- City:
- Bear Mountain, NY
- Site Type:
- Education and Health, Museums
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Completed:
- 1935
- Quality of Information:
- Moderate
- Marked:
- No
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) completed the Historical Museum at the Trailside Museums and Zoo, Bear Mountain State Park, Bear Mountain, NY. The Trailside Museums and Zoo, built during the years 1932-35, expanded an earlier Trailside Museum in the park that dated to the 1920s. The naturalistic style of the building, which ties the structure to the landscape around the building, recalls the “Park Service Rustic” design of Herbert Maier, who designed a building for the Trailside Museums completed in 1927. Maier went on to work in both Grand Canyon and Yellowstone national parks.
Source notes
Ronnie Clark Coffey, "Bear Mountain," (Arcadia Publishing, 2008).
Sarah Allback, "Rustic Trailside Museums and Modern Visit Centers: America's Most Popular Museums," in "People, Places and Parks: Proceedings of the 2005 George Wright Society Conference on Parks, Protected Areas and Cultural Sites," ed. David Harmon (Hancock, Michigan: George Wright Society, 2006).
Neil M. Maher, "" 'Work for others but none for us': the economic and environmental inequalities of New Deal relief" SOCIAL HISTORY, 40:3 (2015), 312-34.
Site originally submitted by Robert Snyder on October 17, 2017.
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