Marked Sites

From 1936 to 1941, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) developed Honeyman State Park, just south of Florence, Oregon, under the supervision of the National Park Service (NPS).  The parkland had been purchased by the state from 1930 to 1936. Honeyman Park covers over 500 acres along Highway 101 (the Oregon Coast Highway), tucked behind the Oregon Dunes National Seashore.  It includes two freshwater lakes, Cleawox Lake within the dunes and the much larger Woahink Lake east of the highway. There is a day-use area on the north side of Cleawox Lake, a large campground south of that lake and water sports...

Between 1935 and 1937, the WPA contributed $38,000 to extending the runways of John Rodgers Airport (now Honolulu International Airport). Today, the airport serves well over 18 million passengers per year and provides a landing area for 370,000 tons of cargo and over 100,000 tons of mail annually.

This colorful mosaic by Stanton Macdonald-Wright is installed above the doors to the auditorium at Hooper Avenue Elementary School in Los Angeles, CA. Entitled "Products of Nature and Inventions of Man," the mosaic was created under the auspices of the WPA Federal Art Project (FAP) in 1936-37. A 1936 article in California Arts & Architecture described the partially completed work: "This mosaic mural will be approximately eight feet wide by seven feet high. It symbolizes the products of nature and the works of man. The mosaic, a form of mural decoration developed by the Federal Art Project in southern California, is...

Hoover Dam, originally called "Boulder Dam", is the anchor of the entire Colorado River water storage and management system.  It lies in Black Canyon (not Boulder Canyon) at the southern tip of Nevada, on the Arizona border, and creates the massive Lake Meade reservoir, the largest in the United States.  It was the first high-arch concrete dam in history, becoming the model for thousands of dams built round the world.  It was constructed under the US Bureau of Reclamation by a joint venture of 8 construction companies (called "The Six Companies"), led by Henry Kaiser and including Bechtel Corporation, Utah...

Seawall constructed on Hope St. Built by the Works Progress Administration between 1935 and 1939.

In 1939, the PWA built this well-maintained 2-story school with a brick façade and concrete elements. It is currently home to the North Nodaway High School.

The Public Works Administration (PWA) funded the construction of the House Park football stadium in Austin. House Park was built between 1938 and 1939 and has served as the home stadium for several Austin Independent School District high schools. The project was part of a larger grant made by the PWA to the City of Austin on October 31, 1938. The grant, up $613,127 under PWA Docket No. Texas-2134-F., was to cover 45% of the costs of construction of school facilities, school repairs and additions, athletic facilities, and land acquisitions. The architects of record were Giesecke & Harris and the contractors were J. R. Blackmore & Sons.

According to the National Register of Historic Places, the Howard County Courthouse was built with $29,000 in funding assistance from the Works Progress Administration between 1936 and 1937.

The WPA and CWA conducted extensive work throughout the park, building stone shelters and fireplaces. From contributor Erin Brown: "Hoyt Park is located on the west side of Madison, and is slightly off the beaten path of busy roads and traffic. The City of Madison first bought the land in 1890 as stone quarries. In 1933, the land was officially deemed a state park. It was named after Frank W. Hoyt, the leader of the Madison Park and Pleasure Drive Association, which was a volunteer group that fought to open and maintain recreational areas and parks in and around Madison. Under FDR’s...

Hoyt Park already appears in The Living New Deal site data. However, most New Deal structures at this cherished park are not represented. Therefore, this submission adds five photos of New Deal structures at this beautiful park. Additional photos could be added in the future.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) developed two parks in El Cerrito, Poinsett and Huber.  WPA improvements at 2.6-acre Huber park include leveling portions of the hillside site, building extensive rubble stone support walls, and constructing recreational facilities.  The latter include a lower area with paved basketball and kickball courts, a large cement slide, a play area with swings for children, and a picnic area with a large brick fireplace.  There is also a small clubhouse (apparently closed), bathrooms, and trails. The date May 1939 is inscribed on the brick fireplace, which is probably the year when the WPA worked at the park.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) built the main part of the Huckabay High School. The two story, stone masonry construction building was built between 1938-1940. A plaque set on the front facade notes the construction dates and the involvement of the WPA.

The Public Works Administration (PWA) provided funding for the Humboldt County Public Health Building in Eureka, California, built in 1939.   The building was originally the county welfare building and juvenile detention home. It is now used by the county health department. The two-story, Streamline Moderne style building was designed by architect Frank Georgeson.  

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) constructed facilities in Linton, Indiana's Humphreys Park in 1938.

The North Building at Hunter College was built between 1937 and 1940, using funds from the Public Works Administration (PWA). It lies between 68th  and 69th Streets along Park Avenue.  FDR dedicated the building on October 1940 and in his speech he recounted the story of how Mayor LaGuardia asked for the funding. North Building’s designer was the firm of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, in consultation with Harrison & Fouilhoux. Wallace Harrison had already designed Radio City Music Hall and the auditorium in Hunter’s building, though much simpler, bears a related design If the façade appears familiar, the main designers also built the Empire State...

