Works Progress Administration (WPA) Sites

"The recreational area known as Lewis Fields at the University of New Hampshire was begun in December of 1933 and finished in September of 1936. It was named for President Edward M. Lewis. The facility was built using funds from the various federal relief agencies set up to help alleviate unemployment during the Great Depression of the 1930's."  (https://www.izaak.unh.edu) Lewis Fields includes "six fields for football, soccer, and lacrosse, four baseball diamonds, a cinder track with a 220-yard straightaway, pits and runways for jumping and vaulting, fourteen composition and six clay tennis courts, concrete bleachers seating 1,750 spectators at baseball games...

This outdoor, one acre, "flow-through" pool was constructed by the WPA in 1937-38 on the UNH campus near the center of town. It has been a popular site ever since. This summer, the university announced plans to close the pool, but there is an ongoing, and growing effort to preserve this historic site.

"Albuquerque is home to scores of WPA buildings and works. Among the most prolific are the following- ... John Gaw Meem designed both Scoles Hall and Zimmerman Library on the campus of the University of New Mexico (the corner of University and Central). Both have undergone redesign and restoration, but still carry many of the architects innovative design features. Also on the campus of UNM, the Anthropology building is from that era, and contains three large murals by Joseph Imhof. The Old Albuquerque Municipal Airport (2920 Yale SE) is a Pueblo revival style two-story building that stands in the shadow of the Albuquerque...

"Albuquerque is home to scores of WPA buildings and works. Among the most prolific are the following- ... John Gaw Meem designed both Scoles Hall and Zimmerman Library on the campus of the University of New Mexico (the corner of University and Central). Both have undergone redesign and restoration, but still carry many of the architects innovative design features. Also on the campus of UNM, the Anthropology building is from that era, and contains three large murals by Joseph Imhof. The Old Albuquerque Municipal Airport (2920 Yale SE) is a Pueblo revival style two-story building that stands in the shadow of the Albuquerque...

  The Public Works Administration funded the construction of the Zimmerman Library at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. The Zimmerman Library website describes the history of the New Deal structure: "Library collections continued to grow and in 1936 UNM James Fulton Zimmerman secured Public Works Administration funding for campus construction that included $370,000 for a new library building. The impressive facility was designed in the Pueblo Revival Style by John Gaw Meem. Miss Shelton turned the first shovelful of earth at the building site on December 2, 1936 and the new library was opened on April 1, 1938. As before, students, faculty, and...

Multiple New Deal agencies, including the Public Works Administration (P.W.A.), Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.), were involved in dramatically developing and transforming what was then the North Texas State Teacher's College (now University of North Texas - Denton TX) in Denton. Federal assistance was responsible for several new buildings on campus in addition to other infrastructural developments.

In 1935 when a baseball park was constructed near McArthur Court, plans got under way to create formal gates and entrances. The park was named Howe Field for Herbert Crombie Howe, an English professor and athletics supporter. Early on, Fred Cuthbert, UO's landscape architect, and Orion B. Dawson, blacksmith, were involved in the designs. Dawson was concurrently working on iron projects at Timberline Lodge. Funding for the project came from the Works Projects Administration, several UO classes, the Soldiers' Memorial Fund, and the Associated Students of the University of Oregon. The gates, sometimes known as the Soldiers' Memorial Gates, also...

Several New Deal murals were painted for URI's Green Hall (the library and administration building), but they have since been lost.

Edwards Hall contains six murals painted by Gino Conti, located in Edwards Hall, the main auditorium of the University of Rhode Island. The murals were created in 1941 under the WPA's Federal Art Project. They were covered over with sheetrock during a renovation during the 1960s. Until that sheetrock was removed in 2010 in preparation for another renovation, they were thought to have been destroyed. Restoration of the murals was funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and re-unveiled at Edwards Hall on October 3, 2011. The Providence Journal of March 16, 1941 stated, “Of the two largest panels, one...

