• Agua Fria School - Santa Fe NM
    The Atlas of Historic New Mexico Maps, produced with assistance from the New Mexico Humanities Council and the New Mexico Chapter of the National New Deal Preservation Association, lists a number of New Deal schools in Santa Fe, including Agua Fria. Constructed in 1935-36, the original adobe five-room school has been added to over the years, changing considerably the historic footprint of the building. Today, only the southwest corner reveals its earlier design. The campus is currently closed (2015) and undergoing a $15 million project to construct a new school.
  • Carlos Gilbert Elementary School - Santa Fe NM
    The Atlas of Historic New Mexico Maps, produced with assistance from the New Mexico Humanities Council and the New Mexico Chapter of the National New Deal Preservation Association, lists a number of New Deal schools in Santa Fe. Agua Fria, Carlos Gilbert, Cerrillos, Chimayo, Galisteo, Harvey Junior High, and part of Wood Gormley were all New Deal projects or constructed with the help of New Deal funds. Capshaw and Golden contain New Deal art only.
  • Don Gaspar Avenue Bridge - Santa Fe NM
    Dedicated on June 23 1934, the Don Gaspar Bridge opened a new crossing to the emerging Capitol Complex south of the Santa Fe River. Designed in the Pueblo Revival manner, the bridge is important for consciously applying the so-called “Santa Fe style” to a utilitarian structure. Made of a rigid-frame design, the bridge was the first of its type in New Mexico and became the standard for subsequent spans over the Santa Fe River. Construction of the Don Gaspar Bridge is tied directly to a New Deal program aimed at improving municipal transportation during the Depression. Created by Executive order...
  • Fray Angelico Chavez History Library Mural - Santa Fe NM
    Olive Rush painted this fresco, entitled "The Library Reaches the People," in 1934, with funding from the WPA Federal Art Project. Its current location was originally Santa Fe's public library, and is now part of the Palace of the Governors.
  • Georgia Redfield Archive, WPA New Mexico Collection, Fray Angélico Chávez History Library - Santa Fe NM
    In 1936, the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) hired Roswell, New Mexico resident Georgia B. Redfield, an unemployed writer of local history, to collect stories and facts on her community. Like thousands of writers, editors, researchers and clerical workers on relief during the Great Depression, Redfield performed hours of spadework to fill a few pages of a state WPA guide. Georgia Brigham Redfield (1877-1956) moved from Louisiana to Roswell in its pioneering days. She had published a book, “Our Mammy, Her Songs” in 1934. Working for the FWP, Redfield roamed Roswell, gathering stories on ethnic groups and pioneers, floods and fires, the town’s...
  • Hyde State Memorial Park - Santa Fe NM
    From Elmo Richardson, Natural Resources Journal, April 1966: The construction of Hyde State Park afforded the first, as well as the best, example of the role of the CCC in state recreation programs. Activities and problems encountered in constructing Hyde State Park were illustrative. Of work projects elsewhere in the New Mexico and in the five-state CCC area. During the first two years, the shortage of local enrollees kept the company at the Hyde site short of the desired 200 total; not until 1938 was that figure attained. Two years later these boys were combined with a company of workers...
  • National Park Service Building - Santa Fe NM
    "No state benefited more from these government-funded programs than New Mexico whose Democratic governor, Clyde Tingley, was a political supporter and friend of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt... ...New Deal projects in Santa Fe include the National Park Service building on Old Santa Fe Trail."   (Sharpe)
  • New Mexico Museum of Art: Patio Murals - Santa Fe NM
    Four fresco panels entitled "The Voice of the Earth", "The Voice of the Sky", "The Voice of the Sipophe", and "The Voice of the Water" were painted by artist Will Shuster in the patio of the New Mexico Museum of Art under the Public Works Art Project. Indian artist Velino Shije Herrera (a.k.a Ma Pe Wi) trained in fresco in order to help execute the project. The patio murals one of several New Deal arts projects completed by Shuster with federal funding. Shuster initially proposed completing a series of portraits of prominent local Indian artists and craftspeople, but the federal...
  • New Mexico Public Welfare Building - Santa Fe NM
    "Completed in 1935, after a design by John Gaw Meem, the New Mexico Public Welfare Building was financed with Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) funds to serve as headquarters for FERA and other relief agencies working in New Mexico during the Depression. Reflecting a restructuring of the state’s relief agency under Governor Tingley’s administration, the Public Welfare Building represents the strengthening and centralization of both the state and New Deal relief programs in New Mexico during the Depression. The architecture of the Public Welfare Building is also significant for introducing the Territorial Revival style to public architecture in Santa Fe,...
  • New Mexico School for the Deaf - Santa Fe NM
    Constructed in 1935, after a design by Santa Fe architect Gordon F. Street, the Old Laundry and Health Center buildings were part of a campus expansion during the New Deal financed by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the Public Works Administration programs. When completed in 1937, at cost of approximately $400,000, the six new buildings expanding the New Mexico School Deaf campus were considered masterworks of Spanish-Pueblo Revival architecture.
