Start Year: 1939

This fresco in the Post Office Terminal Annex lobby consists of eleven semi-circular, tempera on plaster "lunettes" by Boris Deutsch depicting "Cultural Contributions of North, South and Central America." The murals were funded by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts and completed in 1944. "The mural series entitled “The Cultural Contributions of North, South and Central America” in the Los Angeles Terminal Annex Post Office was painted in the early 1940s by Boris Deutsch. While the murals depict a number of indigenous North and South Americans, Mr. Deutsch himself was originally from Lithuania... In 1939, he received a commission from the United...

The Martinez downtown post office contains an oil-on-canvas New Deal mural, "The Road to Eldorado" by noted California artists Edith Hamlin and Maynard Dixon. It was funded by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts in 1939. The subject matter of the mural appears to be a selection of early settlers of Martinez, with the city and the Carquinez Strait in the background (at the edges), including a Californio (Indian?), prospector and sailor on the left and a businessman and town women on the right, with a postal rider in the middle (in buckskin).  The title seems deftly ironic, but not critical. F0r...

In 1939-1940, the Work Projects Administration (WPA) channelized Sausal Creek as part of creating Dimond Park.  The work consisted of building concrete walls to stop erosion, installing grade control step-downs, and putting culverts to let roads pass over the creek.   WPA stamps are still visible in places.   The work extends from the Dimond Recreation Area in the lower park up past the Leimert Street bridge, where the creek flows out of a canyon in the Oakland Hills. Channelization was a popular method of flood control in the middle of the 20th, much promoted by the Army Corps of Engineers, which...

Delano High School was built with the aid of funds from the Public Works Administration (PWA). The name of the school at the time of construction was Delano Joint Union High School. The building design is elegant Streamline Moderne, on three levels. In the last decade, the classic white exterior paint (probably repeated since the building's origin) has recently been replaced with more eye-catching colors, name, logo and images.  Still, the New Deal era school appears to be largely intact.  The one-story classroom building with pillared breezeway and the quonset-hut gymnasium also look to be original. There are plaques on the building...

The Public Works Administration (PWA) funded the construction of the Veterans Boulevard approach road and tunnel to the Golden Gate Bridge (not itself a New Deal project) in 1939-40.  The roadway runs north-south across the Presidio of San Francisco, connecting Park Presidio Boulevard coming north from Golden Gate Park to Presidio Boulevard, running east-west, and on to the southern entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge.  There is an 800-foot tunnel in the mid-section of the approach road. Apparently, the original name of the roadway was Funston Avenue approach, which was changed sometime after World War II.  

The Roosevelt pool in Susanville was built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1939.   It began as a community pool – a project long sought by the people of Susanville – and then was attached to Roosevelt School next door.  After a half-century of excellent service, the pool had to be closed in 2004 due to structural failure brought on by neglect (it began to leak).  It was demolished in 2015. Fortunately, a visitor to site in the late 1990s and took photographs of the pool.  The Susanville Historical Society also has photographs of the pool in its prime (unfortunately,...