Historical Restoration Sites

Between 1935 and 1938, the WPA performed structural renovation and historic restoration work at this site. From Wikipedia: From 1928, the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Macon Kiwanis Club raised funds to create a replica of one of the blockhouses to memorialize the fort. In 1933 the government began archaeological excavations at the Ocmulgee Old Fields, supported by workers and funding of the US Works Progress Administration (WPA) under President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression. In 1936, one of the archaeologists, Gordon R. Willey, did enough work at Fort Hawkins to establish the original "footprint" of the...

The WPA conducted extensive restoration work on this site. According to Frank Straus: “The second cycle began in the summer of 1936, when the Works Progress Administration rebuilt Fort Holmes, using an 1817 engineer’s detailed drawing and elevation of the original redoubt. The federal agency, operating with a workforce encamped on the northern side of the Island at the site of the current solid waste transfer station, raised a new blockhouse, re-dug the ditch, piled up soil for a new embankment, and lined the outward walls of the embankment with cedar logs to rebuild the palisade.”

Fort Humboldt in southwest Eureka, California, was a military outpost that helped secure northwest California for miners, settlers and the US government, from 1853 to 1867, when it was abandoned.  It began to be seen as worthy of recognition and salvage in the early 20th century as a triumphant landmark of Anglo conquest (a history much in question today by the region's native peoples). Works Progress Administration (WPA) crews of relief workers conducted extensive renovations to Fort Humboldt between 1935 and 1938.  This came after a concerted lobbying effort by local veterans' organizations, which had begun the restoration work on their...

The WPA restored this fort at some point prior to 1938. From Rhode Island: A Guide to the Smallest State: "he Works Progress Administration has restored the old fort, graded the land, and converted it into a park." The site is now the Columbia Park Playground.

Between 1935 and 1938, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) performed structural renovation and historic restoration work at this site, a remote historic fort 68 miles west of Key West on Bush Key. In 1992, it became a part of Dry Tortugas National Park.  

Fort Loudoun was in operation from 1756 to 1760, when it was captured by the Cherokee. It fell to ruin until 1917 when it was recognized as an historic site. In 1933, the Tennessee General Assembly purchased the fort and created the Fort Loudoun Association, which managed it until the Tennessee State Parks purchased it in 1977. From 1935 to 1938, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) undertook restoration and archaeological work under the "Fort Loudoun Restoration Project," with plans to reconstruct the fort "as based on historical and archeological research." (wikipedia)

The Civilian Conservation Corps (C.C.C.) restored "several historic buildings in Fort Mackinac."

"During 1934-35, the Civilian Conservation Corps restored the fort and established public recreational facilities, which enabled Fort Macon State Park to officially open May 1, 1936, as North Carolina’s first functioning state park."

The Works Progress Administration carried out historical restoration work at Fort Morgan, on Mobile Baywest of Gulf Shores. The fort was occupied by the Army in the 1920s and later fell into disrepair after it was vacated. In 1960 the fort was designated as a National Historic Landmark.

The New Deal did a great deal of work restoring and improving historic battlefields around the country in the 1930s.  As part of this effort, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) restored Fort Negley in 1937-38.  This was an important Confederate fortification during the Civil War. Using the original plans, 800 relief workers of the WPA reconstructed the limestone fort at a cost of $84,000. Fort Nagley reopened to the public in 1938. It is still an historical attraction in Nashville and has a new visitor's center and informative historical markers.

The WPA performed structural renovation and historic restoration work at this site in 1937.    

Established in 1833, Fort Nisqually was the first European settlement on Puget Sound and was sold to the Du Pont company in 1904. Efforts to preserve the fort were begun in 1933 and taken over by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) from 1935 to 1940. WPA laborers relocated the fort to Tacoma's Fort Defiance Park and "re-created several others to present Fort Nisqually as it was in 1855." (metroparkstacoma.org)

WPA photos and captions from the 1930s show that the WPA helped restore the historic Fort Pike site in the 1930s. The 1938 WPA guide to the city of New Orleans describes the site: "Fort Pike, 36.1 m., occupies the site of a fortification built by Spanish Governor Carondelet, in 1793. The present fort was constructed under Andrew Jackson (1814) and later occupied by Confederates, but so far as is known no engagement ever took place here. Massive ramparts and winding passages lend a feudal atmosphere. Fort Pike was rehabilitated in 1935 and is now maintained as a State park." (New...

"In the beginning of the P.W.A. practically every one of the national parks received financial assistance from it. Some of the parks and monuments were new and unimproved and others needed finishing. Among the many buildings were the Administrative Building and Museum near Hot Springs, Arkansas, the Administrative Building and Museum at Chickamauga, and the restoration of Fort Pulaski in Georgia. This old fort was built in 1810. The project consisted of repairs and rehabilitation and provision of space for a museum. The work was completed in July 1936 at a construction cost of $76,453."

