Territories & Reservations Sites

In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt allotted $2,000,000 in emergency rural rehabilitation funds to the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs (OIA). Out of this sum, OIA sent $32,000 (about $607,000 in 2020 dollars) to the Swinomish Indian Reservation for an 18-house homestead community. The community was completed in the late summer of 1936 and helped relocate families away from nearby (and less stable) floating houses. The cluster of homes still exists today and is known as the “Swinomish Model Village.” In a special 1936 edition of Indians at Work (a publication of the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs), Martin J. Sampson,...

The Jefferson Memorial was built to honor the author of the Declaration of Independence and third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Such a memorial had long been proposed, but it was only realized under the New Deal, 1939-1943.  It remains one of America's most beloved monuments to this day.   The design is based on the Roman Pantheon and Jefferson's own love of classical architecture, as shown in his design of the Rotunda at the University of Virginia. It is built of white Danby marble from Vermont and is elevated on a circular platform of granite and marble, with steps...

The Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA) enlarged the Toro Negro hydroelectric plant, located north of Villalba. The work consisted of “new turbines, penstock pipes, canals, transformers, switches, and other control equipment."

Between 1936-1937, the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA) built the Toro Negro hydroelectric plant no. 2, located at the headwaters of the Toro Negro River.

Built in 1940-41 to serve as a multi-purpose community center for the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians, this tribal hall is the last known intact New Deal Indian Community Building left in Oregon. Its funding came through the Works Projects Administration (WPA), the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (IRA), and the Indian Division of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC-ID). The hall was designed to support what was then an unorganized group of Indians in southwestern Oregon in addressing economic, social, health and political needs. The functional building provided an auditorium to seat 300, a kitchen for canning...

The expansion and development of Puerto Rico’s education system was central to the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration’s (PRRA) agenda. The agency earmarked $2,062,954.40 for the development of the University of Puerto Rico, which remains the most important higher-education institution on the Island. The new buildings built by the PRRA included the Home Economics Building, Library Hall, Teachers’ College Hall, Normal School, the Biology Building, and an auditorium. “With these funds the following buildings have been constructed at the University of Puerto Rico: an auditorium with a capacity for 2,000 persons; a library with room for more than 50,000 volumes; a home economic...

The main campus of the University of Puerto Rico was founded in 1903 in Río Piedras.  Part of the campus, including the athletic field, was built with the help of the PRRA. "In 1924 the Chicago firm of urbanists Bennett, Parsons and Frost were contacted to design a master plan for the future development of the University. It wasn’t until 1935, with the establishment of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA) and the large sum of federal funds that it invested for public works in Puerto Rico, that the partial design and construction of the so-called Plan Parson began. Under the supervision...

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 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).  In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared by Executive Order that the nation’s capital needed a first class marina to meet the needs of recreational boaters (FDR was a great yachtsman). Roosevelt commissioned Charles Chaney, the Philadelphia Harbor engineer, to design and supervise the construction of what was then called Yacht Basin One.  The eastern half of the basin was built by the...

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 location was not given, but is very likely to have been at the old Sewer Department site on the Anacostia River in the southeast quadrant of the district.   Next to the still-extant Water and Sewer Authority garage is a group of brick buildings of the same era at the junction of First Street and Potomac Avenue. Any one of these,...

Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration work relief division efforts included "repairs, reconstruction, and additions various municipal water systems and filtration plants, including the laying of several miles of piping" in Mayagüez, ca. 1937.

Municipalities across Puerto Rico asked for the PRRA’s help with improving existing water systems and building new ones. The municipality of Isabela benefited from this help—between 1937 and 1938, the PRRA improved and built waterworks and irrigation systems in the community. Geoff Burrows writes that, "From Adjuntas to Utuado, the PRRA repaired, modernized, and constructed drinking water systems, sewer systems, and storm drains across the island. By 1938, the PRRA had: repaired 15 municipal waterworks; built new water systems and filter plants in Comerio, Isabela, Patillas, and San Lorenzo; built eight water systems for rural housing and eight for vocational schools; and one...

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 government in DC was firmly under the control of the federal government. Municipal architects Albert Harris and Nathan Wyeth were in charge of the design, which is a large Federal style, multi-story, brick building around a central courtyard, with a tower above the main entrance and minimal decoration. The firm of McCloskey & Co. was hired to do construction. The project was...