MacArthur Boulevard NW – Washington DC

Description

In 1935-36, Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief crews built a new roadway in the district’s northwestern quadrant, west of Glover Park. Based on the description from the National Archives, this was most like an extension and expansion of  Conduit Road, now MacArthur Boulevard:

“West of Glover Park, on the heights overlooking the Potomac, WPA workers completed a task which involved real pioneering, even though it was carried on within a few miles of the Capitol of the Nation. A labor battalion there cut through a literal wilderness on the very outskirts of the Capitol. Several weeks afterwards a broad city thoroughfare existed where labyrinthian forest conditions prevailed. In the advance of progress represented by WPA, as many as possible of the giant red and white oaks and poplars, some of which had been saplings when Indians ranged the bluffs along the Potomac, were saved.” (National Archives)

Conduit Road had previously been on a list of road projects approved for funding by the Public Works Administration (PWA) in 1933, “Among projects approved here are paving of Sixteenth street, Constitution Avenue, Michigan Avenue, Columbia Road, Foxhall Road, Good Hope Road, New Hampshire Avenue, Benning Road and Conduit Road, widening of E Street back of the White House and widening of Thirteenth Street” (Post, 1933).  It is uncertain whether that work was ever done on Conduit Road or mixed in with the building of MacArthur Boulevard.