The Works Progress Administration built a memorial for the war veterans and civilian victims of the September 3, 1935 hurricane.

Small rustic picnic area along HWY 287 (now I-45 Business) in Corsicana, Texas. There are four picnic tables and four fireplaces. The 1936 County Historical Marker is also located here. The area is along a creek and one of the tables appears to have been buried in silt. There are two markers one giving information on who donated the land to the Texas Department of Transportation and another with information on the National Youth Administration. Donation Marker: "This site was donated for park purposes to the State Highway Department of Texas by Johnson-Wiggins Post 22 American Legion. Ray W. Morgan, Post...

From Elmo Richardson, Natural Resources Journal, April 1966: The construction of Hyde State Park afforded the first, as well as the best, example of the role of the CCC in state recreation programs. Activities and problems encountered in constructing Hyde State Park were illustrative. Of work projects elsewhere in the New Mexico and in the five-state CCC area. During the first two years, the shortage of local enrollees kept the company at the Hyde site short of the desired 200 total; not until 1938 was that figure attained. Two years later these boys were combined with a company of workers...

The modernist Iberia Parish Courthouse was undertaken in New Iberia, Louisiana during the Great Depression with the assistance of funds provided by the Public Works Administration (PWA). The three story, Art-Deco style building had white stucco walls and was completed for a cost of $410,863. The original courtroom contains the last federally directed mural by Conrad Albrizio, The Struggle of Man, completed in 1940. The courthouse entered use in 1940 and was officially dedicated on Armistice Day, 1941.

Built by the WPA in 1936 as an ice skating and hockey rink. The arena is still being used today, it is referred to as the "Old Thief River Falls Arena."  

"Within Davis Mountains State Park is the Indian Lodge, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the early 1930s. Indian Lodge has 39 rooms, a restaurant and a swimming pool (for Indian Lodge guests only), meeting rooms, a Texas State Park Store, and 24-hour staffing."

In the 1930s through the early 1940s, Indiana University's Bloomington campus was expanded through New Deal funding. The construction of the IU Auditorium (formerly the Hall of Music) began in 1938 with PWA funding. The Auditorium is built with Southern Indiana limestone and houses Thomas Hart Benton's "Century of Progress" murals.

"Located on N. Broadway in the small town of Inola, this is a T-shaped, 10-room school house and auditorium constructed by the WPA in 1940. A bronze shield on the building documents this. "The school faces Broadway, with a perpendicular auditorium extension to the rear. Construction is of cut, coursed and rusticated native stone. There are seven bays, separated by stone columns, raised above the roofline. Windows are set in groups of one and three, with brick surrounds and have been replaced with fixed panes. The front entrance has double doors and sidelights slightly recessed under a stepped parapet, with low...

In 1933, the Washington Post reported that $15,905 had been allotted to the Public Works Administration (PWA) for unspecified repairs to the Internal Revenue Service building, which had been completed in 1930.   The IRS building is part of the Federal Triangle area, a group of government buildings between Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues, all built along neoclassical lines in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The Texas Highway Department and the United States Bureau of Public Roads built the International & Great Northern Railroad (now Union Pacific) Underpass in 1937 to separate the grade between the railroad tracks and San Pedro Avenue in San Antonio, Texas.

Iowa Lakeside Laboratory was built by CCC Camp BFI in 1936 in the vicinity of Milford IA. It is still serving as a laboratory. 

Esther Hurwitz and the Irving Felicity Club led efforts to obtain this U.S. Works Progress Administration project for Irving. The Felicity Club, Dallas Co., the WPA, and various individuals funded the project at a cost of $1,852.52. The Dallas Co. Irving Fresh Water Supply Dist. #5 donated land for the building. Work began on the Irving Community Clubhouse in January 1936. On March 17, 1936, the Felicity Club presented the one-story brick building to the city. J.F. Woerner served as architect and Robert Gidley as landscape architect. Local men constructed the 50' x 25' structure, which had a small kitchen and a...

Washington Irving STEAM Magnet School (originally Verdugo Road Junior High School) in Los Angeles, CA, was constructed by the Public Works Administration (PWA). The Northeast Los Angeles River Revitalization Area Report describes the school as being built in 1936-37; a PWA plaque on the auditorium, however, bears the date 1939. The original buildings include the main building, a cafeteria, a gymnasium with two bas-relief sculptures near the roof, and an auditorium containing a Federal Art Project (FAP) mural by Ivan Bartlett. All these structures are still standing. The school is one of many schools in the LAUSD school system which were damaged...

