Start Year: 1938

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was responsible for construction of the Board of Water and Light Dye Conditioning Plant in Lansing, Michigan. "The Dye Conditioning Plant at 148 South Cedar Street was designed by Lansing architects Lee and Kenneth Black and constructed in 1938-39 by the WPA in a severe, geometric style. It is decorated by WPA/FAP artworks in various media. Appropriate to the building's function, the theme of all of these works is water. This is the best local ensemble of government-sponsored art planned as a unity of architecture, sculpture and painting."

Henry Perrine Baldwin High School was built 1938-40 with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA).   The school received an initial PWA grant of about $300,000 and a supplemental grant of $25,000 to finish the job. “The main buildings of Henry Perrine Baldwin High School were built in Kahului between 1938 and 1940… "The school buildings were designed by Henry Stewart, the Department of Public Works architect (with assistance from architect Noboru Kobayashi), and are distinguished by their stucco walls, red tile roofs, and decorative details of both Asian and Moderne derivation…”  (NTHP Registration form)    

Medium: Oil on canvas, size: 10' x 5'. "The Fertile Land Remembers", by Louise Emerson Ronnebeck (1901-1980) depicts a determined looking pioneer farming family in a Conestoga wagon pulled by oxen heading toward the viewer. In the background/sky are Indians riding horses chasing buffalo, executed in a translucent cloud-like manner. The Indians and the pioneer farming family were both historically dependent on the land and they are shown being displaced by the new, thriving and growing oil industry. The mural was originally installed in the Worland, Wyoming Post Office. It was later installed into the downtown Casper Wyoming Post Office, located...

At over 1,000 feet, Council Crest Park occupies the highest point in the City of Portland. From 1907 to 1929, an amusement park occupied that vantage point. Despite its superior position and streetcar access, it took eight years before the City of Portland could acquire it and another year before it could begin to be improved with WPA labor. The Oregonian, one of the city’s newspapers, announced in March 1938 that a crew of twenty-six WPA workers had started “clearing brush, grubbing undergrowth and opening trails through Council Crest Park” so that it might be available for use by summer. The...

The Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge was created in 1938 by the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the protection of migratory birds and endemic species of the Basin and Range region.  It serves over 220 species of waterfowl and is the largest nesting area in the west for Canvasback ducks. The refuge covers about 38,000 acres, almost half of which consists of marshes created by springs drawing from aquifers coming out of the Ruby Mountains to the west.  The refuge lies at an elevation of 6,000 feet and mostly within Elko County NV, with the southern end in White...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) constructed the northern approach road to the Golden Gate Bridge (not itself a New Deal project).  It ran 1.5 miles from the end of US Highway 101 to the bridgehead on the Marin Headlands. San Francisco WPA branch manager William Mooser made a prospective announcement of the work in a 1938 report: "This project embraces the location and construction of a lateral highway, one and one-half miles in length connecting U.S. Highway 101 at Sausalito with the bridge-head of the Golden Gate Bridge, with such structures as may be required, and include all necessary excavation, grading, drainage,...

The Henry J. Daly Building is the former District of Columbia Municipal Center, built in 1939-41 with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA) (which was incorporated into the Federal Works Administration in 1939 in a major government reorganization).  The Municipal Building was meant to replace the old City Hall and consolidate the District's local government functions, but has mostly been used as the DC police headquarters. The PWA made an initial allocation of $5.7 million in 1938 (Evening Star 1938) , but the final allocation was evidently $7.75 million (National Archives).  Sources differ over whether this was a grant or...

The Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building was built 1938-40 as the home of the Social Security Administration, one of the major new programs of the New Deal. The building was funded and constructed in conjunction with the Railroad Retirement Board headquarters, now the Mary E. Switzer building.  The two buildings stand across C street from each other.  They were the first federal buildings south of the Mall. As soon as President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law in 1935, planning began for a new headquarters building for the Social Security Administration (SSA).  Then, when Congress funded the...

The first Washington DC airport was built during the New Deal.  Long known as National Airport, it was renamed for former President Ronald Reagan in 1998. Most locals still refer to it by its former name. Construction began in 1938, after "President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced at a press conference that he was 'tired of waiting for Congress' to select a site for the new airport and said that it would be built on mudflats on a bend of the Potomac River at Gravelly Point, 4 miles south of the District of Columbia." (Airport Authority website) Several federal agencies were involved in...

The Cottonwood Community Club House – also known as the Community Center or Civic Center – was built in 1939 with the help of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).  The WPA hired the relief workers to do the labor, many of whom came from the local area, while funds for materials did not come from city government, as was usual, but through volunteer subscriptions by local citizens. The local effort was led by the women's Cottonwood Community Civic Club, for which the club house was intended (on land donated to them three years earlier). The building is eye-catching, with walls of large, round...