Works Progress Administration (WPA) Sites

"During the year 1936 the WPA built East River Drive from Grand Street to 14th Street, demolishing structures in the line of the driveway, backfilling and grading low areas, rebuilding and extending sewers to new outfalls in the East River, building new catch-basins and inlets, and laying a nine-inch concrete base on the drive."

"According to the American Guide Series, ...on Green Bank Rd., a macadamized highway, to Franklin D. Roosevelt Park, 3 m. (athletic fields, playgrounds, bathing beach). Much of the work on the 5.00-acre municipally owned park has been done by the WPA. --- New Jersey, a Guide to Its Present and Past By Federal Writers' Project, 1939, page 602 "

One of the oldest parks in Los Angeles County, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park was a product of WPA efforts. Located in the unincorporated "census-designated" community of Florence-Graham, CA in southern Los Angeles County, the park continues to serve as a vital center of community life, with basketball courts, children's play areas, a community room, a computer center, a fitness zone, a gymnasium, picnic shelters, a senior center, a soccer field, a swimming pool, a skateboard park and tennis courts.

The FDR Park Golf Course was constructed as a WPA project in 1936.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) renovated Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica, CA, after it was damaged in the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. Improvements included the construction of two Streamline Moderne–style buildings for $63,072 in WPA funds as well as tennis courts.

The Franklin Hall dormitory building at OPSU was improved with W.P.A. funds and labor. "By the 1920’s, the dormitory housed only male students, usually forty of them, and was called The Boys’ Dormitory. In 1935, the state legislature and WPA funds allowed funds for some badly needed remodeling. One year later, remodeling provided additional bathroom facilities in the building." Sometimes known as "the white building," the building still stands at the eastern corner of Sewell St. and College Ave.

In 1939 the Works Progress Administration (WPA) constructed an athletic field at Portland's Franklin High School as part of a larger commitment ($468,459) to the improvement of Portland public school properties.

From 1939 to 1942, Portland’s Franklin High School benefited from two different Works Progress Administration (WPA) initiatives. One of the projects allowed artists from the Federal Art Project, one of the five independent branches of the Works Progress Administration, to respond to a commission funded by Franklin High School students and alumni ($15,000). Stonecutter George Berry and his assistants sculpted a fifteen feet tall (with pedestal), forty-ton sandstone statue of the school’s namesake. In spring 1942, the “Statesman Scientist” was installed at the north entrance of the school overlooking the athletic field.  The pedestal includes several built-in benches as well...

"In 1936, CCC and WPA workers gathered on a scruffy piece of logged off timberland to build the Franklin Lake Campground... CCC enrollees from Camp Ninemile in Vilas County worked with the National Park Service to create landscape, trails, roads, and campsites, while WPA workers from the Warvet camp in Vilas County constructed buildings. The campground includes 42 campsites, a picnic area, swimming beach, and ten buildings. The plan adopted Rustic style aesthetics blending manmade elements, such as trails and buildings, into the natural lakeside setting. The buildings' Rustic logs, stones, open porches, wide overhangs, and exposed rafters reflect the beauty...

The Works Progress Administration made improvements to the Franklin Park Zoo. This project sought to improve the lion house, monkey house, and build machine and carpenter shop and garage extensions and a storage building. The total cost of the proposed project was $137,050.14 of which $94,349.50 would be provided by federal funding. This would account for the cost of materials and labor. This federal project was controversial and ended in litigation. The federal government sued the city of Boston for $4787.65 due to diversion of WPA of wages, although there were claims totaling nearly $11,000.

The WPA worked on Franklin St. between Market St. and Bay St.

"Hackettstown is receiving full value of Federal work relief money and is accomplishing a much needed improvement. ... WPA workers... are busy digging the ditches for the storm sewer down Franklin Street which will carry flood waters off High, Sharp, Cook, and Franklin Streets."

"Fraser Field is a baseball park in Lynn, Massachusetts that was built in 1940 by the Works Progress Administration as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal." (Wikipedia)

Olive Rush painted this fresco, entitled "The Library Reaches the People," in 1934, with funding from the WPA Federal Art Project. Its current location was originally Santa Fe's public library, and is now part of the Palace of the Governors.

