• Alvar Street Library - New Orleans LA
    Built by the WPA in 1940. The library flooded during Katrina, but has since reopened.
  • Anseman Avenue Bridge - New Orleans LA
    As part of a massive $12-million project to improve New Orleans’s City Park, the WPA built nine concrete vehicular bridges between 1936 and 1939 throughout the expanded grounds. Spanning Bayou Metairie near the southwest corner, the Anseman Avenue Bridge replaced one of the oldest bridges in the park. Constructed in 1938, it crosses the bayou by a 114’-long, single-span, reinforced concrete, closed-spandrel arch. In elevation, its low elliptical arch is highlighted by the recessed extrados and the heavy, angular cutwater abutments. The bridge carries two lanes of traffic over a 28”-wide concrete roadway; 5’ sidewalks are provided on both sides. Approach spans, flanked...
  • Audubon Zoo - New Orleans LA
    "The Audubon Zoo is a zoo located in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is part of the Audubon Nature Institute which also manages the Aquarium of the Americas. The zoo covers 58 acres (23 ha) and is home to 2,000 animals. It is located in a section of Audubon Park in Uptown New Orleans, on the Mississippi River side of Magazine Street. The zoo and park are named in honor of artist and naturalist John James Audubon who lived in New Orleans starting in 1821... During the Great Depression a $400,000 expansion of the zoo was conducted by the Works Progress Administration. Many...
  • Audubon Zoo, Monkey Hill - New Orleans LA
    "Perhaps the highest return on investment ever earned on a few thousand federal dollars came in the form of a pile of dirt in a rather forlorn park at the depth of the Depression. The agency behind it was the Civil Works Administration, the park was Audubon, and the dirt is now known as Monkey Hill. Contrary to popular belief, the Works Progress Administration did not build Monkey Hill; the mound was nearly complete before the WPA came into existence with the 1935 Emergency Relief Appropriation Act. Nor was the hill a primary goal of the project, much less a designed landscape...
  • Banks Street Sidewalks - New Orleans LA
    The Works Progress Administration (WPA) constructed sidewalks in New Orleans, including along Banks Street in Mid-City. WPA workers often marked their work with "sidewalk stamps" pressed into the fresh concrete -- a common practice by private contractors in the early 20th century.
  • Bayou St. John Improvements - New Orleans LA
    "In the early 20th century, commercial use of the Bayou declined, and the Carondelet Canal was filled in. A number of New Orleanians started living in houseboats on the Bayou. Complaints from people in nearby neighborhoods and sanitation concerns led to this being outlawed in the 1930s. A Works Progress Administration cleaned up and beautified the Bayou. A lock was installed near the Lake Pontchartrain end of the Bayou. In the summer of 1955 the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board temporarily drained the Bayou, to clean out debris and material that was causing foul odors. The Bayou then took on...
  • Booker T. Washington Courts - Lake Charles LA
    The Booker T. Washington Courts was one of two rural public housing projects constructed in Lake Charles in 1939-1941. Architects G. Lewis Dunn and Gustave G. Quinn designed the complex initially as barracks-type housing, which was rejected for one-story duplexes. T. Miller and Sons constructed the project at a cost of $238,397. The 72-unit complex was demolished in 2013 and replaced.
  • Cabildo (Louisiana State Museum) Renovation - New Orleans LA
     The Cabildo has a long and notorious history. It was constructed in 1795-99 as the seat of the Spanish municipal government in New Orleans. The name of the governing body who met there was the "Illustrious Cabildo" or city council. It was site of the Louisiana Purchase Transfer in 1803.  The building later served as the home of the Louisiana Supreme Court and was where  the nationally significant Slaughterhouse and Plessey vs. Ferguson cases were heard before they went up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Cabildo became the home of the Louisiana State Museum in 1911 and remains the flagship of that institution.
