{"id":2440,"date":"2020-04-27T23:11:06","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T03:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/?p=2440"},"modified":"2020-04-28T23:05:03","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T03:05:03","slug":"fallout-shelters-cold-war-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/2020\/04\/27\/fallout-shelters-cold-war-new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"Fallout Shelters"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The Dying City: Postwar New York and Ideology of Fear, <\/em>Brian Tochterman described how the Cold War dropped \u201cflight\u201d and \u201chysteria\u201d like bombs upon New Yorkers as they struggle to organize their own \u201ccivil defenses\u201d because of \u201covercrowding\u201d of buildings and the lack of preparation to defend the city, however, it still offers \u201ca great opportunity\u201d to create solutions and plan constructions for shelters.[1]<\/a> He mentioned that the government would contribute \u201cshelter,\u201d food, water, clothes, blankets, and other survival necessities for civilians that are \u201cwilling to stay\u201d in New York.[2]<\/a> In 1962, Layhmond Robinson, the writer of a New York Times <\/em>article titled \u201cU.S. Is Combing State for Fall-Out Shelter Sites,\u201d announced that \u201c[two thousand] architects and<\/p>\n

\"Fallout<\/a>
Courtesy of Ex1le at English Wikipedia from Wikimedia Commons: These signs were used to notify people which buildings are set up as shelters from possible nuclear attacks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

engineers\u201d were searching for appropriate buildings to protect people from rising tensions and possible nuclear attacks.[3]<\/a> President John F. Kennedy authorized this plan as a part of a multi-million dollar \u201cnation-wide program,\u201d which was to provide protection for United States citizens.[4]<\/a> Robinson added that \u201cbasements,\u201d \u201csubways,\u201d and \u201ctunnels\u201d would count as shelters and should \u201caccommodate fifty people.\u201d[5]<\/a> When most of the larger buildings were filled with people, Robinson reported that New York City\u2019s Council requested for residents and other building owners to \u201cestablish shelters\u201d for others who need them.[6]<\/a> In her journal article, Sarah Lichtman discussed how shelter advocacy increased when the New York Council requests spread. She described the shelter advocacy as an \u201cideologically charged national do-it-yourself project\u201d because it involved assisting citizens to seek shelter, especially in someone else\u2019s home.[7]<\/a> Lichtman defined the \u201cdo-it-yourself\u201d project as a \u201chome improvement with family safety,\u201d which provided reassurance of \u201ccontrol in increasingly uncertain times.\u201d[8]<\/a> In order to notify others of the availability of sanctuaries, the owners of the buildings, transformed into shelters, were supplied with fallout shelter signs.<\/p>\n

The fallout shelter signs (pictured above) were hung up on the exterior buildings to let people know these buildings were available to stay in during the Cold War tensions under stressful predicaments of nuclear attacks. According to the blogger of the Civil Defense Museum, the Department of Defense contributed and posted more than one million signs, which costed nearly seven hundred thousand dollars, inside and outside of the shelters.[9]<\/a> Besides symbolizing caution, the black and yellow colors also signaled \u201ctrained leadership,\u201d medical necessities, \u201cfood and water,\u201d a safeguard from \u201cradiation,\u201d and surveillance to \u201cdetermine safe areas and time.\u201d[10]<\/a> The blogger cited Bill Geerhart\u2019s blog post, highlighting the background of the fallout signs. The \u201cCivil Defense Museum\u201d blogger shared that Geerhart even interviewed the man, Robert Murtha, who was responsible for posting the fallout shelter signs. According to Geerhart, the \u201cfirst fallout shelter sign\u201d was displayed in 1961 at the Westchester County Building, located at 148 Martine Avenue in White Plains, New York (picture of the Building below this paragraph).[11]<\/a> The Westchester County building also accommodated more seventeen hundred people.[12]<\/a> Geerhart reported that Robert S. McNamara, the secretary of Defense, received criticism from Abraham Ribicoff, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, regarding the meaning of the fallout sign symbols.[13]<\/a> Ribicoff claimed that the signs \u201clooked too much like the Atomic Energy Commission radiation symbol\u201d and he was concerned about people confusing the signs with \u201cdanger,\u201d rather than the signs of sanctuary provision and reassurance of military protection.[14]<\/a> Even though the shelter signs were taken down after the end of the Cold War, they serve as a vintage symbol of the geopolitical conflict.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Brian Tochterman, The Dying City: Postwar New York and Ideology of Fear, <\/em>(University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 71<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Layhmond Robinson, \u201cU.S. Is Combing State for Fall-Out Shelter Sites,\u201d New York Times, <\/em>January 10, 1962, pg. 21<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Sarah Lichtman, \u201cDo-it-Yourself Security: Safety, Gender, and the Home Fallout Shelter in Cold War America,\u201d Journal of Design History<\/em> 19 (2006): 39<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Ibid<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> National Fallout Shelter Program \u2013 Public Fallout Shelter Signs, Civil Defense Museum, http:\/\/www.civildefensemuseum.com\/signs\/<\/a><\/u>, accessed April 27, 2020.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Bill Geerhart, \u201cAn Indelible Cold War Symbol: The Complete History of the Fallout Shelter Sign,\u201d Conelrad Adjacent Blog Spots, <\/em>http:\/\/conelrad.blogspot.com\/2011\/06\/indelible-cold-war-symbol-complete.html<\/a>, accessed 27 April 2020.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Ibid<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Ibid<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Ibid<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Dying City: Postwar New York and Ideology of Fear, Brian Tochterman described how the Cold War dropped \u201cflight\u201d and \u201chysteria\u201d like bombs upon New Yorkers as they struggle to organize their own \u201ccivil defenses\u201d because of \u201covercrowding\u201d of buildings and the lack of preparation to defend the city, however, it still offers \u201ca …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4744,"featured_media":2442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[298,4,5],"tags":[322,327,329,328],"class_list":["post-2440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cold-war-new-york","category-neighborhoods","category-tours","tag-cold-war","tag-fallout-shelter-sign","tag-nuclear","tag-shelter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4744"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2440"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2457,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2440\/revisions\/2457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/nyc-history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}