What Will Become of America’s Veterans’ Halls?
Across the country, membership in the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars is declining, but the physical spaces they occupy still serve important purposes.
Photographs by Maureen Drennan
A sign in the entrance of the Michael A. Rawley Jr. American Legion Post advertises the space as “members only,” but the Brooklyn-based photographer Maureen Drennan has warned me in advance to ignore it. Drennan has often entered these establishments unannounced: Since 2018, she’s photographed American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts across the northeastern United States, drawn in by what she calls their “lonely poetry.” The Rawley post, an 1860s brownstone in Gowanus that was once a