The Department of Parks announced the opening of what is now the Fred Samuel Playground on March 31, 1939. The press release explained: "The area located on the west side of Lenox Avenue between 139 and 140 Streets is adjacent to Public School 139, Manhattan and was the first parcel of ground purchased jointly by the Park Department and the Board of Education and developed in collaboration to the advantage of both departments. Besides being completely equipped with play apparatus the area also provides facilities for handball, basketball, paddle tennis, roller skating hockey and ice skating in the winter when subfreezing...

NYC Parks describes the origins of this playground: "South Ozone Park grew into a bustling community, and the neighborhood’s many residents needed recreation space. Parks acquired the playground land in a purchase from William Zagarino in 1936, and soon after developed the area into a play space." Indeed, on April 3, 1937, the Department of Parks announced the completion of this new playground: "It has been equipped with swings, see-saws, slides, sand tables, play-houses and a wading pool for small children. Handball, shuffleboard and table tennis courts, a large play area with a soft ball diamond and an oval roller skating...

The Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) and the National Youth Administration (NYA) undertook crucial preservation work at the Frederick Douglass home ("Cedar Hill") along the Anacostia River in Southeast Washington DC, where the great abolitionist writer and former slave lived and worked from 1878 to his death in 1895. The restoration work was focused on Douglass' papers, library and artifacts, and on improvements to the extensive grounds of the estate. An article published in the The Atlanta Constitution in 1939 reported that the WPA Historical Records Survey Project was “cleaning assembling, indexing and filing the valuable papers” of the late Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) at...

The Department of Parks announced the opening of what is now the Frederick Johnson Park on March 31, 1939. The press release explained: "The 150 Street and Seventh Avenue area obtained by the Department of Parks from the Board of Transportation for an indefinite period has been developed to include 8 tennis courts, 9 handball courts, a volley ball court as well as a sitting area for mothers and guardians of small children. The sitting area is surrounded by continuous rows of benches under shade trees with two separate sand pits for youngsters to play in. This area is adjacent to...

Frederick's Municipal Swimming Pool building was reportedly built by the WPA in 1935. “The Frederick WPA-built school," writes Marjorie Barton, "is an example of how proper maintenance can preserve WPA buildings.”

Fredericksburg received a WPA grant of $4,954 in 1939 to improve the campus and athletic field at the Fredericksburg Public School (now Fredericksburg Middle School). The school agreed to a dollar-for-dollar match and the seniors of 1938 donated $200 from their yearbook fund to help complete the project. The native flagstone wall in front of the school (Travis Street) would be dedicated to them. Other improvements were an arch built over the east entrance and re-paving of the driveway. The athletic field would have drainage enhancements and new sod, a fifty-inch-high fence built along College Street, a cinder tract around the...

The WPA carried out construction and improvements on Frederikberg Gade in Charlotte Amalie. Road construction and improvements carried out by the WPA in the Virgin Islands typically included “clearing the old roadway widening existing curves, blasting rock from the road surface and drains, relocating where necessary, installing culverts, preparing the subgrade and placing the bituminous macadam surface.”

The Works Progress Administration built new bathroom facilities at the Frederiksted Grammar School. Before becoming a public school, the building had served as a hospital and the Danish School. The site of the school is today occupied by the Arthur Abel Complex, which serves as the Governor’s Frederiksted Offices.

The Works Progress Administration built new bathroom facilities for the Frederiksted High School School (renamed Arthur A. Richards Junior High School) on St. Croix.

The Works Progress Administration built a new cistern and carried out the repairs and extension of the water and sewer systems, at Frederiksted Hospital. The plaque placed in 2004 by the St. Croix Historic Preservation Commission at the site of the former hospital reads: "Frederiksted Hospital - Erected as a 2-story town house in 1803 by the DaCosta family, this sturdy building has been greatly modified over the years. Major alterations occurred in the 1930's, when the residence was converted into Frederiksted's main hospital."

In Newport, Rhode Island "the WPA built sidewalks and most of the stone walls, grandstands, concession buildings and other facilities in Newport’s public parks. Vernon Park, Freebody Park and Cardines Field are the most visible examples." At Freebody Park, the extent of WPA work is unclear as the astounding stone perimeter wall bears a 1932 date stamp, which pre-dates the New Deal.

