[log in to unmask] wrote:
> Any Pinheads experienced materials/craftspersonship of a substantially 
> lower quality than the norm on buildings of the WPA era?
>
> I am Curious, Twybil
Twy,

Interesting question. Begs me to ask. What is quality?

At the Hessian Hut, a sort of folly at Dyckman, that predates WPA, I can 
say that there was something missing. It was also revealing to me that 
the more I tried to make a chimney flashing that I thought was 'quality' 
of workmanship the worse and out of place it looked. I had to bang on it 
with a hammer -- and, oddly, that took skill. Quality in that case seems 
to be conditioned by that it does not leak, but looks like crap hack 
work that blends in. Previously for however many years of the 20th 
century it leaked. That and a few other projects have kept me alert to 
when good work means consciously making it look like bad or untutored 
work. I find it harder to make good work look bad than it is to achieve 
good work.

I have seen work done in sort-of contemporary construction in the 70s 
and 80s that I thought was a whole lot worse than in the WPA era. Tell 
tales were things like beer cans buried in the walls (though I can also 
say that digging pits at the Edison Historic site in West Orange we 
found beer cans under the concrete floor -- that I had to turn over to 
the site archivist.) Then again there were a lot of extra nails in 
Edison Building #11, circa 1940 reconstruction at Greenfield Village.

If your inference is that a whole lot of untrained people were out 
building stuff during the WPA era I am not quite sure how to place it. 
My grandfather, the master finish carpenter who specialized in building 
spiral staircases out of his head, was a camp foreman at Fillmore Glenn 
in Moravia, NY. I can wander around there and have no clue where he fit 
into the quality equation. He was not much for telling long stories but 
I do remember right after I got out of HS, and when he retired, he 
seemed intent to explain to me about young structural engineers who did 
not know how to blow up stumps that knew everything otherwise but had a 
nasty habit of blowing themselves up. I think in his own way he was 
telling me to work safe. Either that or it pays to stand clear.

Last week I got to look at a concrete block foundation. I was asked if 
it was quality work. My response, this is not a museum, looks good to 
me. The wall was obviously not falling over. Then again I have seen work 
done in the last year that was a whole lot worse than anything I've met 
WPA era... bad enough it had to be done over. That don't last long with me.

][<en

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