Picatinny Arsenal – Rockaway Township NJ

Description

The federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) conducted millions of dollars (not even adjusted for inflation) of improvement and development work at the Picatinny Arsenal and a sub-installation, the Lake Denmark Naval Ammunition Depot, in New Jersey. Work involved the construction and improvement of storage facilities and various utilities.

One WPA project description:

Repair and rehabilitate buildings, utilities, equipment, water supply, and purification, water and sewer lines, transportation facilities, and airport, improve plumbing, heating, and electrical installations, landscape, grade, and drain grounds, also includes the construction of storage buildings officers quarters extension to storage buildings, officers quarters, extension to carpenter shop, change houses, lunch rooms, loading buildings, and small magazines, and demolishing condemned buildings.

A cataloguing of these projects was undertaken by the DoD in its Heritage Assessment, cited below.

Mainlib.org: “The WPA workers at the present time have under construction a storage shed, which will be about 1,000 feet long, for shells. They are also laying about three miles of 10-inch water mains for fire protection.” (Jan. 30, 1937)