Multiple projects were "planned, staked out and supervised" by West Hartford's Engineering Department in 1935-6 utilizing Federal Emergency Relief Administration (F.E.R.A.) and/or Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) labor. One such project involved storm sewer construction "across the St. Joseph College property north of Asylum Avenue."

The University of South Carolina was the beneficiary of a large influx of New Deal funds from various agencies throughout the Great Depression. In "The Prosperity of the Depression," the university's website writes the following with regard to this era of the campus's history: "It is interesting to note that almost as many buildings were built during the Depression as during the period 1908-1930. A world economic crisis occurred in 1929, the harbinger of the Great Depression. Even before that, in 1927, state appropriations for permanent improvements had ended. On the one hand, the Great Depression meant severe financial constraints for the...

Plant Hall was formerly known as the Tampa Bay Hotel. It was built in the late 19th century. By the 1930s it was in disrepair until the WPA restored the building and converted it into use by the University of Tampa. One wing of Plant Hall now houses the Henry B. Plant Museum.

The University of Texas opened on September 15, 1883 with the completion of its Victorian style main building. The university was funded by a combination of state appropriations and annual distributions from the Permanent University Fund (PUF), an endowment of 2.1 million acres of land in West Texas. Initially, the PUF provided minimal income from leasing the land for grazing cattle, but when the first oil was discovered on the land on May 28, 1923, the university was set to receive a windfall. However, it was not until 1930, that all the details were worked out on how the money...

Multiple building construction projects were undertaken at the University of Utah during the Great Depression. The old library (now Crocker Science Center) and Einar Nielsen Fieldhouse are both Public Works Administration (PWA) projects that are still in use. Carlson Hall, another PWA construction, has since been demolished. The present status of a fourth building, the Seismograph Building, is presently unknown to Living New Deal. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was involved with the creation of artwork at the old library. From a 2013 retrospective on Carlson Hall, the women's dormitory: "After bequest to the U, the University administration approached the...

A WPA press release from Dec. 1937 stated: "The finishing touches to the creation of what is said will be the most beautiful college campus in tho west will begin this week with the opening operations of a new Works Progress Administration project. The plans designed, under a series of projects of which this is the culminating one, will give the University of Washington a campus second to none in boauty of landscape, according to the university buildings and grounds engineers. The WPA grant for the present project is the largest single federal allotment to the university and, according to present estimates,...

James Watrous painted a tempera-on-gesso mural cycle consisting of nine 6' tall panels, called "The Story of Paul Bunyan,"  in the UW Memorial Student Union. The works were painted in 1935 with funds provided by the federal government, and given the date the murals were probably commissioned by the Federal Arts Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration.  That needs to be confirmed. The murals used to hang in the Paul Bunyan Room, but have disappeared. 

The Works Progress Administration constructed a university laboratory building in Centennial, Albany County. The camp had been founded near Mullen Creek in 1935 by a CCC camp (possibly F-36). The University of Wyoming later used the facility as a recreation camp. During WWII, the camp was used by the Army and Air Force. The facility has been demolished. The former location of this facility is unknown to the Living New Deal.

The Works Progress Administration built the university Main Hall east wing in Centennial, Albany County. The camp had been founded near Mullen Creek in 1935 by a CCC camp (possibly F-36). The University of Wyoming later used the facility as a recreation camp. During WWII, the camp was used by the Army and Air Force. The facility has been demolished. The former location and condition of this facility is unknown to the Living New Deal.

The Works Progress Administration conducted work on women's dormitories at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. The structure was designed in Collegiate Gothic style by Wilbur Hitchcock. Today the building serves as Knight Hall and houses Student Services.

The Works Progress Administration built a reservoir in the vicinity of the University of Wyoming campus, near the University artesian well. The exact location and condition of this facility is unknown to the Living New Deal.

W.P.A. project description: "Blue Hills Reservation at Unquity Road and Canton Avenue, Milton; to develop an area of eighteen acres for playground and skating use." The location and status of these facilities is unknown to Living New Deal.

