Completion Year: 1943

The Washington Channel is a two-mile long body of water that sits between East Potomac Park and the Southwest Waterfront. There had been a decades-long attempt to improve and modernize the area, but little had been done before the New Deal redeveloped the entire place from 1935 to 1943. Several pieces of New Deal legislation were needed for this massive project, including the River and Harbor Act of 1935 and the War Department Civil Appropriations Act of 1939.  These granted approval and provided initial and supplemental funding for a grand modernization and beautification of the Washington Channel and Southwest Waterfront. This...

The federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) provided funding and labor for construction of what was then known as the Queen City Pool and Pool House at Queen City Park in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The WPA supplied $100,000 of the $125,000 total cost of the construction project. The facility now serves as the Mildred Westervelt Warner Transportation Museum. Wikipedia: "Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's apprentice Don Buel Schuyler, the Queen City Pool served the citizens of Tuscaloosa from 1943 through it closure in 1989. It was constructed as a ... Works Project Administration relief project of the Great Depression. The site features a poured concrete...

Fort Loudon Dam is one of many New Deal dams built by the Tennessee Valley Authority: "In the mid-1930s, TVA drafted its "unified plan," a series of long-term goals that called for the construction of a series of dams along the Tennessee River to provide a minimum 9-foot (2.7 m) navigation channel along the entire length of the river, control flooding in the Tennessee Valley, and bring electricity to the area. The Fort Loudoun project was initially known as a the Coulter Shoals project, named for a site identified by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 6 miles (9.7 km) upstream from the...

"Douglas Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the French Broad River in Sevier County, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. The dam is operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which built the dam in record time in the early 1940s to meet emergency energy demands at the height of World War II. Douglas Dam is a straight reinforced concrete gravity-type dam 1705 feet long and 202 feet high, impounding the 28,420-acre Douglas Lake. The dam was named for Douglas Bluff, a cliff overlooking the dam site prior to construction." (Wikipedia)

A 1943 article in the Washington Post reported paving and sewer work underway by on Oklahoma Avenue along Anacostia Park in Northeast DC, between Benning Road and C Street.  The work was being done by the Federal Works Agency (FWA).

The Wilbur J. Cohen building, originally built for the Social Security Administration in 1938-1940, is home to a magnificent collection of social security themed artworks funded by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts. One of the lesser-known artworks is a mural by Jenne and Ethel Magafan, "Mountains in Snow." (c. 1942) Two other murals have been removed and are now stored at the National Museum of American Art: Dorothy and Fred Farr, "Sports Related to Food" (1942). Gertrude Goodrich mural, originally placed around the four walls of the cafeteria, depicting typical activities in four parts of the country (1943).    

The DC Armory was paid for by a congressional appropriation (part of the District’s general funding bill for fiscal year 1940), and probably also through local revenue sources such as real estate taxes and parking fees. The DC Municipal Architect’s Office was responsible for planning and supervising the construction. The Armory was completed in 1941 at a total cost of about $1.5 to $2.5 million. One year after the Armory opened, the New Deal’s Federal Works Agency (FWA) approved funding for a recreation area in the “stadium-armory area at the end of East Capitol Street” (Evening Star, 1942). It was reported...

The present day Anacostia Pool & Recreation Center was constructed at the very end of the New Deal, as it overlapped with the country's entry into World War II.   On May 15, 1942, the Evening Star newspaper reported that “A $69,000 recreation center for servicemen to be erected in Anacostia and operated by the United Service Organization has been approved by President Roosevelt… the new center will include a large social hall, refreshment stand, reading, writing, and game rooms and other facilities. The hall will be used for dances, movies and sports.” The Federal Works Agency (FWA) was to plan...

Merritt Middle School was built in 1942-43 with funding by Public Works Adminstration (PWA) (part of the Federal Works Agency) to the DC Commissioners for the Board of Education.  It is unknown if the district government paid a portion from its own funds. The school closed in 2009 and the site has been retrofitted as a district police headquarters.   The look of the present building – 1960s brutalism – suggests that the school had been rebuilt since the New Deal.

The Public Works Administration (PWA) paid for the construction of the Stanton Elementary School, on Naylor Road SE, in 1943, at the very end of the New Deal (New Deal programs wound down as the country went to war). Stanton is still in use as a public elementary school.