Hoke Smith Sites

The Clifton School is an Art Deco style building constructed in 1940. The structure is brick with pre-cast white stone ornamentation (made on the job site). The entrance has two stories, the second story being reserved for administrative space. Two one-story wings extend from the entrance. The school had a total of 32 rooms (eighteen of which were classrooms) and had wood floors. The interior cafeteria food service was part of the WPA lunch project. The school was demolished in 2019.

Starting in 1938, the Work Projects Administration (WPA) demolished the 1900 Delta County Courthouse in Cooper and built a new $110,450 four-story courthouse that was finished in 1940. The architect of record was Hoke Smith (1896-1943).

The first school in the community of Lavon was a two-story brick building. In 1910, the Little Creek school, which was organized in 1885, closed and transferred to the Lavon School District No. 135. Between 1938 and 1940, the school building for the Lavon Independent School District was built through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt with the passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, the WPA was to be an extension of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration Work Program which funded projects at the state and local level. The goal of the program...

The Works Progress Administration built the Penelope Rural High School, School Dist. 8. The one-story brick building bearing white cement decorations at the top was completed in 1940. It houses eight classrooms, a gym-auditorium, offices, storerooms, and a locker room.

In 1937, a school was built in Rylie, Texas (now Dallas) to replace the former school that burned down the year before. An article published in 1937 in the Dallas Daily Times Herald, recounts the process by which federal funds were granted for the construction of the school: "Officials Puzzled When Second Okay for School WPA Grant Comes Through The board of trustees of Rylie common school district is well fixed for federal aid on construction of a new school house, unofficial reports from Washington indicated Wednesday. Hoke Smith, architect for county school projects aided by the Works Progress Administration, was unable to understand an...