During the Depression of the 1930s, over 600 unemployed people lived in Hooverville, just south of downtown Seattle. There were several other such settlements in the city, and many others around the nation. The average Hooverville resident was a white, unmarried male, about 45 years old. During the booming 1910s and 1920s, he had been a logger, fisherman, miner, or farm laborer, but now he couldn't find regular work.

In this photo, taken by James P. Lee in October 1931, Seattle Mayor Robert Harlan stands near a Hooverville shack on Third Avenue South, near Charleston Street. Like many of the other shacks in the area, this dwelling is built from scrap lumber, canvas, tarpaper, and metal and furnished with an old table and chair.