under the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act, passed by Congress in July 1937 authorizing credit to assist tenant farmers to purchase land.

Courtesy of the NJ Digital Highway

The Good Will Thrift Store at 53 Plane St. in Newark is shown in this photo from 1929. It is not known if this store was affiliated with the organization founded in 1902 by  Rev. Edgar J. Helms, a Methodist minister and early social innovator. The organization he founded (today’s Goodwill Industries) collected used household goods and clothing in wealthier areas of the cities, then trained and hired the poor to mend and repair the used goods. The goods were then resold or were given to the people who repaired them.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

This tar paper shack off of Amwell Road near Bound Brook served as a family’s home in the winter of 1936.

Courtesy of the National Archives

This pond, with an island, was constructed by the WPA in Highland Park in 1939.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Children of farm laborers took a short break to pose for this photo by a government photographer in the late 1930s.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Washing and toilet facilities for cranberry pickers in Burlington County are shown in this photo from 1938.

Courtesy of the U.S. Department of State

Men wait in line in April 1935 to apply for work wielding a pick and shovel on a Newark subway excavation project. The pay was $4 for a 10-hour day.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

This photo of a room in which migratory agricultural workers slept was taken in Camden County in 1938. Luxury autos, a common symbol of financial success, far outnumber other images pasted to the wall.

Courtesy of the National Archives

Unemployed men hold a protest march calling for work in Camden in this photo from 1932.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

WPA workers mix cement on a worksite in Hightstown in 1935.

Greg Hatala/For NJ Advance Media