  • Calliope Street Public Housing - New Orleans LA
    The Calliope projects were constructed as the fourth of six housing projects developed for New Orleans, 1939-1941. The original boundaries were South Dorgenois Street, Erato Street, Calliope Street (now Earhart Boulevard), and South Prieur Street. The George A. Fuller Company was awarded the contract for construction of the 690 apartment units. The $2,497,000 bid covered demolition of existing buildings, construction, plumbing, heating, electrical work and site improvement. As with the other pubic housing complexes, the units were demolished with the exception of two residential buildings and the former administration building. The administration building faces Earhart Boulevard and the residential buildings...
  • Canal Street Branch Library (former) Mural - New Orleans LA
    An exceptional mural, "History of Printing," was painted by Edward Schoenberger for the Canal Street Branch Library in New Orleans.  The library building was a pre-existing structure from the early 1900s, in a quirky Caribbean style of uncertain origins. The mural occupies the entire back wall of the main room on the second floor and is approximately 30 feet long by 10 feet high. The branch library has been closed, probably after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the building sold to private owners.  The mural was covered and damaged after the building was repurposed, but has been restored to its full glory...
  • Charity Hospital (derelict) - New Orleans LA
    Charity Hospital was constructed between 1936 and 1940 in central New Orleans, about a mile north of the downtown by today's Interstate 10.   Charity Hospital was one of two teaching hospitals which were part of the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans. For decades it served one of the country's largest populations of uninsured citizens. At the time it was built, Charity Hospital was the second-largest hospital in the United States. The cornerstone lists the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works (later called the Public Works Administration) as the building funder. The architects were Weiss, Dreyfous & Seiferth, who were also...
  • City Park Improvements - New Orleans LA
    The Wikipedia entry on City Park provides a good summary of park history, including the role of the WPA in making improvements to the park: "City Park, a 1,300 acre (5.3 km²) public park in New Orleans, Louisiana, is the 6th-largest and 7th-most-visited urban public park in the United States. City Park is approximately 50% larger than Central Park in New York City, the municipal park recognized by Americans nationwide as the archetypal urban greenspace... City Park was established in the mid-19th century on land fronting Metairie Road (now City Park Avenue), along the remains of Bayou Metairie, a former distributary of the...
  • F. Edward Hebert Federal Building - New Orleans LA
    The F. Edward Hebert Federal Building was built from 1935 to 1939 and is still in use. At the time it was built, the Treasury Department was responsible for all federal buildings. Formerly home to the New Orleans Main Post Office, the building still houses a post office station inside.  It is decorated by three groups of New Deal era sculptures on the exterior. The state of the interior of the building is unknown to us.
  • F. Edward Hebert Federal Building: Lang Sculpture - New Orleans LA
    This limestone sculpture "Flood Control" by Karl Lang was created for the F. Edward Herbert Federal Building with Treasury Section of Fine Arts funds.  It still graces the southeastern corner of the building.
  • F. Edward Hebert Federal Building: Proctor Sculptures - New Orleans LA
    This marble eagle statue  -- one of four at the entrances to the F. Edward Herbert Federal Building -- was produced with Treasury Section of Fine Arts funds by Gifford Proctor.
  • F. Edward Hebert Federal Building: Scheler Sculpture - New Orleans LA
    This limestone sculpture "Harvesting Sugar Cane" by Armin Scheler was created for the F. Edward Hebert Federal Building and paid for with Treasury Section of Fine Arts funds. It still graces the northeastern flank of the building.
  • Fire Station - New Orleans LA
    Constructed in 1939-40, the former New Orleans Fire Department Station Number 2 is one of three firehouses built by the WPA in the Crescent City in the late 1930s. Located in the Lakeview neighborhood, south of Lake Pontchartrain, it consists of a brick-clad, cross-gabled, house-type plan containing one bay. Modest regional influences are expressed through the wrought-iron porch supports and a balconette at the top of the front gable. At the rear is a lower gabled addition holding sleeping quarters. Hurricane Katrina devastated this section of the Lakeview commercial district. The fire station is one of a few buildings pre-dating...