  • New Mexico State Capitol Mural - Santa Fe NM
    Title: "Polo Ponies" "s part of the Works Project Administration, created a polo mural that currently hangs in the Santa Fe State Capitol passageway between the Capitol and its Annex. It is on a long term loan from the New Mexico National Guard. This mural may have been planned to be placed at the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell but actually started out at the state's Horse Calvary Unit in Albuquerque before being moved to the Military Museum (the New Deal built Armory) in Santa Fe."   (Flynn) Medium: oil on canvas Size: tryptich Restoration Info: Restored 2007
  • New Mexico State Police District 1 Campus (former) - Santa Fe NM
    Located on the campus of the New Mexico Department of Transportation is the former New Mexico State Police District 1 office. Constructed as three separate WPA projects between 1935 and 1940, the former State Police campus consists of an administrative building (1935) and a later annex (1939). Both were designed in the regional Pueblo Revival style by Willard C. Krueger, the WPA’s chief architect in New Mexico, who would later design structures for the Manhattan Project. The State Police started humbly in 1905 as the New Mexico Mounted Police, a small division of equestrian officers appointed by the Governor under single...
  • New Mexico Supreme Court Building - Santa Fe NM
    "The Supreme Court Building was built to relieve the congestion that existed in the State capitol where the supreme court had always been housed. The new building is occupied by the supreme court with its accessory offices, the attorney general, the State treasurer, and the State law library. The necessary vaults and storage spaces are provided for each department. It is a semifireproof structure provided with a sprinkler system. The floors are concrete on steel joists, sash are steel, and exterior walls are brick covered with cream-colored stucco. Copings and window sills are brick....
  • Old Santa Fe Trail Building - Santa Fe NM
    "Built from 1937 to 1939 and designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1987, the Old Santa Fe Trail building on Museum Hill is the work of the young men who served in the Civilian Conservation Corps in New Mexico during the Great Depression. The Spanish/Pueblo Revival-style adobe building is a testament to them and in particular, the Native American and Latino New Mexicans whose commitment and craft are manifest in this beautiful building. "The CCC men constructed the unique building largely by hand using local materials. The logs for the vigas and corbels came from the CCC camp in nearby...
  • Santa Fe County Courthouse (former) - Santa Fe NM
    The historic former county courthouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico was constructed with the assistance of federal Public Works Administration (PWA) funds. The building, which was completed in 1939, "served until the 1970's when the judicial building was constructed just down the street. It now houses county administrative offices." (flickr)
  • Santa Fe National Cemetery Development - Santa Fe NM
    The Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) conducted numerous improvement and development projects at Santa Fe National Cemetery. "Improve cemetery" Official Project Number: 165‐2‐85‐143 Total project cost: $14,833.00 Sponsor: Commanding General, 8th Corps Area, U.S. Army "Develop landing area at airport" Official Project Number: 165‐3‐85‐144 Total project cost: $16,588.00 Sponsor: Commanding General, 8th Corps Area, U.S. Army "Construct landing strips at airport" Official Project Number: 165‐3‐85‐72 Total project cost: $56,513.00 Sponsor: Commanding General, 8th Corps Area, U.S. Army "Construct and improve buildings, facilities, and grounds at cemetery" Official Project Number: 265‐3‐85‐71 Total project cost: $44,900.00 Sponsor: Commanding General, 8th Corps Area, U.S. Army "Grade, drain, and landscape grounds and improve buildings" Official Project Number: 265‐85‐8000 Total project...
  • Santa Fe River Park - Santa Fe NM
    "Seventy-five years ago, Democrats controlling the White House and in Congress launched a series of public-works programs unprecedented in U.S. history. ... No state benefited more from these government-funded programs than New Mexico whose Democratic governor, Clyde Tingley, was a political supporter and friend of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. ... The Santa Fe River Park includes flagstone walkways, a stone-lined acequia channel, picnic tables, limestone-block walls lining the banks and thousands of trees. The park was developed in several phases, at undetermined costs, by the Civilian Conservation Corps between 1935 and 1940. David Kammer, an Albuquerque historian, said Stephen DeBoer, a landscape architect...
  • Santiago E. Campos U.S. Courthouse Murals - Santa Fe NM
    "In addition to the public-works projects, Santa Fe also had more than its share of New Deal-financed art and craft projects designed to train young men and women in traditional skills while producing works of art for public buildings. Perhaps the best known of the New Deal art in Santa Fe are the six murals landscapes on canvas affixed to the walls by William Penhallow Henderson in the U.S. District Court building on Federal Place. The old courthouse, built between 1853 and 1889, recently got three more New Deal artworks scenes of Navajo life painted by Warren Rollins for a...
  • Wood Gormley Elementary School - Santa Fe NM
    The Atlas of Historic New Mexico Maps, produced with assistance from the New Mexico Humanities Council and the New Mexico Chapter of the National New Deal Preservation Association, lists a number of New Deal schools in Santa Fe. Agua Fria, Carlos Gilbert, Cerrillos, Chimayo, Galisteo, Harvey Junior High, and part of Wood Gormley were all New Deal projects or constructed with the help of New Deal funds. Capshaw and Golden contain New Deal art only.