and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Faced with the choice of supporting Roosevelt or Brookwood, these unions gave their financial support to Roosevelt. Educational historian Joseph Kett cites declining enrollment as the primary cause of the college's closure, although the reason for the decline is not stated, while labor historian Frances Ryan agrees with Brookwood's directors that competition from a wide array of worker education efforts was the key reason. Labor historian Susan Stone Wong argues that the real was uninspired institutional leadership and indifference by labor leaders, while social historian Neil Hamilton cites, among other things, attacks by big business. Aftermath After the college's closure, Tucker Smith was hired by the United Auto Workers to lead their worker education department. The Brookwood campus sat abandoned for four years after the school's closure. The board deeded the property to a successor body, Stanroy Estates, Inc. In August 1942, Stanroy Estates sold the campus to the Norwegian Shipping and Trade Mission for $34,000. The Norwegian government renamed the campus renamed Eidsvold, and transformed it into a rest home for Norwegian merchant sailors whose ships were being repaired in New York City. Eidsvold was sold in 1951 to developer Albert Stone for $110,000. Theatre group Brookwood Labor College was noted for its exceptionally strong theater program. The drama troupe, the Brookwood Labor Players, toured the United States and received acclaim in the mid-1930s. The core of the program was a course, "Labor Drama", which was offered one hour each week. The course taught such basic skills as acting, directing, playwriting, and set design. But it also emphasized the importance of dramatic themes such as working-class problems and collective action as solutions to those problems. Singing was also part of the theater program, and included the teaching of standard labor songs. An adjunct of the drama program was the radio program The Brookwood Hour. The hour-long program aired Thursdays on WEVD in New York City. Brookwood began teaching drama in 1923. Hazel MacKaye was the first director. MacKaye left in 1926 to run a similar program for the United Mine Workers, and was replaced by Jasper Deeter, a director who had worked with Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill. Deeter directed several plays for The Workers' Theater after its formation in 1925, and often had Brookwood players appear in Workers' Theater productions. Among the more celebrated plays produced by Brookwood Labor College were Peggy, Starvation