The Massachusetts Avenue bridge was built in 1940-1941 by the Army Corps of Engineers with federal funds provided by Congress to the District of Columbia Commissioners. It was a final step in the completion of the Rock Creek and Potomac… read more
Coolidge Senior High School in northwest Washington DC was built in 1938-40 with federal aid to the District of Columbia Education Department. An appropriation of $350,000 was made by Congress in 1937 to the District Commissioners (the municipal government)…. read more
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… read more
The Henry J. Daly Building is the former District of Columbia Municipal Center, built in 1939-41 with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA) (which was incorporated into the Federal Works Administration in 1939 in a major government reorganization). The… read more
The Calvert Street bridge was built in 1935 as part of the completion of the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway project of the 1930s. It was later named for Duke Ellington. It replaced a streetcar bridge built in the 1890s…. read more
The John Philip Sousa Bridge carries Pennsylvania Avenue across the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. It was built in 1939-40 during the New Deal and named after the famous American marching band composer, who grew up nearby. Agitation for a new… read more
In 1937, the District of Columbia government contracted with the Fred Drew Co. to reconstruct the Municipal Fish Market Pier (also called Pier No. 1). The cost of the project was $20,000 (about $366,000 in 2020 dollars) and funds were… read more
On August 22, 1933, Public Works Administration (PWA) chief Harold Ickes announced a grant of $1,759,500 for various DC sewer projects. These included an extension of the Northeast Boundary Sewer “intended to eliminate a pollution nuisance in Kingman Lake in… read more
In Spring 1939, the DC government used funds from the Public Works Administration (PWA) to award contracts for the Outfall Relief Sewer project, a large sewer line to run from the Poplar Point Pumping Station to a point near the… read more
The old Recorder of Deeds Building is a three-story structure built 1941-1943 by the municipal government of the District of Columbia. Funding was provided in 1940 by the Public Works Administration (PWA), which was by then part of the Federal… read more
The Shoreham Hill bridge was constructed in 1938 as part of the completion of the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway project of the 1930s. It lies just south of the large Connecticut and Massachusetts Avenue bridges. It is the third… read more
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) aided in the construction of the 16th Street underpass beneath Scott Circle NW. A 1941 Washington Post article reported that: “First steps to remove one of the District’s worst remaining bottlenecks were underway at Scott… read more
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… read more
The Washington Marina was originally called Yacht Basin No. 1 and was part of a multi-million dollar improvement program for the Washington Channel and Southwest Waterfront, funded by both the Army Corps of Engineers and the District Commission (DC government). … read more
Works Progress Administration (WPA) records in the National Archives report that in 1937 WPA labor was used to “erect a brick building in the city to be used as a combination carpentry and blacksmith shop by the Sewer Department.” The… read more
In the early years of the New Deal, 1934-1935, Congress funded the construction of the Woodrow Wilson High School through one or more appropriations of around $1 million to the DC Commissioners. At the time, funding and control of the local… read more