Forest Park - St. Louis MO - Living New Deal

City:: St. Louis, MO
Site Type:: Parks and Recreation, Infrastructure and Utilities, Tennis Courts, Golf Courses, Paths and Trails, Comfort Stations (Restrooms), Athletic Courts and Fields, Water Supply, Roads, Bridges, and Tunnels
New Deal Agencies:: Works Progress Administration (WPA), Work Relief Programs
Started:: 1935
Completed:: 1937
Quality of Information:: Very Good
Site Survival:: Extant

Description

Forest Park is one of the largest municipal parks in the nation, just larger than Central Park in NYC. It was the site of the 1904 Worlds Fair and the WPA projects in the park transformed it and brought it up to date, including much clearing of brush in places where it had become overgrown. In places, it truly was and still is a forest. Projects included: roads through-out the park, handball courts, tennis courts (now the Davis Tennis Center), draining lakes that had been constructed for the World’s Fair and which had filled in and had debris-filled to an even 3 foot depth with rip-rapping around the edge, bridle paths, baseball fields, a horse track, enlargement of the lower parking lot for the Many opera, an extensive sprinkler system, many comfort stations, and redoing of the fairways and greens on the golf course. A waterfall was described in an earlier project. The total project cost was more than $1,300,000 with numerous laborers used for an extended period of time.