• Arlington "Ollie" Edinboro Playground - New York NY
    St. Nicholas Park is a long stretch of park between Harlem and Manhattanville, reaching from 127th St. to 141st St. The park contains two playgrounds. The larger one at 129th St., known as St. Nicholas Playground, opened before the New Deal in 1931. A July 1934 Department of Parks press release announced the opening of a second playground at the opposite end of the park near 141st St.. When it opened, the 200 ft. by 60 ft. playground contained an "open pavilion, a comfort station and a wading pool which can be converted into a basketball court, and slides, jungle...
  • Inwood Hill Park: Boat Basin and Seaman Ave. Fields - New York NY
    A January 26, 1939 press release by the Department of Parks announced that, "The WPA is at present constructing a boat basin in the Harlem Ship Canal which utilizes the old channel bordering Inwood Hill and Isham Parks  no longer used since the cutoff through the old Johnson Iron Works was completed by Army engineers early this year. This basin will house small boats of every description from canoes and outboards to cabin cruisers. It is scheduled to be completed in April 1939 and before that time work will have been started on the reconstruction of 10 acres of existing...
  • Inwood Hill Park: Dyckman Fields - New York NY
    Before the 1930s, the large area of Inwood Hill Park north of Dyckman Street, between the New York Central Railroad tracks and the Hudson River was a literally a dump. Through the efforts of the Henry Hudson Parkway Authority, the Department of Parks and the Works Progress Administration, this area was transformed into an extensive landscaped area full of baseball and soccer fields, archery ranges and more. A January 1939 Parks press release explained that the Henry Hudson Parkway Authority contributed to this not only through landscaping the new Henry Hudson Parkway and providing foot-bridges between the waterfront area and...
  • Post Office and Federal Building - Salina KS
    The Salina United States Post Office and Federal Building (c. 1937-1938) is located at 211 W. Iron in Salina, Saline County, Kansas. The two story, flat roofed, limestone building has a northern facade orientation. The building measures approximately one hundred and twenty feet from east to west and one hundred and seventeen feet from north to south. The facade of the building is comprised of three groups of three multipaned, metal windows. These are linearly aligned windows with inset marble panels between the first and second levels. The Section sculpture projects from the building on the wall space that flanks...
  • Inwood Hill Park: Payson Playground - New York NY
    Payson Playground, in the Southeast corner of Inwood Hill Park, is one of three playgrounds in the park. The current Department of Parks website says the playground was built by Robert Moses in 1939, but Parks Department press releases from the New Deal period show that the park was originally built in 1934 and completed in 1941. A 1934 press release announced the opening of the playground in August of that year. The release describes the new playground as containing a "Field house, comfort station, play area, basketball courts and the usual playground equipment for children." The labor and materials...
  • Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies - Los Angeles CA
    The Los Angeles Center for Advanced Studies was launched in 1977 as the first magnet school in LA and used various facilities such as a temple, an unused building at Hamilton High School, and a closed Catholic School at Pico and Arlington before moving to the current site in 1986. It now occupies the campus of the former Louis Pasteur Middle School, which was built in 1939 with aid from the Public Works Administration (PWA) – sometimes called by its full name, the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, as in this case. It is probable that the Pasteur Middle School was built...
  • Whittier High School - Whittier CA
    Whittier High School—perhaps best known as Hill Valley High School in the film Back to the Future—was rebuilt with New Deal funds after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. The funding almost surely came from the Public Works Administration (PWA), which had made school reconstruction in Southern California a priority.  This needs to be confirmed. The Wikipedia entry on the school says that, "The Science Building was rebuilt in 1934; a Boys' Gym in 1935; dressing rooms and Cafeteria in 1936. The Auditorium stood idle for almost 20 years and then was renovated into the present Library. In 1938, the District approved bonds...
  • Wadleigh State Park - North Sutton NH
    The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) "onstructed road and water holes, fought forest fires, and restored local roads and bridges after the 1936 flood and the 1938 hurricane."
  • Bear Brook State Park Improvements - Allenstown NH
    The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built "roads, trails,bridle paths, vehicle bridges, ponds for fish and waterfowl, lookouttowers, a nature observatory, shelters, picnic areas, fireplaces,campgrounds, recreational lakes, and worked on landscaping and firefighting. Today you can also find a museum devoted to the CCC in New Hampshire here."
  • Vesuvio Playground - New York NY
    Originally known simply as the playground at 99 Thompson St., this was one of fourteen new playgrounds throughout New York to open in August, 1934.  The labor and materials for all these playgrounds were provided by "Work Relief funds." Given the timing, Relief funds mentioned most likely came at least partly from the CWA. The Parks Department press release announcing the opening described this playground as containing: "Recreation building, a wading pool in the center of the play area, and usual apparatus for small children including sand tables, see-saws and slides. This is distinctly a playground for small children." At the time, the park...