  • Fort Pike Restoration - New Orleans LA
    WPA photos and captions from the 1930s show that the WPA helped restore the historic Fort Pike site in the 1930s. The 1938 WPA guide to the city of New Orleans describes the site: "Fort Pike, 36.1 m., occupies the site of a fortification built by Spanish Governor Carondelet, in 1793. The present fort was constructed under Andrew Jackson (1814) and later occupied by Confederates, but so far as is known no engagement ever took place here. Massive ramparts and winding passages lend a feudal atmosphere. Fort Pike was rehabilitated in 1935 and is now maintained as a State park." (New...
  • Fountain of the Four Winds, Lakefront Airport - New Orleans LA
    One of the results of the 1936 Works Progress Administration (WPA) airport beautification project was the Four Winds fountain and bas-reliefs by sculptor Enrique Alférez. The airport, originally Shushan Airport, was renamed New Orleans Municipal Airport, and then Lakefront Airport after the new airport was constructed. The airport was restored in a 4-year project following Hurricane Katrina damage, at which time Alférez' bas-reliefs and murals by Xavier Gonzalez were uncovered. Alférez served as the director of the sculpture program for New Orleans WPA artists.
  • French Market - New Orleans LA
    The Public Works Administration (PWA) provided the funds for the restoration and expansion of the historic French market along the waterfront of the Vieux Carré of New Orleans.  Short and Brown's 1939 compilation of important PWA projects has the following to say: "Along the Mississippi River water front in New Orleans is located a group of buildings comprising the old French market, which is one of the largest public markets in the United States. One of the buildings was erected during the Spanish domination in the eighteenth century, and it has been an object of interest to tourists for the past...
  • Grandjean Bridge - New Orleans LA
    As part of a massive $12-million project to improve and expand New Orleans’s City Park, the WPA built nine concrete vehicular bridges across the grounds between 1936 and 1939. Located behind the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Grandjean Bridge spans an inlet of Little Lake on a reinforced concrete rigid-frame arch. Constructed in 1938 to replace an older bridge, the structure reveals modernistic flourishes, including sections of vertical fluting, curving end walls and nautical-like lighting. A stylized WPA logo appears in counter relief across the southeast end post. Little used in Louisiana, the rigid-frame technology casts the superstructure and substructure monolithically as...
  • Harrison Ave. Bridge, No. 1 - New Orleans LA
    Constructed in 1939, the Harrison Avenue Bridge spans a lagoon developed by the WPA. The bridge is a single-span, reinforced concrete, closed-spandrel arch design. Approach spans, flanked by heavy parapet railing, lead up to the crossing. In elevation, the low, elliptical arch is highlighted by the recessed extrados and the oversized fluted abutments. A stylized WPA logo is stamped in counter relief on the northeast end post. As part of a massive $12-million project to improve and expand New Orleans’s City Park, the WPA built nine concrete vehicular bridges between 1936 and 1939.
  • Huey P. Long Bridge - New Orleans LA
    This bridge across the Mississippi River was started under President Hoover's Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1931, and completed in 1935 with PWA funds. "Opened in December 1935 to replace the Walnut Street Ferry, the bridge was named for the extremely popular and notorious governor, Huey P. Long, who had just been assassinated on September 8 of that year. The bridge was the first Mississippi River span built in Louisiana and the 29th along the length of the river. It is a few miles upriver from the city of New Orleans." (Wikipedia)
  • Iberville Public Housing (former) - New Orleans LA
    The Iberville Projects public housing was the third of six low-rent public housing developments in New Orleans funded by the United States Housing Act of 1937. The Housing Authority of New Orleans was the first housing administration approved in the US under the Housing Act (Adams, 2014). The 75 building complex resembled rowhouses, and were constructed of brick exteriors with tile roofs, chimneys, and galleries with iron columns and decorative cast iron railing, typical of other New Orleans style architecture. One, two, and three bedroom apartments made up the 858 units completed in 1941. The architects were Herbert A. Benson,...