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees from the Mt. Elden Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp near Flagstaff worked at Walnut Canyon National Monument from 1938 to 1942.  The most important contribution made by the CCC men was construction of the Island Trail, which descends the cliff behind the visitors center and encircles a promontory ("island") in the canyon to allow visitors to view the ruins up close.  The trail is about one mile long and descends almost 200 feet via 273 steps.  The trail is lined with stone and, in many places, rock support walls were required. The Island Trail was quite elegantly...

Between 1933 and 1942, relief workers stationed at two Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps and one Works Progress Administration (WPA) camp carried out extensive development of Itasca State Park at the headwaters of the Mississippi River.  They constructed 45 buildings in the Rustic Style, and myriad other structures, as well as creating campgrounds, picnic areas and a trail system. Buildings were constructed under the supervision of the Minnesota Central Design Office of the National Park Service and Edward W. Barber and V. C. Martin were the principal architects. According to the Minnesota Historical Society “Log construction was generally used because timber...

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) constructed Itasca State Park’s Old Timer’s Cabin in 1933-1934.  It was the first structure built at the park by the CCC. This rectangular log cabin with gabled roof ranks is composed of logs so large that “just four of them made an entire wall.”  The logs were hand-shaped from downed trees, but the idea was to remind people of what the northern American forest was like before the age of mass timbering in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Emergency Administration of Public Works funded the construction of the Auditorium/Gymnasium at J.U. Blacksher High School.

The Jack County Courthouse was designed in 1939 by Wichita Falls firm Voelker and Dixon. The county applied for a grant in 1938 from the Federal Works Agency and received approximately half of the funding from the PWA, the rest of which had to be provided locally. Voelker and Dixon designed a number of courthouses and other buildings for Texas. The buidiling was completed in a "Modern Classical Style" which includes elements of Art Moderne and Art Deco, both popular at the time, with classical elements such as the pilasters (Smith, 2012). The three-story building (with an additional story in the...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) played an important role in the construction of highway 1 along the California coast during the 1930s – most famously along the Big Sur coastline. WPA crews also worked on highway 1 in Mendocino County, where they built three new bridges  — Jack Peters Creek bridge, Russian Gulch bridge and Jug Handle Creek bridge. Jack Peters Creek bridge, completed in 1939, is a concrete stringer bridge, 223 feet long with a central span of 90 feet. Like the others, Jack Peters Creek bridge has a date stamp but no other marking as to its origins with the WPA. According...

"On June 9, 1933, the Jackson County Court awarded a $2,073,609 contract to the Swenson Construction Company for construction of the Jackson County Courthouse.  The opulent Art Deco-style 300-foot tall building would reside alongside Kansas City's skyscrapers and provide much-needed space for the court system.  Equally important, its construction along with dozens of other projects completed as a part of Kansas City’s “Ten Year Plan” would provide jobs to hundreds of beleaguered Kansas City residents then suffering from the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression..."   (https://www.kclibrary.org) The courthouse was completed in 1934 with PWA support.  

The Jackson Parish Courthouse was undertaken in Jonesboro, Louisiana during the Great Depression with the assistance of funds provided by the Public Works Administration (PWA). It was part of the largest wave of courthouse construction in Louisiana history, with eleven total courthouses erected between 1936-1940 (Leighninger, 2011). The courthouse for Jackson Parish is a "...relatively simple and sedate composition with deco bands above first and third floors...first floor is stone, and the upper two are brick" (Leighninger, 2007, p. 113-114). Cost of construction was $251,406.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) built the Jackson School in Pauls Valley OK. Contributor note: "Jackson Elementary School is located at 1015 S. Walnut and is an active elementary school today. It has an Art Deco theme, which was rare for the architect Albert S. Ross. The school is a one story buff brick building constructed in an L-shape, with a flat roof. Later additions to the school have been built at each end, to closely resemble the original. The windows are set in triples with three large panes each. Four belts in darker brick run above and below the windows, and "through"...

During the New Deal, the Work Progress Administration (WPA) restored the historic buildings at the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans, forming three sides of Jackson Square: the Upper and Lower Pontalba Buildings, the Cabildo and the Presbytère (see project pages on each one).  The work to restore the buildings was part of a larger effort by the WPA to document and restore historic sites in the French Quarter and to improve the appearance of the French Quarter for the purpose of improving tourism to the Crescent City. The project took place between 1935 and 1937, and it cost...

The Jasper County Jail in Jasper, Texas was built by the Works Progress Administration under project number 65-66-3047. The building is currently the Jasper County Historical Commission Office and Library.

A state historical marker on the courthouse square has text that reads that "The present courthouse, constructed of locally made red brick, was completed in 1889.... An adjacent office building was erected by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1940 ..." There is a WPA plaque by the east entrance with the dates 1938 - 1940.