Completion Year: 1938

"Among the several projects in the Virgin Islands was the Bluebeard Castle Hotel. The group of buildings was erected on the summit of a hill 200 feet above the sea. An ancient stone tower with walls 5 1/2 feet thick, is supposed to have been the watchtower of the famous legendary pirate, Bluebeard. The building on the right in the larger illustration contains the lobby, administrative offices, dining room, bar, kitchen, and service rooms. A detail of its entrance portico is illustrated on the right side of this page. Terraces planted with palms, tropical flowers, and foliage surround all the...

"A vacant site of approximately 22 acres was purchased for the Cedar Springs Place low-rent housing development in Dallas, Texas. It cost $66,149, or about 7 cents per square foot. The structures cover 15 percent of the land area and contain an average of 27 rooms to the acre. The development consists of a series of 2-story apartment buildings and 1-story row houses with no basements. All buildings are fireproof. There are 598 rooms divided into 181 family-dwelling units, approximately 13 percent of which are arranged in 2-room, 51 percent in 3-room, 28 percent in 4-room, and 8 percent in 5-room...

The Public Works Administration (PWA) paid for construction of Tennessee's Supreme Court building in 1937-38.  The state's highest court had not previously had its own building, having been housed in the state capitol.  The structure also contains the....  Short and Stanley-Brown recorded in their 1939 report on PWA projects that: "Before the erection of this building the supreme court was housed in the State capitol and its offices were located in rented quarters in various parts of the city. The new structure houses the Tennessee Supreme Court, the Tennessee Court of Appeals, the legal department of the State government, the attorney general...

The Davidson County Public Building and Courthouse on the Public Square in Nashville was constructed in 1936 to 1938 with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA).  This enormous, 8-story building covers an entire city block and was built to house county and municipal offices, plus several courtrooms.  The county jail was originally on the 7th floor.  Short & Stanley-Brown (1939) put the cost of the project at $2,167,000 but no not give the share provided by the PWA.  Paine (1984) says the project cost $1,595,000 and that the city raised $400,000 for it in a public bond issue.  We have...

Construction of Hope High School, undertaken with federal Public Works Administration (P.W.A.) funding, comprised one of the largest New Deal undertakings in Rhode Island. "The Hope Street High School is one of the largest high schools in America, accommodating 2,200 pupils. It is in the vicinity of Brown University. It has 60 classrooms, an auditorium seating 1,285, a large stage and sound-moving-picture equipment, a library, study hall, cafeteria which accommodates 700 at one sitting, modern kitchen facilities, boys' gymnasium, and a girls' gymnasium with 105 individual shower stalls. There are special rooms for wood-working, art metal, machine-shop work, music rooms, and...

"The building is part two stories and basement in height and has over-all dimensions in plan of 112 by 42 feet. It houses the municipal offices, the police and fire departments. There is space for the fire apparatus and a police-car garage, reading and billiard rooms for the firemen, police hearing room, detention cells, council chamber, offices for the borough secretary and tax collector, and a room for social gatherings. The construction is fire-resistant. The exterior walls are limestone backed up with hollow tile and the floors are reinforced concrete on steel joists. The volume of the building is 140,000 cubic feet....

"This high school occupies a site of 35 acres. Large play areas, 7 fields for games, 6 tennis courts, and 12 handball courts, as well as a stadium seating 2,626 and bleachers seating 1,000, are part of the plant. The building accommodates 2,500 pupils. The academic, commercial, and science departments are in the wings on the left; and the shops, domestic science, and art departments on the right, with the auditorium and gymnasium between them. There are 52 standard and 30 special classrooms, a library seating 250, and a cafeteria with a capacity of 625. The construction is fireproof. Exterior walls are...

Originally constructed as a high school, what is now Eisenhower Middle School in Norristown, PA was built as a New Deal project: the Public Works Administration (PWA) provided a $487,086 grant for the project, whose total cost was $1,114,009. Construction was completed in April 1938. "The building contains 65 rooms, including shops, laboratories, music rooms, an auditorium seating 2,011 people, a cafeteria for 600, a library for 120, and 2 gymnasiums which when thrown together make a room 88 by 112 feet. There is an outdoor theater and stage, with sloping, sodded seats of 3,300 capacity. The building is fireproof. The exterior...

The Lincoln Tunnel is a 1.5-mile long tunnel under the Hudson River, from  Weehawken, New Jersey to the borough of Manhattan.  The  project was funded by the New Deal's Public Works Administration and the design was by Ole Singstad. Construction began in March 1934 and the tunnel opened to traffic on December 22, 1937, charging $0.50 per passenger car. The cost of construction was $85,000,000.  The original design called for two tubes. Work on the second was halted in 1938 but resumed in 1941. Due to war material shortages of metal, completion was delayed for two years. It opened on February 1, 1945 at a...

Franklin K. Lane High School, located in the Cypress Hills neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, was constructed with the assistance of federal Public Works Administration funds during the 1930s (PWA Docket No. NY 8884-R). Short and Stanley-Brown write: "This is one of the largest and most modern schools in New York City and has been highly rated by the Municipal Art Commission. It is in a residential district. It contains the usual administrative offices, service rooms, 84 classrooms, library, commercial museum, 4 gymnasiums, rooms for social activity, homemaking, artcraft, 8 drawing rooms, a swimming pool, and an auditorium. The student capacity is...