In 1938, the Washington Post reported that the Public Works Administration (PWA) had funds to build a new tuberculosis unit with 150 additional beds at the Freedman's Hospital site. The same year, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) also did repairs at the former Freedman's Hospital in Washington DC.  WPA project cards in the National Archives state that the work to be done was to, "Clean and renovate Freedmen's Hospital buildings, including cleaning windows, washing walls, floors, woodwork, furnishings and small equipment". Freedmen's Hospital was established in 1862 to serve the thousands of African Americans who came to Washington during the Civil War, seeking their...

"Port Deposit is an interesting town that sits alongside the Susquehanna River, not far from the Conowingo Dam. There is an abundance of stonework in the town, and the former African American school shown below is no exception. This was one of 19 new schools that the WPA built in Maryland (they repaired or improved 389 other schools). The building is now called 'Freeman Hall.' ...The building seems to be in fairly good shape, but it has suffered from some degree of neglect and vandalism. Fortunately, a restoration project has been started, and on December 14, 2011 it was reported that...

The January 16, 1936 issue of the Woodland Daily Democrat "reported that WPA-funded landscaping was transforming the 'old city dump at the east end of Court Street' into a 'new park for the City' and that 'much interest is being shown in the proposed target range which will occupy part of the park'." Though the park no longer appears to contain a target range, if it ever did, there is still a very nice park with a pagoda, a playground, a band stand and several other amenities at this location.

The Works Progress Administration built the Fremont Armory in Fremont OH in 1936. Originally a National Guard Armory. Presently (January 2022) Armory Vintage Market.

A $40,000 building was built at Fremont Elementary School under the WPA, the most extensive work done on any Riverside school. In the field of education, WPA relief was limited to repair and construction work. The WPA did work on seventeen Riverside area schools, with such tasks as painting Lincoln Elementary School, improving the Bryant Elementary School playgrounds, and rebuilding the Riverside City College chemistry lab. It appears from Google photos that the building constructed by the WPA is no longer extant. Newer looking buildings comprise the elementary school today.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) carried out improvements to the grounds at Fremont Elementary School in Alhambra, CA.

Fremont Lake, north of Pinedale, Wyoming, is a large natural lake created by glacial scouring and a terminal moraine that has been expanded by the construction of modern dams.  Today, the lake is about 12 miles long and 1/2 mile wide.  It lies entirely within the Bridger-Teton National Forest. In the 1930s, a concrete and rubble stone dam was built that raised the level of the lake by 2 feet.  Relief workers from the Civil Works Administration (CWA) and Works Progress Administration (WPA) participated in the construction of that dam. We do not know exactly which years the work was done. A...

French Charley’s Playground is located within the northern part of Bronx Park, near the park entrance at East 204th Street by Webster Ave. "In June of 1941, Parks developed this playground and the fields, and the WPA (Works Progress Administration) provided the labor force for the new construction."   (www.nycgovparks.org) WPA work included the playground itself, as well as footbridge to the park at East 204th St., landscaping, paths and a large, rounded stone retaining wall. "The park is about 16 feet below street level and the WPA had to convert the sloping landscape into two levels that are flat, which involved moving...

The WPA built a sewer line from the gravity tank on Frenchman’s Hill to Charlotte Amalie. It also built a new pumping station with two diesel engines for pumping.

This bridge was constructed with funds and labor provided by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) workers conducted the following work in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From a W.P.A. Bulletin: WPA beautification of the Cambridge Fresh Pond Parkway golf course includes the filling of unsightly water filled pools, messed with an accumulation of assorted junk and discarded automobiles.

The zoo is located in Roeding Park. The zoo's history goes back to 1907. The WPA added the cat barn exhibit and small chain link cages in the 1930s.

The stadium was originally built in 1926, but later improved by the WPA. The archival photo pictured details each feature the WPA worked on at and surrounding this stadium, including new adjacent handball and tennis courts. The WPA work on this stadium was most likely included the 1942 work referred to in the following quote from the stadium's website: "The stadium, originally know as Fresno State College Stadium and renamed for Fresno State's first football coach, Emory Ratcliffe, in 1941, was expanded with a high-rise grandstand on the west side in 1942, boosting the seating capacity to 13,000."   (www.fresnocitycollege.com) This may also...

Fresno received $90,000 from the federal government for sewers, water system, and street drainage. The WPA storm sewer project pictured below cost $55,000.

The airfield opened in 1942.