Completion Year: 1940

The Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, or BARC, is a unit of the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. BARC is the largest agricultural research complex in the world. It was founded in 1910 and greatly expanded under the New Deal.  Several New Deal agencies were involved in this massive  project, presumably working under the direction of the USDA's Bureau of Plant Industry (which later became part of the Agricultural Research Service). To begin with, the Public Works Administration (PWA) purchased the land and paid for clearing, drainage, water lines, roads, walkways and an irrigation system.  The...

The Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building was built 1938-40 as the home of the Social Security Administration, one of the major new programs of the New Deal. The building was funded and constructed in conjunction with the Railroad Retirement Board headquarters, now the Mary E. Switzer building.  The two buildings stand across C street from each other.  They were the first federal buildings south of the Mall. As soon as President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935, planning began for a new headquarters building for the Social Security Administration (SSA).  Then, when Congress funded the...

The old Winnemucca Post Office was built by the Treasury Department in the 1910s, when William McAdoo was Secretary of the Treasury. Curiously, the date and other information has been erased from the bottom of the cornerstone.  The building was reconstructed and expanded in 1940 by the Federal Works Agency (responsibility for federal buildings had been transferred from the Treasury Department in 1939). Judging from photographs on display in the New Post Office, the building was gutted and the interior entirely rebuilt. Some of the 1940 interior, with its Art Deco curves and glass-block wall, appears to have survived the subsequent conversion...

The 1940 oil-on-canvas mural, "Cattle Round-Up," by Polly Duncan depicts several cowboys guiding cattle into a shed while the bulk of the herd is being driven in from the broad expanse of the Nevada landscape.  It is a typical New Deal era post office mural in that it depicts a theme from the locality and its history and is done in American Regionalist style. The Treasury Section of Fine Arts funded this mural, probably at the same time as the old post office was expanded in 1940.   The mural at the former post office was moved to the city's modern post...

Oil on canvas entitled "Wisconsin Rural Scene" painted in 1940 by Peter Rotier. It depicts local farmer Maurice Ryan and his twin sons.

Constructed by the Treasury in 1940.

This tempera mural "Skid Row" by Richard Haines was a winner of the Treasury Section's 48-State Post Office Mural Competition. "When Section officials in Washington, D.C., chose Minneapolis artist Richard Haines to paint a mural for the new post office in Shelton, Washington, the local community openly complained about the selection. Haines tried to make the best of the situation and his logging-themed, egg tempera mural, “The Skid Road,” was actually the only one in the state completed on site. “Whenever possible,” he commented, “I feel painting of the murals on the spot should be encouraged. It is an enlightening experience...

The Lake of the Pines (now known as Sheridan Lake) on Spring Creek was constructed as a joint project by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) from 1938 to 1940.  It was the largest earth dam built by the CCC or WPA in South Dakota. "...some of the most significant structures built by the CCC were the dams that created recreational lakes in the Black Hills. Most of these dams were either 'earth fill with core trench' or 'earth fill on bentonite base.' Occasionally, concrete dams were constructed. Earth fill on bentonite dams created Lakes Mitchell, Major, Dalton, Roubaix,...

"The rectangular-plan gymnasium measures 137 x 70. The gymnasium is two-stories tall, with a balcony level above the main gym floor. There is a full basement. The building has a reinforced concrete footing, foundation, and skeleton. WPA-made concrete blocks form the curtain walls and partitions. Adobe blocks are used for some of the basement partition walls. Stucco covers the exterior walls. The gymnasium is covered with a wood truss barrel roof; it is covered with asphalt roll roofing. Flat roofs cover the west and east ends of the building where the lobby and stage are located. The concrete exterior is demarcated...

Construction of New York's LaGuardia Airport was among the largest undertakings of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration (WPA) and included both today's main airport (then the "landplane field") and what is now the Marine Air Terminal (then the "seaplane division"). The airport was constructed between 1937 and 1939 and dedicated in March 1940. At the time it was among the most advanced airports in the world. The 1939 WPA Guide to New York City (p.567) describes the new project: "The seaplane division is designed to accommodate regular transaltlantic airplane travel and will be used by Pan American Airways, Air France Transatlantique,...