- State:
- WASHINGTON-DC
- Site Type:
- Civic Facilities, Monuments and Memorials
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Quality of Information:
- Moderate
- Marked:
- No
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
Samuel Gompers was an American labor leader and founder of the American Federation of Labor. This sculpture by Robert Aitken was erected in 1933 and President Franklin Roosevelt made an address at the dedication ceremony for the monument on October 7th.
Apparently, New Deal relief labor was used to improve the park around the memorial (now Samuel Gompers Park). That would likely have been part of the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) million dollar program of parks improvement in 1935-36.
Source notes
National Archives, Record Group 69, Records of the Work Projects Administration, “Newspaper clippings file, 1935-1942.”
“New Deal Projects Aid Many Park Developments in Capital,” Washington Daily News, July 23, 1936.
https://www.dcmemorials.com/index_indiv0001702.htm
Jones, Marian Moser. 2012. The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal. JHU Press.
Site originally submitted by Brent McKee - wpatoday.org on June 7, 2013.
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