Education and Health Sites

The former Lafayette Junior High School, which opened in the 1920s, was rebuilt with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA) in 1936. Reconstruction was carried out by architect Arlos B. Sedgley and general contractor Monolith Construction Company. The Los Angeles Union School District (LAUSD) closed the school in 1955 due to decreases in student enrollment. The property is now used as a LAUSD maintenance plant. In January 1934, the PWA allocated $9,380,000 to the Los Angeles Unified School District for the rehabilitation of schools damaged in the severe 1933 Long Beach earthquake. One hundred and thirty schools would benefit from...

The Lafayette School in Sanford, Maine was constructed as a New Deal project; the facility was built with Public Works Administration (PWA) funds. The PWA provided a $36,739 grant for the project, whose total cost was $82,347. PWA Docket No. ME 1115

In 1936, the New Deal funded a new gymnasium and a classroom for Laguna Beach High School. Laguna Beach High School was founded in 1934. It repurposed former Laguna Beach Elementary School buildings which were built in 1928. The New Deal funded gymnasium still stands today.

"Built in the 1920s, the renovated hospital campus contains more than a hundred contemporary and historical public artworks. The entryway to the main building displays five murals by WPA artist Glen Wessels. The WPA inspired three contemporary mosaic murals in the lobby depicting the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. A status of Florence Nightingale by FAP sculptor David Edstrom honors the founder of professional nursing." (Guide.)

The federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted modest improvement work, including painting of the auditorium, at the old high school on Lake Avenue in Saratoga Springs. The facility is presently in use as the Lake Avenue Elementary School.

Lake Byron was the 1934 gift from the Senior class to then named State Teachers College. It was named for Byron E. Green, Forrest County Board of Supervisors, who secured WPA relief funding to finance construction. The lake was planned as a state fish preserve, and completed April 1934. The lake and bridge were damaged in the 2013 tornado that struck Hattiesburg. The renovations enlarged the lake, and the historic bridge was reconstructed for compliance with ADA, with assistance from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

The Lake County Museum was completed by the WPA in 1936. It now serves as the Lake County Law Library.

Built in 1936, the brick structure appears to be the only extant WPA building in Roseville, MN. The address is 211 McCarrons Blvd N, Roseville, MN. The building predates the city. The structure is in good shape, and renovations have been done in such a way as to preserve the original building.

In 1922, due to increasing numbers of students, the Lake Placid school district constructed a large brick high school at the south end of the current middle high school. It was modern and fireproof, sitting on the hill overlooking athletic fields and Main street. In November 1933, again due to increasing numbers of pupils, the community members voted to increase the school size by building two more sections. The original brick building was incorporated as the south end of the newly completed high school, now having three main sections, all finished with a Palladian neoclassical façade. A plaque indicating that...

Construction of this school was undertaken in Lake Providence, Louisiana during the Great Depression with the assistance of funds provided by the Public Works Administration (PWA). The funding was allocated as part of a joint project with a training school in the same city. The brick school contained 20 classrooms, a gymnasium, offices, locker rooms, lavatories, and shower baths, and was completed at a cost of $140,093 (Monroe Morning World, 1937). The school was destroyed by fire in 1992 (Leighninger, 2007). The exact location of the school is unknown to Living New Deal.

As a result of the drought and the Great Depression in general, many farmers were financially unable to send their children to adjoining towns to high school. During normal times, parents would have been able to provide a high school education for their children. In rural districts 12, 14 and 49 in Brown County, approximately twenty miles southwest of Ainsworth, twelve pupils were ready to enter high school in the fall of 1934, but would be denied this education unless some means of providing for their schooling was provided closer to home. On July 6, 1934, the school boards of...

The Lakeside School was built in 1918 in Chisago City, MN. The original school was not built with an auditorium or anywhere for entertainment, plays, etc. and after 30 years the gymnasium in the school had fallen into disarray and many schools in the area refused to play in the gym that had a narrow floor, low ceiling, and no room for spectators. In 1934 the WPA selected Chisago County among 13 other counties to receive a WPA project. The school board submitted an application for federal aid in August of 1938 to make improvements to the school. In September...