Artist Paul Julian created a series of four large petrachrome murals on the exterior of Upland Elementary School's auditorium. The murals were funded by the WPA's Federal Art Project and completed in 1942. The set of four murals depicts scenes from Upland's history: native era, mission era, Anglo settlement and citrus era.  The paintings are in a stylized social realism typical of the time, featuring muscular men at work in all four panels.  It is notable that the Indigenous people are portrayed in the same muscular manner as Spaniards and Anglos – though the cooperative labor of padres and natives seems a...

Between 1935 and 1939 the WPA maintained, expanded, and improved Suiter Field (now Upolu Airport). Upolu still operates today as a small regional airport.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was active in Jerome, a copper mining town hit hard by the Great Depression.  The WPA hired out-of-work miners for several projects in Jerome and nearby towns, c. 1937-38.  One of those projects is "Upper Park" on the hillside between upper Main Street and Clark Street. The parks consist of two parts.  Along Main Street a spacious, curving bank of stone risers is flanked by stairways and stone walls, with a short pair of central stairs and a metal drinking fountain.  The stairways lead up to a small area with grass and trees, backed by a...

The Pontalba Buildings flank Jackson Square in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans.  The Upper Pontalba Building lies on the west side of the square along St. Peter Street, the Lower Pontalba Building on the east side on St. Ann Street.  Both are block-long structures, four stories in height, built of brick and graced with the ironwork typical of buildings in the French Quarter. They were originally built in the 1840s. The two building were the gift of the Baroness de Pontalba, who wished to improve the appearance of Jackson Square – then the center of the city....

In 1940, the the Works Progress Administration (WPA)  installed sewers on Upton Street, Reno Road, and Thirty-Seventh Street in the district's northwest quadrant. This work was part of a massive New Deal era program for Washington of sewer construction, separation of sanitary and storm sewers, and sewage treatment at the new Blue Plains facility in order to clean up the badly polluted Anacostia and Potomac Rivers.

The Uptown Post Office Murals “Carl Sandburg and Louis Sullivan” were WPA New Deal Art Projects completed in 1943 by Henry Varnum Poor. These are significant murals created by the WPA which celebrates both agriculture and poetry (Uptown PO Chicago). At the time the murals were created, Poor was an established artist - one of the few non-relief artists who was allowed on the project because many unemployed craftsmen could be put to work executing his designs. His notability also gave the projects an air of respectability (Bernstein). Poor, who was born in Chapman, Kansas, studied art at Stanford University and...

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.

The US Coast Guard Station Humboldt Bay at the end of the Samoa Peninsula across from Eureka, Calif0rnia was built in 1936-37 as a federal military project, with the aid of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and its relief workforce. (HABS, p. 17) The structure replaced a considerably smaller station built in 1878, known as the Humboldt Bay Life-Saving Station. This was part of a nationwide effort to upgrade Coast Guard facilities during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt (as ardent sailor and Undersecretary of the Navy in the early 1920s). (The Life-Saving Service and Revenue Cutter Service had been merged to...

The federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted improvement on the training ship USS Illinois (later USS Prairie State), stationed off 135th Street on the Hudson River. The boat was sold for scrap in 1956. WPA project details: “Alter and rehabilitate U.S. Naval Training Ship "Illinois" at 135th Street and North River, including installing water lines, heating lines, ventilating ducts, and electrical work, replacing toilet and other partitions, tile floors and roofing, painting boat and superstructures” Official Project Number: 765‐97‐2‐8 Total project cost: $63,300.00 Sponsor: Commandant, 3rd Naval District, U.S. Navy

The federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted improvement on the training ship USS Newton, stationed in Jersey City, NJ. The boat sank in the Hudson River in 1946, and "her hulk was later sold." WPA project details: "Improve training ship" Official Project Number: 765‐22‐2‐58 Total project cost: $7,446.00 Sponsor: Commanding Officer, Training Ship, U.S.S. Newton, U.S. Navy