  • Jackson Barracks Improvements - New Orleans LA
    Jackson Barracks was established in the early 19th century. It was transferred from the US Army to the state National Guard in the 1920s. "From 1936 to 1940, Louisiana adjutant general Raymond H. Fleming utilized the federal Works Progress Administration to provide renovation and new construction to the post. Included in the WPA project was a new headquarters building, later dedicated to the Louisiana commander... Fleming Hall served as the Guard's state headquarters until Hurricane Katrina. Just prior to the storm, it suffered a fire. It has since been restored and is in use as a conference building."   (https://neworleanshistorical.org) "In August 2005,...
  • Jackson House Restoration - New Orleans LA
    It appears that the historic Jackson House was restored by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the mid 1930s as part of a larger historic rehabilitation project in the Jackson Square area (source #1). The plaque on the building confuses matters, however, by claiming that the Jackson House was built in 1933 and restored in 1978 by the state of Louisiana.  The 1933 date hardly seems possible, given the age of the brick used in construction of the house (see photo of plaque for close-up of bricks). Furthermore, the building is shown on the 1876 Sanborn fire insurance map (image from...
  • Jackson Square Renovation - New Orleans LA
    During the New Deal, the Work Progress Administration (WPA) restored the historic buildings at the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans, forming three sides of Jackson Square: the Upper and Lower Pontalba Buildings, the Cabildo and the Presbytère (see project pages on each one).  The work to restore the buildings was part of a larger effort by the WPA to document and restore historic sites in the French Quarter and to improve the appearance of the French Quarter for the purpose of improving tourism to the Crescent City. The project took place between 1935 and 1937, and it cost...
  • Lafitte Avenue Public Housing - New Orleans LA
    Lafitte project was constructed 1940-1941 and included 896 units. It was the fifth of six local housing units constructed in New Orleans following the Housing Act of 1937. The project was bounded by Lafitte Avenue, Orleans Avenue, North Claiborne and Avenue, and North Dorgenois Street. Architects were Sol Rosenthal, Jack J. H. Kessels, and Ernest W. Jones. R. P. Farnsworth and Company were the contractors for the $4,000,000 project. The units were built in a traditional New Orleans style townhouse with metal balconies and porch columns and railings. The project was originally slated for demolition in 1995 but postponed. It...
  • Lautenschlaeger Market (former) Improvements - New Orleans LA
    Located in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood, downriver from the French Quarter, Lautenschlaeger Market was constructed in 1901 as a public open air market. In the late 1930s, the City of New Orleans owned 19 public markets, many of which had fallen into disrepair and were threatened by demolition. The city turned to the WPA, which financed the improvement of eight of them under the Market Rehabilitation program, spearheaded by Mayor Robert Maestri. Maestri, a New Dealer elected to office in 1936, used work relief programs, according to historian Anthony J. Stanonis, “to change the physical appearance of the cityscape as...
  • Lower Pontalba Building Renovation - New Orleans LA
    The Pontalba Buildings flank Jackson Square in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans.  The Upper Pontalba Building lies on the west side of the square along St. Peter Street, the Lower Pontalba Building on the east side on St. Ann Street.  Both are block-long structures, four stories in height, built of brick and graced with the ironwork typical of buildings in the French Quarter. They were originally built in the 1840s. The two building were the gift of the Baroness de Pontalba, who wished to improve the appearance of Jackson Square – then the center of the city....
  • Magnolia Public Housing Project - New Orleans LA
    The Magnolia Housing Project was one of the first two planned for New Orleans. The original 740 units in one, two, and three story buildings included one, two, and three bedroom apartments. The chief architect was Moise H. Goldstein, with supportive architects Thomas Harlee, Frederick Parham, N. Courtlandt Curtis, Richard Koch, and Charles Armstrong. Construction was completed by R. P. Farnsworth Company. Jens-Braae-Jensen, structural engineer, Frank Chisholm, mechanical engineer, Orloff Henry, electrical engineer, William Wiedorn, landscape architect, and Frank Hugh Waddill, civil engineer were also part of the construction and design crew. Magnolia was completed in 1941 for $2,478,980. The...
