Inside a New York Depression-era “relief station”

"Saul Kovner was a Russia-born artist best known for his poetic glimpses of 1930s New York, from East Side tenement backyards to kids playing in a snow-blanketed Tompkins Square Park. But one painter Kovner completed in 1939 tells a story about what it was like to be poor in Depression-era New York. 'Relief Station' depicts a group of mostly strangers sitting on wood benches in a drab facility, facing forward as if they’re waiting for their names to be called. Where is this group? In a place New York new longer has, a relief station—where jobless people with no money to buy food or pay rent sought what was known as 'home relief.' ..."
Ephemeral New York