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Long Beach Polytechnic High School, which opened in 1895, was rebuilt with New Deal funding in 1935 after incurring extensive damage during the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake. Buildings 100, 300, 400, 600, and the auditorium were designed by architect Hugh Davies in the WPA/PWA Moderne style. Polytechnic High's auditorium is of particular note. "During the repairs, the building was transformed from a Mediterranean Revival auditorium to a building that strongly evoked the WPA Moderne style. While the corner towers retained the look of three windows near the base of the structures, the domes as well as any arching was removed,...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) played an important role in the construction of highway 1 along the California coast during the 1930s – most famously along the Big Sur coastline. WPA crews also worked on highway 1 in Mendocino County, where they built three new bridges  — Jack Peters Creek bridge, Russian Gulch bridge and Jughandle Creek bridge.  Russian Gulch bridge, completed in 1939, is 527 feet long, with a central span of 240 feet.  It is an open-spandrel concrete arch design. It is similar in design to the more famous Bixby Creek Bridge in Big Sur, but its arch has no...

Belle Baranceanu painted two oil on canvas murals at Balboa Park in 1935, paid for with federal funding:  "Progress of Man" and “Education and Culture”.  She rushed to complete the later for the 1935-1936 California Pacific International Exposition and would later claim that she could not stand to look at it. These are the only two of her murals to survive in their original location.

"Deer," an egg tempera mural, was painted by Helen K. Forbes for the Susanville, California post office in 1939. The project was funded by the federal Treasury Department's Section of Fine Arts.

Carlos Dyer, an alumnus of Woodrow Wilson High School, painted this WPA mural "Democratic Education" upon the asbestos fire curtain in the school's auditorium (also a WPA project) in 1940. At 22 x 44 feet, the mural depicts a multiracial group of students engaged in academic and extracurricular activities—including art, music, and sport—against a beach backdrop. In a nod to the city's aerospace industry, a plane flies overhead. "At its present state it is raised so that only the bottom few inches are exposed revealing the words 'Let us seek here truth in the name of liberty and peace, justice...

In 1936, artist James Redmond painted a mural, "Early California," for the post office in Compton, CA. Funded by the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP), the mural depicts the mythic history of early California and wraps around all four walls of the lobby. "One of the most beautiful sets of mural panels executed under government sponsorship during the depression is James Redmond's panels for the Compton Post Office. Unfortunately, because of their location, they are also one of the least visited sites, which is a pity since they are so captivating in person. In his letter to TRAP administrators describing...

In 1940, the Work Projects Administration (WPA) built the Urho Saari Swim Stadium in El Segundo, CA. It was named after the world famous swimming and water polo coach. Today, the 25-yard pool—known as "the Plunge"—is administered by the El Segundo Recreation and Parks Department. It closed for extensive renovations in 2021 and is expected to re-open in 2025. There are two bas-reliefs at the entrance to the stadium, of a male and female swimmer; it is unknown whether they are New Deal art projects.

As part of extensive improvements throughout Golden Gate Park, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) carried out modest improvement work at the Police Training Academy – now the Golden Gate Park Senior Center.   The work involved alterations to the main office and grading and paving a drill ground behind the building – now a parking lot.  (Healy, pp 70-71). It is likely that the work was done in 1938-39, when the WPA was most active in the park, but we have not been able to verify that.    

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) improved San Francisco's Potrero Hill Playground (the present Potrero Hill Recreation Center) in the late 1930s, when WPA relief workers built the children's play area, tennis courts and a restroom (Healy, p. 66). Both the playground and the tennis courts are still there, but have been completely redone in recent years. We did not find the restroom. It is possible that the quonset hut-style Recreation Center Field House is a later New Deal project, but we do not have confirmation of that.