Lakeview Elementary School in Mahopac, New York was originally constructed as Mahopac High School during the 1930s with the assistance of the federal Public Works Administration (PWA Docket No. NY 6223). The PWA provided a $180,000 loan and a $136,448 grant ($316,448 in total) toward the school's construction. Construction on the building began September 1935. Short and Stanley-Brown write: "This new school building accommodates 800 pupils from the vicinity. Besides the classrooms, it has a bus garage, bowling alleys, and a combination gymnasium-auditorium. It replaced old frame building which has been abandoned. The construction is fire resistant. It is built with structural steel...

The 1936 addition to Lakeview Elementary was a PWA project (docket #1098-RD). The building remains in use as the privately owned Idaho Arts Charter School. The windows appear to have been modernized, but the basic structure has not changed.

The federal Work Projects Administration worked to improve Great Neck, New York's Lakeville Elementary School during the late 1930s. One modest project called for general carpentry improvements and painting at this building and Great Neck's "domestic science cottage."

Carlsbad Current-Argus: "Local employees are now engaged in ... refurbishing Lakewood school at Lakewood. ... Second story of Lakewood school will be removed, a new roof and teacherage - will be built, and rooms will be redecorated."

A Public Works Administration package of school construction grants of $3,821,000 helped build Lamar High School in Southwest Houston, along with other schools in the city. The Moderne style school was completed in December 1937. There is a large bas-relief map of Texas carved over one entrance.

The historic Lamb County Library building in Littlefield, Texas was constructed as the city's post office in 1940 with federal Treasury Department funds.

Construction of Lambert Fieldhouse was enabled by Public Works Administration (P.W.A.) funds in the form of a $293,000 grant. The total project cost was $712,164. Construction occurred between Dec. 1936 and Nov. 1937. PWA Docket No. IN 1018

Montana's Big Timber Pioneer newspaper reported in 1938 that 40 WPA laborers were "doing a $40,000 job of tree painting, landscaping, road oiling, leveling and general beautification" at what was then known as the Montana School of Mines, now Montana Tech of the University of Montana. Most evidence of such renovations is long gone, but one rock wall we observed looks suspiciously like WPA work. WPA employment was vital to the welfare of unemployed miners around Butte, Montana during the Great Depression.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) built an addition to the Langston Elementary School in Langston OK. The structure is currently not in use. 

The WPA demolished and reconstructed Lankershim Elementary School.

Lankershim Elementary School, which opened in 1910, was rebuilt with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA) between 1934 and 1935. In January 1934, the PWA allocated $9,380,000 to the Los Angeles Unified School District for the rehabilitation of schools damaged in the severe 1933 Long Beach earthquake.  One hundred and thirty schools would benefit from the system-wide loan and grant, with 2,500 men to be employed in rehabilitation work over 21 months. Upon receiving news of the PWA allocation, Board of Education member Arthur Eckman told the Los Angeles Times, “I am sure that every member of the board agrees with me...

"The reservoir at what is now the site of Lanphier High School was removed as a CWA project in 1933. The $300,000 construction of Lanphier High three years later was partially financed by Public Works Administration funds, as was an addition completed in 1938."

The Lapeer State Home and Training Facility was used as a house for the mentally feeble and those suffering from epilepsy or other medical conditions. Originally established in 1895, it was previously known as both the Michigan Home and Training School, as well as the Oakdale Regional Center for Developmental Disabilities. Spanning hundreds of acres, it also became known as Oakdale, made up of a number of buildings similar in operations to that of the Lapeer State Home and Training Facility. The Lapeer State Home and Training Facility was created by the state of Michigan to help make advances in...

The Public Works Administration (P.W.A.) sponsored additions to multiple school buildings in Laramie, Wyoming, including to the former East Side School, now the Laramie Plains Civic Center. The building also houses examples of New Deal art.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) reconstructed Las Flores Elementary School (today's Las Flores Home Education Independent Study Academy) in Bellflower, CA, following the 1933 Long Beach earthquake.

This free-standing brick façade laundry facility was completed in 1940 by the Public Works Administration to service the St. Louis City Hospital complex including the City Hospital, Malcolm Bliss Psychopathologic Institute, and clinic. It is a red brick building in the Georgian style and is along the same style as the original City Hospital Building. City Hospital closed its doors in 1985. In 2008 the building was repurposed as a private event space, retaining the building's original architectural features.

