Unmarked Sites

New Deal agencies realigned and reconstructed the Old Tioga road from 1933 to 1943, from Crane Flat to Tuolumne Meadows.  An important element of the road project was the bridge over the Tuolumne River, just east of the Tuolumne Meadows campground. The bridge was constructed in 1933-34. Funding came from the Public Works Administration (PWA); the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) managed construction, using private companies; and the National Park Service (NPS) oversaw all work in the park. The Tuolumne River bridge is a modern design of steel beams and concrete, but is dressed up with stone siding to accord with the...

A 35-unit subsistence homestead community, located 5 miles north of Tupelo off the Natchez Trace consisted of modest, one-story frame houses. Twenty of the units remain, and are owned by the National Park Service since transfer in 1940, and were used to house park personnel until recently. A man-made lake and recreation area was constructed in the community, although the dam broke in the 1960s and nothing remains of that feature. First initiated by the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, the project was completed by the Resettlement Administration. The original plans called for 25 units, industrial-type homesteads, and in 1934, Tupelo Lumber...

Several structures along Lincoln Log Loop in the Tusuyan Ranger Station complex were originally constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  "The Tusayan Ranger Station is one of the most historically-intact Forest Service administration complexes in Arizona. Six buildings were constructed by Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees from the Grand Canyon camp, NP2A, between 1939 and 1942. They include a residence and associated shed, office, barn and corral, garage, and seed shed. Designed in the National Park Service Rustic architecture style, the buildings are sheathed in a masonry veneer of red sandstone cut from a nearby quarry. The site represents the expanded...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) carried out pavement repair and other, unspecified improvements to a segment of Twelfth Street NW, from Constitution Avenue to Pennsylvania Avenue, in 1935-36.  The street was “widened to conform with the design of the Triangle area, and repaved with sheet asphalt pavement.”   The work was part of the $949,496 WPA allotment for DC roadwork for fiscal year 1936.   The work is likely still extant, but invisible beneath subsequent repavings.        

In 1941, Work Progress Administration (WPA) labor was used to, "Develop and improve a public park area from 12th to 14th streets, and Constitution Avenue to Madison Drive, including constructing sidewalks, curbs and tree wells; landscaping; filling; grading; placing topsoil; fertilizing; seeding; adjusting manholes; demolishing obsolete buildings; and performing appurtenant and incidental work." (National Archives) In 1964, this site was converted into the location of what is now the National Museum of American History.

Twentieth Street Elementary School in Los Angeles, CA was rebuilt following the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. Construction of the school's main building in 1935-36 totaled $56,931 and was partially funded by the Public Works Administration (PWA). It does not appear the New Deal building survived another round of reconstruction in the 1980s. The reconstruction and renovation of Los Angeles schools damaged by the 1933 Long Beach earthquake was the single largest PWA funded program in the country, totaling ~$34.7 million (LA Times, May 23, 1937).  It was overseen by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and proceeded in two cycles,...

In 1941, the Washington Post reported the start of a $1,158,000 road paving program carried out by the Public Roads Administration division of the Federal Works Administration (FWA). One of the streets slated to be paved was 21st Street between Virginia Avenue and C Street, NW. Although the street has been repaved since 1941, the New Deal played a role in its continued maintenance.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) carried out pavement repair and other, unspecified improvements to Twenty-Second Street NW, from Constitution Avenue to E Street, in 1935-36. The work was part of the $949,496 WPA allotment for DC roadwork for fiscal year 1936. This WPA roadwork is undoubtedly no longer visible, in part because the War Department building (now the State Department) was built over 22d Street in the early 1940s.

The field house at Twin Oaks Playground was constructed by the Civil Works Administration (CWA) relief crews in 1933-34. The playground itself dates to 1920.  Originally a "white" playground in Washington’s segregated playground system, Twin Oaks was officially opened to all children in 1953. The 1-½ story field house follows the Colonial Revival design developed by municipal architect Albert L. Harris after the vernacular Hall-and-Parlor houses of the Tidewater region, a regionally appropriate style that was informal and good for recreation areas. In 1936, the Washington Post reported that Works Progress Administration (WPA) crews had also done work on the Twin Oaks Playground,...

