1932, from OMCA Collections 1
Pipe City (also known as Miseryville) was a makeshift community during the Great Depression. Using surplus sewer pipes belonging to the American Concrete and Steel Pipe Company, homeless men made makeshift shelters in individual sections of pipe. "Dutch" Jensen served as mayor. 3
The community at the foot of 19th Avenue eventually grew to over 200 men. To qualify for a pipe:
“To qualify for citizenship in Pipe City you must be jobless, homeless, hungry, and preferably shoeless, coatless, and hatless. If one also is discouraged, lonely, filled with a terrible feeling of hopelessness and helplessness, one’s qualifications are that much stronger. One belongs. Not all of Pipe City’s inhabitants are that way. Some of them have learned that a philosophical attitude helps. One may tinge his philosophy with a drop of irony, even bitterness, and the concrete may seem less hard and the blankets less thin and the mulligan less watery. But it takes a lot of philosophy, you bet, to make concrete either soft or warm!”
–Oakland Post-Inquirer, December 3, 1932 2
Although destitute, the men were self-reliant:
Pipe City defied expectation — it was organized, self-reliant, spunky. A burly, out-of-work construction crew chief, “Dutch” Jensen, served as mayor; Frank Sewell was appointed police chief. Jensen, who negotiated the men’s squatters’ rights with the concrete company, ran Pipe City on three simple rules: no drinking, no slovenliness, no “talking politics.” He organized the community into subsections and sent them out each day to scavenge for food, dropping the day’s harvest into the communal stew at night. Any spare food was kept in a common — and well-guarded — storeroom. Pipe City dwellers didn’t beg and accepted no government assistance. 3
Links and References
- A66.95.326 "Pipe City" courtesy Oakland Museum of California Collections. Photograph by M.L. Cohen, 1932
- Pipe City’s Dreams: Oakland, California and the Great Depression on www.museumofthecity.org
- A Haven in Hard Times Oakland Museum May-June 2011
