Completion Year: 1941

The modern campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was established at Bethesda MD during the New Deal.  It included the first laboratory of the newly-created National Cancer Institute, as well (the NCI came under the NIH in 1944). The NIH is the leading medical science agency of the United States, performing its own research and funding research at universities and hospitals around the country. The NIH was launched in 1930 as a reorganization and enhancement of government-funded medical research efforts that date back to 1887. NIH’s original location (1930-1938) was at 25th and E streets NW, Washington DC.   In...

The post office contains a 1941 Treasury Section of Fine Arts mural by Joe Jones entitled "Husking Corn." This is an excellent mural showing farmers harvesting and husking corn.  The dominant feature is the men working with lots of movement and wearing work clothes.  The corn is important, but could be any commodity.  He is celebrating the workers, very much in keeping with his strong political beliefs. Joe Jones was largely self-taught and won an award in 1931 which enabled him to travel to the artists colony in Provincetown, MA.  He was highly political and after becoming communist, was shunned by many...

The Navy-Merchant Marine Memorial, located in Lady Bird Johnson Park on Columbia Island, is a statue honoring sailors of the United States Navy and the United States Merchant Marine who died at sea during World War I. It was designed in 1922 by Harvey Wiley Corbett and sculpted by Ernesto Begni del Piatta. The monument was not erected until 1934, when it was installed with New Deal support as part of a larger Capital Parks improvement program. It is likely that the first installation was done with the help of Civil Works Administration (CWA) relief labor. Nevertheless, lack of funds meant that...

Originally called Fort Humphreys, this Army post was established during World War I. The name was changed to Fort Belvoir in 1935. "Title I of the Work Relief and Public Works Appropriation Act gave $13,942,572 in WPA funds and $52,283,400 in PWA funds for Army housing. Spent at 64 posts, 285 projects, 1091 sets of quarters. These projects had to be substantially completed by Jan. 1, 1940...Both Jadwin Loop Village and Gerber Village expanded in 1939 with the addition of row houses using PWA workers."   (https://www.fortbelvoirhousinghistory.com) WPA work on the site in 1938-40 included: "Improve grounds at Fort Humphreys…including rehabilitating roads and sidewalks,...

The Walter Reed National Military Medical Center began life as the National Naval Medical Center under the New Deal. Congress appropriated the funds in 1937 and President Franklin D. Roosevelt selected the site in Bethesda, Maryland.   Architect Paul Cret designed a magnificent Moderne building with a tower that still delights (though much obscured by subsequent additions to the complex).  Construction began in 1939.  FDR laid the cornerstone of the famous tower on Armistice Day 1940, and the center opened soon thereafter (probably some time in 1941, not 1940 as most sources say). According to the official Center website, "The President’s vision was to...

Project cards in the National Archives index describes extensive work to be undertaken by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in Arlington National Cemetery in 1938-41.   "Reconstruct and improve roads and streets in Arlington National Cemetery Reservation located near Fort Myer in Arlington County; Improve buildings, grounds and utilities of the Arlington National Cemetery by painting, brick and carpentry work, razing old buildings, grading, top soiling, seeding, planting trees, spraying and shrubs, setting and realigning headstones, rebuilding rubble masonry wall, rip-rapping streams, laying drain pipe; Improve and enlarge existing facilities and improve grounds at Arlington National Cemetery. The work includes installing...

From 1933 to 1941, New Deal relief workers added a number of new animal exhibit areas to the National Zoo, as well as improving existing enclosures.  The following are sketches of the significant work performed at a dozen areas, taken from the Zoo’s annual reports, with the relevant relief agency and years in parentheses.  Many of these exhibit improvements appear to still exist today, as shown in the photographs below.  Further verification is needed, but much of the stone and concrete work is typical of the New Deal era. Antelope and wild sheep exhibit “Replacing old and unsatisfactory frame structure by a series...

In 1941, Frank Bowers and Arthur Prunier painted two murals at City Hall in South Gate, CA. The murals, which depict people involved in economic and leisure activities, were funded by the WPA's Federal Arts Project (FAP). Bowers and Prunier also collaborated on a FAP mural at the Ruth Home in El Monte, CA.

What is now the High School of Fashion Industries began in the 1920s as a vocational program in a garment center loft on West 31 Street. It was intended to train a work force for New York's large garment industry, and most early students were first or second generation immigrants. In 1938, the WPA helped build a new campus for the what was then called the Central High School of Needle Trades. The school was completed in 1941. The school's current website explains that "It’s curriculum was almost entirely vocational, stressing sewing, machine work, and fashion design. It had many ties...

The school's main lobby features a large oil on canvas WPA mural painted by Maxwell Starr in 1941 . Entitled "History of Mankind in Terms of Mental and Physical Labor," the mural "traces developments from the Stone Age through the 1930s and portrays notable scientists and inventors." The mural was restored in 1998 by the Tech Alumni Association.   (https://www.bths.edu)