The Tyler Little Theater opened on May 16, 1939. It was built with funds from private donations, the City of Tyler and the Works Progress Administration. Designed by in the late Art Deco style by architect Shirley Simmons and constructed by R.L. Clanahan, the brick building featured two auditoriums. When World War II began, there were no longer enough men to continue performances and the theater shut down. The building is currently used as a church.

In 1934, 3.1 miles of old California Route 23 (now US 395) from Point Ranch to the Bodie Road, south of Bridgeport, were graded and surfaced at a cost of $45,000.  Funds came from the federal government Bureau of Public Roads.

In 1933-34, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) worked at the United States Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery repairing the grounds and cleaning tombstones.  It is one of the country’s oldest national cemeteries, the final resting place for more than 14,000 veterans, mostly from the Civil War

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built paths and rock walls in the University of California Botanical Garden, including a rock bridge over Strawberry Creek.  The CCC enrollees worked out of a camp in Strawberry Canyon in 1933-34.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) improved the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) grounds in the 1930s.

The Ukiah Municipal Golf Course, now known as the Ukiah Valley Golf Course, was constructed in 1935-1936 with federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) funds and labor. It is a full 18-hole course, designed by Paul Underwood. "he golf course has cost $28,000, of which WPA contributed $18,000 and the City of Ukiah $10,000. The city is to repay no part of the contributed sum received from the WPA and for its outlay the city has acquired 154 acres of land, a clubhouse valued at $3,000, golf equipment (including a tractor, mowers, hose and pipe) valued at $4000." Ukiah Republican Press, August 26,...

The Union Creek Historic District on the upper Rogue River in Union Creek, Oregon, is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places because it is a fine representative of a type of rustic resort popular in the early 20th century and has been little altered since the 1930s. The United States Forest Service (USFS)  began planning the recreational development of Union Creek in the 1920s, as outdoor recreation by automobile expanded rapidly. Subsequent development of the area followed forest service plans and the USFS has maintained the integrity of the district for the last century. There are almost one hundred...

This large office building in the Suitland Federal Center –also known as Federal Office Buildings #3 – was constructed by the Public Building Administration (a branch of the Federal Works Agency) in 1941-1942 to be the headquarters of the U.S. Census Bureau, which remained in the building until 2007. Unfortunately, due to deterioration, the building was demolished a few years after that. 

Anchoring downtown Zeeland, the new one-story 60-by-70 foot post office was built for $68,000. Construction was completed in just seven months, tapping into a pool of unemployed workers available during the New Deal Era. Although the population of Zeeland at that time did not justify such a large post office, Zeeland was then home to 60 hatcheries, shipping up to 13 million live chicks and turkey poults to farmers per year, by rail and through the postal service. The post office opened on December 2, 1935.

The United States Travel Bureau existed from 1937 to 1943 as an office within the Interior Department, and its mission was to promote travel in the western hemisphere and especially within the United States. The U.S. Travel Bureau had offices in Washington, DC, New York, and San Francisco. In DC, its office was located at 1702 F Street NW (at the corner of F and 17th), across from today’s Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The building that the Travel Bureau was located in is probably no longer extant. In their WPA Guide to Washington, DC, federal writers described the Travel Bureau’s office: “Its...

University at Albany, State University of New York's Hawley Hall was opened in September 1909 as the Auditorium, one of three buildings (with the Science and Administration Buildings) on the original Western Avenue (Downtown) Campus. On December 12, 1927 the Auditorium was named Hawley Hall. The building served as an auditorium and gymnasium until February 1933 when the first floor was opened as the College library. Since the Great Depression the Dewey Graduate Library, at the University at Albany Downtown Campus, features numerous murals designed by William Brantley Van Ingen (1858‐1955), "a student of John LaFarge and Louis Comfort Tiffany, as...

The federal Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) funded construction of the railroad overpass on University Avenue in Berkeley – which today leads into the Interstate 80 freeway.  At the time, it was known as an "overhead".  The overpass is still in use today. The overpass is almost 1,000 feet long and carries four lanes of traffic, two in each direction.  It was jointly designed by state highway engineers, city engineering staff and engineering officials of the Southern Pacific Railroad.  The builders were Heafey-Moore Co. and Fredrickson & Watson Co., private contractors.  An article in California Highway and Public Works gives these details: "The...

