American culture of the 1930s was heavily affected by the economic downturn of the Great Depression. According to the University of Washington, the effects of the Great Depression were widespread and permanently changed American culture, with life at the end of the 1930s quite different from life at the end of the 1920s. Changes in America’s government during the 1930s would also have a lasting effect on culture, even today.

When the stock market crashed in October 1929 the effects on the economy were profound, with trade grinding to a halt and unemployment rising as high as 30 percent or more by the early 1930s. Notable cultural icons were created by this tumultuous time, ranging from an increase in vaudeville and low-cost public entertainment to America’s controversial love affair with daring bank robbers and bootleggers, deniers of authority. The efforts of Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected in 1932, created nationwide programs and institutions that had a direct effect on the landscape.

A big cultural change in the 1930s was the popularity of mass entertainment despite the economic crash. Cinema, vaudeville, and even local dance competitions were popular as a low-cost escape from the drudgery and desperation of Depression life. As a result, America’s entertainment industry flourished, helping it become the most expansive in the world. 

Part of America’s love of entertainment led to an obsession with Hollywood and California, which did not fall prey to the Depression as fast as other states. In fact, California’s relative insulation from the Depression on the West Coast led to thousands of Americans traveling cross-country in search of work and prosperity in the land of sunny Hollywood and fruit-rich agriculture. So many drought-stricken farmers from Texas and Oklahoma, their lands rendered useless by the Dust Bowl of the early ’30s, traveled to California in ramshackle convoys that they were called “Okies” and became part of permanent Americana, especially due to the iconic 1939 John Steinbeck novel “The Grapes of Wrath,” explains the Oklahoma Historical Society.

While the 1930s made sunny California and Hollywood an American dream, the arts were also amplified by president Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. To hire many unemployed workers the federal government commenced on an infrastructure building spree in the 1930s, building roads, national parks, and government buildings. Many such buildings included artwork, sculptures, and murals from artists paid for by New Deal funding, bringing art to the masses. These famous buildings, such as the U.S. Supreme Court building, remain iconic today.

The expansion of the national parks, as well as state parks, has had a lasting impact on American leisure, with many more citizens able to access the wilderness and its wholesome fun than ever before. This expansion in outdoor accessibility likely influenced the growth of potent American institutions like the Boy Scouts of America, which is widely known for using camping and backpacking to teach youth important knowledge and skills.

Other New Deal infrastructure campaigns changed American culture by electrifying the land, literally, through the construction of hydroelectric dams. The Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority are well-known projects from the ’30s, helping modernize remote areas of the country. Without the Great Depression, areas like the rural South, Appalachia, and the barren deserts of Nevada might not have been developed until years later. The proliferation of electricity allowed millions of Americans to listen in on modern news and entertainment, like president Roosevelt’s “fireside chats,” which forever changed the presidency into an office that was more open to the public.

Those friendly “fireside chats” represented the growth of the American presidency with the 1930s seeing the office grow from Herbert Hoover’s laissez-faire handling of the economy to Roosevelt’s powerful use of the executive order. American politics was changed forever by the need for a strong, decisive president, and the changes generate much debate even today. 

Despite crushing poverty, the 1930s was a period of cultural transformation and groundwork-laying that would pave faster developments during the 1940s and 1950s. Much of the art and infrastructure from the 1930s remains pertinent today, and both Hollywood and the office of the president have maintained their greatly-expanded role in American society.