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) made extensive improvements to the Utah State Hospital for the mentally handicapped in 1936-37.  WPA workers constructed a Recreation Center (now the Castle Amphitheater) and a Superintendent's Residence (now the Hospital Museum), as well as remodeling the Central Administration Building, upgrading the heating plant, and doing maintenance work on the 320-acre grounds of the hospital.    The former Central Administration Building was a large Victorian structure and apparently the WPA renovation work included removal of gothic spires from the old building. Unfortunately, that historic building has been demolished and replaced by a modern administration building of...

The Museum at the historic Utah State Hospital for the mentally handicapped was formerly the Superintendent's Residence, which was constructed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1936-37 as part of a general improvements to the state hospital complex.  That work included renovations to the Central Administration Building and a Recreational Center (now the Castle Amphitheater).

The historic stone amphitheater on Old Main Hill at Utah State University in Logan, Utah was constructed in 1934 with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the USU Classes of 1925 and 1926. The amphitheater is still in use, but one can see that the original wooden seats have long since been removed, leaving traces of their metal supports.  

The New York Times reported in 1941 that the WPA was to be involved with several street improvements in Brooklyn, including the "elimination of a mile-long traffic hazard on Utica Avenue between the trolley track areas." A trolley line ran along a 4.2-mile stretch of Utica Avenue between Fulton Street and Avenue N, making it difficult to determine the stretch of Utica Avenue affected by this project.

In Sept. 1941 the New York Times described a playground being constructed by the WPA in Queens at "Utopia Parkway and Seventy-third Avenue." This site, Utopia Playground, is still in use today. New York City's Parks Department writes: "Utopia Playground was opened on January 1, 1942. Parks acquired the majority of the site, which was formerly the home of an old country school, on March 7, 1940. The remaining portion was obtained on January 7, 1941 by condemnation and immediately became part of the original Parks property. In 1943, Local Law 32 gave the playground its current name."

From the Uvalde NFH website: Establishment of the hatchery originated from a 100 acre land donation by the County of Uvalde in 1935. This donation came shortly after the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1934 which allowed for the acceptance of land donations to be used for the protection, rearing, stocking, and increase of game supply. Construction began on October 1, 1935 under a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program, and was mostly complete in 1937, with commencement of operations beginning in 1938. Today the hatchery is operated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and focuses on propagation efforts to promote...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted landscaping work at the now-former VA Hospital, located northeast of the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City. The property, now a luxury condo complex, is now privately owned. Its location has been described as 12th Avenue and E Street; the former VA Hospital building is closest to Capitol Park Ave.

The WPA helped with a few projects at this Veterans Health Care facility in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. Ongoing Projects Proj. 9870 - Veterans Admin. Facil. Improve Grounds San Fernando - Federal Funds $15,815 - Men employed per month 39 - Months Duration 6 Proj. 11024 - Vet. Admin. Facil. Paint Building and Equipment, San Fernando - Federal Cost $12,354 - Men Employed per Month 35 - Months Duration 5 Completed Projects Proj. 6322 - Vet. Admin. Facil. Paint Hospital Building San Fernando - Federal Cost $3,845 Sponsor Costs $1,311 - Men Employed Per Month 8 - Months Duration 4 Proj. 6963 -...

The federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) helped to clear vacant lots in Bayonne, New Jersey. This community improvement effort also paved the way for the development of some of these properties for municipal parks (which were then constructed by the WPA). Areas cleared included: "areas along Newark Bay shore 12,500 square feet from Ninth to Eleventh street, 6,230 square feet from Fifteenth to Sixteenth street and 12,500 square feet from Nineteenth to Twenty-first street. Vacant property ... 894,916 square feet off Fifth-eight street, between Broadway and Avenue C, 45,000 square feet at Avenue C and Twenty-seventh street, and 37,500 square feet,...