University High School in Los Angeles, CA was renovated in 1935-37 with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA). The brick Gothic revival campus—designed in the style of nearby UCLA—is distinctive among Los Angeles schools, which were primarily (re)constructed of reinforced concrete following the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. Today, University High is a charter school. In 1935-36, the H. M. Baruch Corporation oversaw the reconstruction of the main building—extant at the corner of Texas Ave and S Westgate Ave—for $135,418. In 1937, a new girls' gym and shower building were built, while the boys' gym was rehabbed. Charles J. Dorfman oversaw...

An 840 x 965 ft reservoir that added 82 million gallons of storage to the existing 60 million gallon reservoir that was already on site. The reservoir is lined with 6" of reinforced concrete and the roof has 21/2" slab on concrete joists and girders, supported on circular columns spaced at 25' intervals. It was part of a $12,000,000 improvement program for the SF water supply system (the PWA-funded expansion of the Hetch Hetchy system, which included raising O’Shaughnessy Dam, the Pulgas Water Temple, and more) financed by a bond issue with the aid of a PWA grant in 1933. It...

Batch field house was built in 1936 with the aid of the Public Works Administration (PWA). Set against the football stadium, it is part of the larger University of Colorado athletic complex and still actively used for intramural sports.  "The new field house for the University of Colorado is approximately 144 by 296 feet in over-all dimensions. The large hall has an earth floor with a cinder running track 12 laps to the mile, and is provided with a removable wood basketball floor, 60 by 90 feet. Permanent bleachers seat approximately 2,000, and removable bleachers on both sides of the basketball...

Completed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1939, the Mary Rippon Outdoor theater is located on the University of Colorado campus between the Henderson Building (see post on Henderson Building) and the Hellems Art and Sciences Building.  Mary Rippon is believed to be the first female professor at the University of Colorado and the first woman in the United States to teach at a state university. The theater was designed by George Reynolds, a professor of English and one of the founders of the theater department. The theater was officially completed in 1939, but no plays were staged there until 1944.  Because...

Built in 1937 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the University's Henderson Building houses the Museum of Natural History.  The building cost nearly $200,000 to build, including furnishings.  In 1951, the building was named in honor of Judge Junius Henderson, appointed curator of the university museum in 1903.  The original layout of the building included archeology and biology halls on the ground floor, an art gallery and geology hall on the main floor; classrooms on the second floor; and laboratories, storerooms, and a darkroom on the top floor. The building is a representative work of noted architect Charles Z. Lauder, who designed...

Murphy Hall may have been a New Deal project dating to the late 1930s. It was constructed between 1938-1940 as a new home for journalism.

Barnard was built in 1938 as a women's dormitory, and attached to existing dormitory Isom Hall, built in 1929. It is currently used to house ROTC at the University of Mississippi. It is defined as a "contributing building" in the historic center of the campus (Master Plan 2009, University of Mississippi).

Kennon Observatory, one of 39 buildings constructed by the PWA on the campus during the years 1936-1941, was designated a Mississippi Landmark in 2011. "Kennon Observatory was constructed in 1939, and once again, R. W. Naef was the architect.  Naef apparently held the reins to all of the New Deal construction on campus during those years."   (https://misspreservation.com/) Dr. William Lee Kennon was "instrumental in securing the funding for Lewis Hall and Kennon Observatory, and conceived the building design (University of Mississippi, Department of Physics and Astronomy history). An adaptation of classicism (J. Baughn, Mississippi Department of Archives and History), the observatory faces due...

The Big Timber Pioneer reported in late 1934 that the Public Works Administration (PWA) approved $181,000 for "improvements and equipment" for what was then known as the Montana Normal College at Dillon. Of that, $100,000 came as a loan and $81,000 as an outright grant. We do not know more about what was done with the federal funding, but we suspect that the Main auditorium was constructed at the time. Mathews Hall and the Business & Technology Building also possibly date to the 1930s. And the project might have included landscaping and paths. More information is needed. Montana...

The Journalism Building on the University of Montana campus in Missoula, now known as Stone Hall, was constructed with Public Works Administration funding in 1936-7.  The three-story brick structure originally housed the Journalism School and the printing press of the student newspaper, the Montana Kaimin, and now is the home of the Department of Geology, the College of Forestry and Conservation and the Central and Southwest Asian Studies Center. According to the Montana Historical Society: "Dean Arthur Stone pitched four tents near the Oval in 1914, thereby founding the University’s School of Journalism. An old bicycle shed and later World War I...