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) rebuilt Fort Raleigh on Roanoke Island, site of the first English settlement in North America.  By the 20th century, virtually nothing remained at the site, which was known as "The Lost Colony."   The site, which was a state park at the time of the WPA work, was designated as Fort Raleigh National Historic Site in 1941 and put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. A 1938 inventory of WPA achievements notes that:  "For 350 years all that remained of of Fort Roanoke, site of "The Lost Colony" on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, was...

WPA crews rebuilt historic Fort Recovery between 1935 and 1939. The fort was originally built in 1794 on the site where Army General Arthur St. Clair was roundly defeated by the armies of a confederation of Miami and Shawnee Native Americans. The fort was memorialized in 1910, and a museum opened on the site in 1938. From the National Archives file: “They also built, for use as a museum, a replica of the log cabin occupied by General St. Clair on his arrival there in 1791, and in addition constructed a modern library building.”

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) began to restore the foundation of Fort Rice and build replica structures on the historic site in 1937.  Located eighteen miles south of Mandan in Morton County, Fort Rice was originally built as an Army post during the Civil War. The WPA mapped out a program of improvement for both the site and the North Dakota State Park system more generally. “No structures remain but there are markers for the site and individual building locations. The main marker is enclosed in a stone shelter. Two replica blockhouses were constructed by the WPA in the 1930s, but they...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted restoration and preservation work at Fort Sewall in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

WPA crews conducted restoration work at the site between 1935 and 1938. From the Library of Congress: "In 1937, the fort was restored as a WPA project. It has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, but today is in great need of additional need of repair and structural work."  

The fort dates back the early nineteenth century, when it was used to “promote and protext the interests of the United States in the region’s fur trade” (historicfortsnelling.org). Between 1938 and 1940, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) performed structural renovation and historic restoration work at this site, including sidewalks, sewers, porches, and garages. National Park Service: "Fort Snelling benefited from New Deal programs such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The programs provided funding for a general reconditioning of the fort, including landscaping and infrastructure. Workers graded and resurfaced existing roads, built new sidewalks and curbs and...

"Louis Vasquez and Andrew Sublette built an adobe fort on this site about 1835 as part of their fur trading enterprise. The two sold the fort in 1841 and it was abandoned a year later. In the late 1930s, the Works Progress Administration reconstructed the adobe fort using the small portions of the remaining walls and the limited information available regarding the size and plan of the original. The Colorado Historical Society operates the property as a museum."   (www.historycolorado.org)

The W.P.A. conducted restoration and preservation work at Fort Wayne in Detroit, Michigan.

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) restored and recarved hundreds of totem poles in Alaska, as part of a restoration program that lasted between 1938 and 1942. The program was part of a larger U.S. Forest Service effort to employ Alaska Natives and conserve totems and Native cultural assets. U.S. Forest Service architect Linn A. Forrest oversaw the joint program of the Forest Service and the CCC throughout Southeast Alaska. Master carver John Wallace of Hydaburg carved the Four Story Totem Pole. An information page, published by the Public Art Archive, summarizes the history and symbolic meaning of the figures represented on the...

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...

"This monumental bronze portrait bust, dedicated in 1893, depicts Civil War General Winfield Scott Hancock (1824–1886), and was created by American sculptor James Wilson Alexander MacDonald (1824–1908)." (www.nycgovparks.org) In the 1930s, the bust was restored with federal funding under Karl Gruppe, "chief sculptor of the Monument Restoration Project of the New York City Parks Department, from 1934 to 1937." The program was initially supported by federal funding from the Public Works of Art Project (Lowrey, 2008), and later by the WPA.

The State Emergency Relief Administration (SERA) financed a $25,000 appropriation "which employed 65 research workers out of the Bancroft Library of U.C. Berekey and 56 additional workers put to work in the field to gather the necessary information to provide for the restoration of the old town of Columbia, in Tuolumne County." According to the Mariposa Gazette, efforts were being made in 1934 to have a local Mariposa County ghost town Hornitos being made into a state park in a similar way to what was occurring in Columbia California. Like most Mother Lode towns of the Gold Rush era gold was discovered...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) worked to restore the Giuseppe Verdi Monument during the mid-1930s.

Government House, in Christiansted, St. Croix, was reconstructed and fireproofed with the assistance of federal Public Works Administration (P.W.A.) funds. The Annual Report of the Governor of the Virgin Islands for 1941 mentions that the rehabilitation of the Government House in Christiansted provided "modern, comfortable living and office accommodations. (…) This work has been done under the supervision of the Public Buildings Administration, Federal Works Agency.”

"Outstanding achievements were the completion of the rehabilitation of the Government House and Administration Building in Charlotte Amalie and the Government House in Christiansted, providing modern, comfortable living and office accommodations. (...) This work has been done under the supervision of the Public Buildings Administration, Federal Works Agency."

