Livability
In America, we sometimes see rankings or maps of the most “livable” areas in the country. How that is defined makes all the difference: one list of the “greenest cities” in North America ranks New York #3; a different list doesn’t include New York in its top 100 cities, or any other from the state (Dillinger; “Top 100”). Besides taxes, the cost of housing, and other measurable data, it seems that longtime associations of cities and rural areas still play a role in defining where we want to live. Even how we envision a livable place is important, since almost all photographs have been taken on sunny days. What can we learn by revisiting the transformations and population movements of the 1930s?
As other pages in this exhibit argue, cities were portrayed as energetic (or chaotic), dense (or crowded) with neighborhoods. Leonard Pytlak’s colored lithograph New for Old shows buildings in one block being demolished by the wrecking ball; they don’t look especially dilapidated but clearly date to the previous century, and “progress” is shown to be inexorable. The human consequences must be inferred by a viewer, because no people appear in the scene. One standard of livability would praise modern housing and amenities, the razing of crowded slums—or even relocating out of the city. Carl Gustof Nelson’s Third Avenue El, however, presents a city street where proximity creates community, the apartments are colorfully painted and in good repair. We can call it a “walkable” city because public transportation is nearby (with no sign of a noisy train). It’s guided by a different aesthetics and vision of livability.
New Deal artists often portrayed rural America as peaceful and resilient, turning those landscapes into symbols of hope and renewal. Where photographers of the Farm Security Administration recorded stark black & white photographs of rural poverty, painters in the FAP Easel Division usually favored calm, restorative landscapes offering emotional relief from the stresses of modern life. Carl E. Noble’s House by the Water is one such example, where earthy greens, browns, and muted blues are used in the palette to create a quiet rural atmosphere. A curving walk divides the composition: on one side, two small boats in calm waters softly reflecting the house; on the other, a solid-looking house with mountains in the distance. Both halves of the painting make subtle use of negative space—a calm inlet, a lawn chair aligned looking outward—to imply not just beautiful scenery surrounding the house, but separation and sanctuary from a tumultuous world.
W.H. Worrall’s Bronx River and County Center, White Plains also foregrounds water, mirroring the picturesque sky overhead. There is so much foliage that it seems we’re in the countryside, but Westchester’s County Center was a large Art Nouveau structure built in 1920 for public events (“History”). Even earlier, before the Civil War, a railroad ran alongside of the Bronx River and White Plains was building an industrial district on its other ban (Beers). Those aspects of the scene are represented as a grey blur in the distance. All of this is to say that there is a subjective, even imagined dimension to livable places that transcends their individual locations. Ideas of the urban and rural help to orient those feelings.
Works Consulted
-- Beers, Frederick W. “White Plains, New York.” 1867. Courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection. Link
-- Dillinger, Jessica. “The Greenest Cities in North America.” World Atlas. 25 July 2019. Link
-- “History of the Westchester County Center.” Department of Westchester County Parks, Recreation and Conservation. 2026. Link
-- “Top 100 Places to Live in the U.S. in 2026.” Livability. 2026. Link