  • McFadden Cottage Improvements, City Park - New Orleans LA
    The McFadden Cabin was built by a City Park benefactor in the 1920's as a recreational facility for New Orleans Girl Scouts (still in use today).  The WPA made improvements as part of its many works projects in the park, which had been recently expanded when the New Deal came into being. A plaque was placed in the stonework at that time.
  • Presbytère (Louisiana State Museum) Renovation - New Orleans LA
    The former Presbytère or Rectory of the late 18th century St. Louis Cathedral is now part of the Louisiana State Museum complex, along with the old Cabildo Building.  The Cabildo flanks St. Louis on the west and the Presbytère on the east, along the north side of Jackson Square along Chartres Street.  The Presbytère was begun in 1891 and only finished thirty years later, and never served its intended purpose.  It was rented and then sold to the City of New Orleans for use as a courthouse and then transferred to the Louisiana State Museum in 1911 (see plaque). The Presbytère...
  • St. Bernard Avenue Public Housing - New Orleans LA
    St. Bernard Projects were constructed 1940 as one of New Orleans' "Big Four" high-density urban public housing projects. Initially comprised of 744 units in 74 buildings constructed on 30.9 acres, the project was bordered by St. Bernard Avenue to Gibson Street and Senate Street to St. Denis Streets. Architects Herbert A. Benson, George Christy, and William Spink designed the buildings "to echo the brick townhouses of the Vieux Carre" (Historic American Buildings Survey, 1933). Similar to other public housing units in New Orleans, they reflected elements of the period including porches and balconies with metalwork and canopies. Unlike other units,...
  • St. Roch Market Improvements - New Orleans LA
    Established in 1875, in a Creole neighborhood northeast of the French Quarter, St. Roch Market is one of several public markets improved by the WPA in New Orleans in the late 1930s. By that time, the city supported 19 public grocery markets, many of which had fallen into disrepair and were threatened by demolition. The city turned to the WPA, which financed the improvement of eight public markets under the Market Rehabilitation program. This included making interior and exterior upgrades to six neighborhood markets and building two new ones. For the St. Roch Market, the WPA gutted the interior, replacing...
  • St. Thomas Public Housing - New Orleans LA
    St. Thomas was one of six public housing projects constructed under the Housing Act of 1937. It was constructed 1938-1941 and contained 920 units of two or three story brick buildings. The architect's rendering for the St. Thomas Street project was "planned to provide maximum light, space and air; buildings about a central court, with cool porches" (Slum Clearance, 1938, p. 68). The housing authority began demolition and redevelopment in the late 1990s, but five or the original buildings were saved "for historical purposes" (St. Thomas Development Neighborhood). The buildings are on the corner of Felicity and St. Thomas streets...
  • Tad Gormley Stadium, City Park - New Orleans LA
    Constructed in 1935-37 with WPA labor, the 26,500-seat stadium came as part of a massive New Deal project to expand New Orleans’s City Park. Richard Koch, an architect on the park board and the architectural firm of Weiss, Dreyfous and Seifert, designed the stadium. The architectural firm had reached national exposure after Governor P. Huey Long selected it in 1934 to design the new Art Deco State Capitol in Baton Rouge. Built of poured reinforced concrete, the stadium’s upper seating rests on a series of stout columns arranged in an oval, allowing for curved seating. The space between the terrace seating and...
  • Upper Pontalba Building Renovation - New Orleans LA
    The Pontalba Buildings flank Jackson Square in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans.  The Upper Pontalba Building lies on the west side of the square along St. Peter Street, the Lower Pontalba Building on the east side on St. Ann Street.  Both are block-long structures, four stories in height, built of brick and graced with the ironwork typical of buildings in the French Quarter. They were originally built in the 1840s. The two building were the gift of the Baroness de Pontalba, who wished to improve the appearance of Jackson Square – then the center of the city....