Governor Wentworth Historic Site is a 96-acre (0.39 km2) protected area in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. The undeveloped property features a plaque and the stone remains of an extensive northern plantation built just before the outbreak of the American Revolution by New Hampshire's second Royal Governor, John Wentworth. The mansion burned to the ground in 1820. The CCC 117th COMPANY S-53 out of Tamworth NH were involved in the remodeling of a cottage and garage.

Located in front of the Governor’s Mansion in Juneau, the Governor’s Totem Pole was commissioned by the Civilian Conservation Corps. It was carved between 1939-1940. Charlie Tagook, a Tlingit carver from Klukwan, began the work, and William N. Brown, a Tlingit and head carver from Saxman, finished it. The totem stands at 31’-6” tall, and is carved on a yellow cedar log. The seven figures represented on it illustrate Tlingit legends. “Figure one on top is Raven and in descending order are Grandfather Raven, Man, Giant Cannibal, Mosquito, The World, and Old Woman Underneath,” reports Klas Stolpe in the Juneau...

Gracie Mansion has been the official residence of New York City's mayor since 1942, Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia and his family moved in.  It is located on East 88th Street in Carl Schurz park.  The federal style house was built in the 18th century for wealthy merchant Jacob Watson.  In 1798 ship merchant Archibald Gracie traded his Lower East Side townhouse for the Watson mansion in what was then known as Yorkville. The city purchase the Gracie estate in 1886 to expand Carl Schurz park.   For years it served various functions as part of Schurz park, housing public restrooms, an ice cream stand, and classrooms. From 1924 until 1936, it...

"This majestic, gilded-bronze equestrian group statue depicts one of the United States’ best-known generals, William Tecumseh Sherman (1820 – 1891). Dedicated in 1903, it was master sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s (1848 – 1907) last major work, and serves as the centerpiece of Manhattan’s Grand Army Plaza." In the 1930s, the sculpture was restored with federal funding under Karl Gruppe, "chief sculptor of the Monument Restoration Project of the New York City Parks Department, from 1934 to 1937." The program was initially supported by federal funding from the Public Works of Art Project (Lowrey, 2008), and later by the WPA. The statue's gold leaf...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) worked to restore the Pomona statue (also known as the "Lady of the Plaza") in Grand Army Plaza in Manhattan, during the mid-1930s. The statue tops the Pulitzer Fountain in the plaza's southern half.

This dramatic arch in Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza was created by architect John Hemingway Duncan in 1889-1892. The statuary on the arch was added over the next several years, by several different artists including William Rudolf O'Donovan (men), Thomas Eakins (horses) and Frederick MacMonnies (Army and Navy sculptures and the allegorical crowning sculpture). In the 1930s, the sculpture was restored with federal funding under Karl Gruppe, "chief sculptor of the Monument Restoration Project of the New York City Parks Department, from 1934 to 1937." The program was initially supported by federal funding from the Public Works of Art Project (Lowrey, 2008),...

"This large bronze equestrian statue by William Ordway Partridge (1861-1930) depicts Civil War General and 18th United States President Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822-1885). Though Grant’s reputation was tarnished after serving as President amidst one of the most corrupt administrations in the nation’s history, he is revered for his decisive action in bringing about the end of the Civil War... The sculpture of Grant was commissioned by the Union Club of Brooklyn and unveiled on April 27, 1896, the 74th anniversary of his birth. Partridge depicts a determined Grant in his military outfit, including his signature wide-brimmed hat. The work is one...

Great Smoky Mountains National Park occupies large areas of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. The park’s creation was a decades-long process, including advocacy in the late 19th century; legislation signed by President Calvin Coolidge in 1926; and donations and land acquisitions from small donors, the governments of North Carolina and Tennessee, and charitable organizations, such as the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fund. Once the park’s existence was firmly established, funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA) and labor from the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) made it both accessible and accommodating to the public. President Franklin Roosevelt dedicated the park on...

The building was originally constructed in 1832 and many of the rooms portray it as it looked in 1837, the year of Grover Cleveland's birth. In 1936, laborers for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) restored the building to its original appearance.

Hale Pa‘ahao (stuck-in-irons house) was Lahaina’s “new” prison, built in the 1850s during  the whaling era. The prison has been restored three times, in the 1930s, 1950s and 1970s. The Lahaina Restoration Foundation reports that:  "During the 1930s, County of Maui sponsored reconstruction of the cells and stockade  by the Works Progress Administration (WPA)."  There is a stone marker acknowledging the WPA's work, as well. Another metal marker says that the gatehouse was restored in 1959.  Then, as the Lahaina Restoration Foundation report continues: "In 1967, Lahaina Restoration Foundation presented to Maui Historical Commission a plan for restoring the old prison. It detailed...

Once the home of Bishop William Hanby, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, and his son, Benjamin Hanby, a popular composer, in 1937 the Works Progress Administration (WPA) moved the Hanby House to its current location, to save it from demolition. Between 1941 and 1942, WPA laborers also performed structural renovation and historic restoration work at this site, now a museum.