In July 1935, the Laurel School Board sponsored a proposal for a new athletic field adjacent to the school grounds. The land had been used as a school “park”, but since the school had no athletic field to speak of, the Board proposed to procure 6,000 cubic yards of dirt from the nearby borrow pit of the State Highway Department and level the yard. Thirty men were given employment as a result of this Works Progress Administration (WPA) project.

Set back from Main Street (US 25) this building is a former school with a historical marker in front indicating it was the site of the 1826 Laurel Seminary which opened in 1858. Became a Common School 1870-1884, private to 1893, common public school before the original building was replaced with the existing building. (Historic name undetermined)

A Works Progress Administration (WPA) project in the amount of $22,000 was allotted to 2 Laurel schools in 1940. One project was to complete plastering and ceiling, drainage and landscaping of the Frank G. Wisner Activities building for Laurel High School. The building was a two-story Art Moderne designed by N. W. Overstreet and A. H. Town completed 1939-1940.

Laurelton State Village was formed in 1913, but several buildings were added during the Great Depression: "This project called for the construction of two cottages, buildings for administration, recreation, and hospital purposes, and improvements and extensions to the existing plant. The administration building contains in the basement a garage, psychological laboratory, a post office, and various service and storage rooms. On the first floor are board and staff rooms and a number of offices. The second and third floors are devoted to living quarters for the staff and officials. The building is reinforced concrete with exterior walls of local stone, wood trim,...

Construction on this Public Works Administration (PWA) funded building took place in 1934 as an addition to the town's high school (built in 1911). While retaining the New Deal era gymnasium, the current Lava Elementary School structure replaced the high school in 1979. The Lava School Gymnasium received National Register status in 1997 based on its significance to both local history and architecture. In the application's statement of significance, it was argued that the gymnasium is associated with "the continued development of this small southeastern Idaho town during the Great Depression" and its ability to demonstrate several primary contributions of the...

The first school in the community of Lavon was a two-story brick building. In 1910, the Little Creek school, which was organized in 1885, closed and transferred to the Lavon School District No. 135. Between 1938 and 1940, the school building for the Lavon Independent School District was built through the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt with the passage of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, the WPA was to be an extension of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration Work Program which funded projects at the state and local level. The goal of the program...

The Public Works Administration (PWA) funded the construction of a school gymnasium in Lawn TX. Excerpt from Abilene Reporter-News (1939): "Lawn Gymnasium To Be Dedicated The newly-completed Lawn gymnasium will be dedicated Friday night. according to H. 0. Keese, school board president, who was in Abilene yesterday. The gymnasium, a brick-tile structure, has been completed by Bonike Brothers of Abilene, contractors, for a total cost of $16,000. Funds were provided by a PWA grant of $7,400 and a $10,000 bond voted at Lawn. Remainder of the money will be used in repairing the old school building. W. B. Williams is superintendent of the Lawn school. School board...

All 17 schoolhouses in Framingham, Massachusetts were painted, remodeled, and/or repaired with federally funded labor during the Great Depression. The former Lawrence Street School building presently houses the Eugene Thayer Campus of Framingham High School. In 1940 the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) installed a new steam heating plant at the school and "transformed the basement room into an assembly hall large enough to seat the whole school." A temporary 'portable' school facility adjacent to this building was repaired and "connected with the heating system of the Lawrence Street School" in 1941.

Tha PWA built this school for Reidsville, North Carolina in 1934-1935. The total cost was $186,589, and the PWA contributed $54,048 of that. The locals came up with their 70% share on their own.

This K-8 school is now known as the Lawton Alternative School. The PWA built both the elementary school (with 18 classrooms) and the Kindergarten portions of the school, as well as an auditorium with 350 seats.

"A modern school at Le Grande, California, constructed with PWA funds."

ENMU's Lea Hall was constructed as a New Deal project in 1936.  The Public Works Administration (P.W.A.) provided a $46,000 loan and $37,636 grant for the project, whose total cost was $85,034. P.W.A. Docket No. N.M. 7048