- City:
- Monterey, CA
- Site Type:
- Rock Walls, Civic Facilities
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Quality of Information:
- Good
- Marked:
- No
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
Friendly Plaza is a small park in front of historic Colton Hall and the city hall of Monterey, California. The brick courtyard of Friendly Plaza was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project (Owens et al., 2004, p. 139). The decorative stone wall around the plaza was probably also by the WPA, although Dennis Copeland, archivist and historian for the City of Monterey in the early 2000s, claimed that it was partly funded by the Public Works Administration (PWA).
Given the common confusion between PWA and WPA, both then and now, our guess is that both projects were undertaken by the WPA and its skilled relief workers. The PWA normally paid for private contractors to build city halls, courthouses, schools and other civic structures, while the WPA commonly did rock work, street paving and city parks, among other things.
We do not know the exact dates of the work at Friendly Plaza.
Source notes
Tom Owens, Melanie Bellon Chatfield. 2004. Insiders' Guide to the Monterey Peninsula, 4th Edition. Globe Pequot. p. 139
Site originally submitted by Colleen Bailey on December 22, 2008.
Additional contributions by Richard Waker.
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