- City:
- Gloucester, MA
- Site Type:
- Infrastructure and Utilities, Sanitation and Water Disposal
- New Deal Agencies:
- Works Progress Administration (WPA), Work Relief Programs
- Site Survival:
- No Longer Extant
Description
WPA Bulletin, 1937: “Up in Gloucester four WPA painters are specks in the sky as they swing in tiny bossun’s chairs from the top of the 250-foot Babson Reservoir water tank which they are painting. Such a height should make a sea gull unbalanced but these men don’t mind it a bit. “Safer than walking on the street” says Harrison Boutwell, one of the WPA’ers, an ex-navy man who was given a medal last summer for saving a child from death after it had fallen into Gloucester harbor and was held by the muddy bottom.”
Living New Deal believes the water tank to be demolished.
Source notes
Works Progress Bulletin, Massachusetts: Oct. 15, 1937 (pg. 4). https://archive.org/details/worksprogressbul3637unitSite originally submitted by Evan Kalish on May 5, 2017.
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