- City:
- Rincon, NM
- Site Type:
- Education and Health, Schools
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Started:
- 1936
- Quality of Information:
- Moderate
- Marked:
- Yes
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
On February 12, 1936, the Doña Ana County Board of Education prepared a WPA project proposal to remodel and enlarge an existing school in Rincon, a small farming community on the Rio Grande north of Las Cruces.
The project would add onto to an existing one-story, red-brick Mission Revival-style schoolhouse. The Board anticipated it would cost $5,111.20, with the WPA contributing $4,111.20 (WPA OP 65-85-1469).
What resulted is a complementary brick addition, with the same pattern of windows and roof type as the original school. The only difference being the source of bricks and the type of sill applied to the windows.
The schoolhouse addition was the only WPA project funded in the community.
The WPA played an important role in developing school infrastructure in New Mexico during the Great Depression. Prior to the New Deal, New Mexico’s more than 900 school districts relied primarily on property taxes to fund new school construction.
Given the state’s low tax base, especially in poor, rural areas, the monies provided by the PWA and WPA proved a boon to school construction.
According to one figure, by 1937 the WPA had financed 257 new school buildings, 54 playgrounds, 15 gymnasiums, and remodeled 56 schools (Nanninga, 1942: 111).
By the conclusion of the New Deal, 361 schools had been constructed with WPA funds, representing the seventh highest expenditure on schools in the United States during the Depression (Kammer, 1994: 53).
The Rincon School, no longer in use as a public building, is visible from Interstate 25, and aside from the Catholic Church, is the most defining landmark of the community.
Source notes
Kammer, David. The Historic and Architectural Resources of the New Deal in New Mexico. Multiple Property Documentation Form prepared for the Historic Preservation Division, 1994. Nanninga, Simon P. The New Mexico School System. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942. WPA Official Project File # 65-85-1469.Site originally submitted by John Murphey on April 13, 2015.
Contribute to this Site
We welcome contributions of additional information on any New Deal site.
Submit More Information or Photographs for this New Deal Site
My father and his siblings used to go to school there they are from the Garcia family what I like to know is what is the building used for now is it occupied and can it be rented out or is it for sale
I purchased in 2006 and School Building is not for sale
I wanted to find out more info in regarding Corea Street and Rincon elementary school.
Your father and his siblings attended this school in what years ?
What I know about this school was open in 1908 and closed in 1953