Big Apple History . New York Living . Bread Lines

In the wake of the Great Depression many New Yorkers lost their jobs, savings, and property. There was no unemployment insurance and almost no government relief reached the people of New York. Some New Yorkers -- even those who had made a fortune in the stock market's heyday -- now struggled to simply survive. Many stood in bread lines. To get food for themselves and for their families, men stood four abreast forming lines that were as long as city blocks. The men were wedged so tightly together that no one passing by could squeeze through.


	Bread lines often stretched for blocks.

All who stood in bread lines experienced humiliation. But those in the back of the line, who often didn't get anything to eat at all, experienced much more than humiliation. They experienced hunger, suffering, and fear for the survival of their families. Whenever garbage trucks came to the dumps near the river on the Upper East Side, hundreds of women and children would run out to scavenge for food in the freshly dumped refuse. Living in the city made food-gathering harder. In the countryside they might have had some luck gleaning something to eat, but not in New York.

By the beginning of 1932, 95 New Yorkers had starved to death. People were so desperate that the city had to take action in Central Park. When the park was created in the 1860s, sheep were donated to give it a country feel. They grazed in an area of the park called Sheep Meadow. A shepherd stopped traffic twice a day to walk the herd across a road from the Victorian building where they were housed to fresh pasture in Sheep Meadow. The sheep were the city's pets. But in 1934, officials were concerned that starving men would turn the sheep into lunch. The city rescued the sheep from this possible danger by sending them away to the safety of the Catskill mountains. The herd was never returned to Central Park.

When the stock market crashed, a few people jumped off tall buildings. But most remained alive to witness a depression-struck New York where the effects of the economic catastrophe were among the most visible and heartbreaking in the country.