Collection of 79 Press Photos Puerto Rico

Collection of 79 Press Photos Collection of 79 Vintage Press Photos, 1936-1971.This collection of photographs documenting Puerto Rico ’s vast, federally funded postwar housing boom, is heavily annotated with typed captions and lengthy AP stories pasted verso. Often the texts are in jarring juxtaposition to the images, as the island ’s “progress” is hailed as a triumph of modern architecture and construction technologies by an exuberant US mainland press. The series begins with works spearheaded by the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA) in the late 1930s, and continues through Federal Housing Authority projects and the apparatus of Operation Bootstrap. Operation Bootstrap was an economic strategy aimed at modernizing the island through industrialization, urbanization, outmigration, and population control. While it spurred significant economic growth, averaging around 6% annually from 1947 to 1973, it also increased Puerto Rico ’s reliance on foreign capital and led to enduring problems. The housing sector was a central driver of the rapid growth, largely fueled by three key initiatives: 1) urban low-income housing projects; 2) suburban developments that enabled many working-class families to attain homeownership via long-term federal loans; and 3) rural self-help cooperative housing projects. The images and stories collected here span various phases of the housing expansion, including early instances of slum clearance and the construction of new low-rent housing projects initiated by the PRRA and its successor agencies in the FHA. They also depict families moved during rural resettlement efforts; planned communities that emerged following the 1941 Land Law; DIY “self-help” community-built maposteria and concrete block housing projects; and other forms of informal architecture (e.g., a family in Arecibo who built their home from wood packing cases originally used for the world ’s largest radio telescope). Additionally, the collection captures the construction of large-scale urban and suburban single-family developments like Levittown and Puerto Nuevo, which were key components of Operation Bootstrap. The AP writers constantly assure their readers that what were “crude” and “miserable” slums have been or will be transformed into “sparkling” modern communities in just one generation. Unfortunately, in the same generation many of the depicted housing projects and suburban developments have either been privatized (e.g. the Art Deco masterpiece El Falanesterio) or become sites of “concentrated povery and structural inequality” (e.g. LLorens Torres, the largest public housing project in the US). Undermined by flawed planning (e.g. building in flood zones), reduced public funding, foreclosures, rising crime, neglect, and abandonment, they are now representative of “over a hundred years of exploitative and inequitable U.S. mainland housing and economic policies carried out at the island ’s expense.” Most 1936-1960. Vintage black and white silver gelatin prints, each print near 20 x 24.5 cm, a few larger and smaller. Almost all with studio stamps, dates, and typed paper captions verso, some with additional or alternate registration numbers from various newspapers, libraries, and dealers. Studios include Hamilton Wright, an organization specializing in public relations for foreign governments. Many with editing crayon marks verso, a few recto. One negative with a positive photocopy print, and one letter to a community library. VG+.