Located on the University of Oregon campus. Work on the ornamental Dads' Gates began in August 1940. They were formally dedicated on February 8, 1941, as part of the 14th annual Dad's Day celebration weekend. The UO Dads Club was the sponsor and underwriter of the project. The Dads Club was a patron-parent organization established in 1927. The concept for the gates began in 1938 and was supported with funding from the Dads Club with additional support from a PWA program. Abbot Lawrence, a UO architecture graduate and son of Ellis Lawrence, created the design that was executed by metal...

In 1935 when a baseball park was constructed near McArthur Court, plans got under way to create formal gates and entrances. The park was named Howe Field for Herbert Crombie Howe, an English professor and athletics supporter. Early on, Fred Cuthbert, UO's landscape architect, and Orion B. Dawson, blacksmith, were involved in the designs. Dawson was concurrently working on iron projects at Timberline Lodge. Funding for the project came from the Works Projects Administration, several UO classes, the Soldiers' Memorial Fund, and the Associated Students of the University of Oregon. The gates, sometimes known as the Soldiers' Memorial Gates, also...

The Public Works Administration paid for the construction of the United States Bureau of Mines building on the University of Utah campus in 1939-40.  It was designed by Cannon and Mullen architects.  The building was demolished recently to make way for the new Frederick Albert Sutton building of the College of Mines & Earth Sciences – or, more specifically, the parking garage for the Sutton complex. In 1938, the land had been deeded to the U. S. Government by the University of Utah, so a federal facility could be built on the campus.  In 1981, the Bureau of Mines property was deeded back to the university, along...

James Watrous painted a tempera-on-gesso mural cycle consisting of nine 6' tall panels, called "The Story of Paul Bunyan,"  in the UW Memorial Student Union. The works were painted in 1935 with funds provided by the federal government, and given the date the murals were probably commissioned by the Federal Arts Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration.  That needs to be confirmed. The murals used to hang in the Paul Bunyan Room, but have disappeared. 

President Theodore Roosevelt created a 9,000 acre national bird refuge around Deer Flat Reservoir, now Lake Lowell, by executive order in 1909. It remained unstaffed and undeveloped until the New Deal, when the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) sent in relief workers to make improvements under the management of the U.S. Biological Survey (later the Fish and Wildlife Service). In 1935, the Civilian Conservation Corps established a camp at the refuge, BR-24, staffed by Company #2506.  Between 1935 and 1941, 750 CCC young men did restoration work on the Upper and Lower dams (or embankments) that...

The Civil Works Administration built two bridges in 1934 to carry Shoal Creek Boulevard over Shoal Creek. The Upper Shoal Creek Bridge structure consists of a shallow concrete arch between concrete piers. The Lower Shoal Creek Bridge structure consists of flat concrete slabs between concrete piers. The two lane bridges are open to traffic and are contributing structures to the Old West Austin Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 12, 2003.

In 1933, the Public Works Administration allotted $15,000 for the construction of an Upper Potomac Interceptor extension. The Evening Star described this project in its September 3rd (Sunday Star) edition: “This will complete the last link of a sewer located along the north shore of the Potomac between Rock Creek and the District line to intercept sewage discharging directly into the Upper Potomac. The section to be built is in the line of Newark street between the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal and Conduit road .” In 1934, the District awarded a contract for the work to the Peter D’Amato Construction Company,...

The Union Creek Historic District on the upper Rogue River in Union Creek, Oregon, is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places because it is a fine representative of a type of rustic resort popular in the early 20th century and has been little altered since the 1930s.   There are almost one hundred buildings and other facilities in the Union Creek Historic District, almost all of which conform to the Forest Service plans of the 1920s and 30s.  Roughly a third were constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) from 1933 to 1942.   CCC enrollees worked during summer...

An article in the December 5 1935 Bangor Daily News reported that the Agriculture Dept. had approved 5 grade crossing elimination projects in Maine submitted by the State Highway Commission. "ON MAINE CENTRAL RAILROAD Androscoggin and Kennebec counties, between Leeds and Monmouth, on federal-aid highway route 1, construct grade separation strcuture, state funds, $475, federal funds $79,013." Route 1 was changed to US-202 and the former Maine Central RR following 1970's deregulation was merged into Guilford Transportation Inc./Pan Am Railways and recently into CSX Railroad.