This bridge was built during the Great Depression with the assistance of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). It was constructed of pipes and serviced the G. B. Cooley Tuberculosis Sanatorium at White’s Ferry in West Monroe, Louisiana.
Construction of this footbridge was undertaken in Swartz, Louisiana during the Great Depression with federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) labor. The drainage canal was excavated by African American Works Progress Administration workers in 1936, near Monroe.
The St. Helena Parish Courthouse was undertaken in Greensburg, Louisiana during the Great Depression with assistance of funds provided by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The Greensburg courthouse was one of two Louisiana courthouses built with WPA funds instead of support from the Public Works Administration (PWA) (Leighninger, 2001).
The Monroe swimming pool was undertaken in Monroe, Louisiana during the Great Depression with the assistance of funds provided by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The Monroe swimming pool at Forsythe Park was constructed for approximately $100,000 and was described as “one of the finest fresh water inland natatoriums in the county” (Work report made by WPA, 1937, p. 10). It operated without cost to community members (New Deal Network, 2003).
The Concordia Parish Courthouse was undertaken in Vidalia, Louisiana during the Great Depression with the assistance of funds provided by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The “Greco-Deco” courthouse in Vidalia was erected due to the need to relocate the town for flood control of the Mississippi River. The WPA relocated businesses and houses, as well as constructed the new parish courthouse. Constructed for a cost of $109,950, the building remains in use as the parish library and records storage.
A three classroom school was constructed in Newport, Texas during the Great Depression with the assistance of funds from the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The ranch-style rock building was constructed to replace a frame school that had previously been destroyed by fire. Two of the classrooms were separated by a sliding partition that could be opened to create an auditorium. The WPA funded $5,762 of the approximate $9,000 cost of construction.
This high school gymnasium was constructed in Antelope, Texas during the Great Depression with the assistance of the Works Progress Administration. In addition to the native stone structure, the construction project included a septic tank, disposal field, and improved school facilities and employed approximately 20 laborers. $13, 622 of the total cost of $21,393 was provided by WPA while the local school district provided the remainder.
The first free-standing house built for home economics education was constructed in Mineral Wells, Texas following site selection by state supervisor of home economics Lillian Peek in 1933. It was completed by federal labor using native stone, and was occupied by students in February 21, 1934.* The building style was “semi-Georgian” (Shubert, 2013) and included a foods laboratory (kitchen with 6 units), clothing laboratory (sewing machines), living and dining room (with rustic faux fireplace), terrace, bedroom, and bath room. The cottage cost $11,200 for construction with additional costs for furnishing. Along with an amphitheater originally constructed in 1937, the building is currently in process of restoration and renovation by the 50 Year Club of Mineral Wells.
* While sources cite the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) as the source of this labor, it was most likely the Civil Works Administration (CWA), which existed at the time of construction, that conducted the work.
Nation and Capitol Times editor/writer John Nichols eulogized Senate stalwart Frank Lautenberg (New Jersey_ when he passed away last month, by calling him bold, unapologetic, and a carrier of the New Deal Faith. Among other things, Lautenberg was the fire behind the 21st Century WPA Act, which aims to revive New Deal programs that put people back to work. Here’s a excerpt from his article, with a link below for the full text:
Frank Lautenberg, the son of a Paterson, N.J., silk mill worker and the last World War II veteran serving in the U.S. Senate, took his cues from another political time: a time when liberals were bold and unapologetic, a time when it was understood that government could and should do great things.
One of the few members of Congress who could remember listening to Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the radio and going to college on the initial GI Bill, Lautenberg served five terms in the Senate as a champion of great big infrastructure investments — especially for Amtrak and urban public transportation — great big environmental regulations, great big consumer protections, and great big investigations of wrongdoing by Wall Street.
It can fairly be said that the New Jersey senator, who died Monday at age 89, kept the New Deal flame lit in the Senate. Indeed, he was behind one of the last major pieces of legislation proposed to renew one of FDR’s greatest legacies: the Works Progress Administration, which provided public works employment for millions of Americans during the Great Depression of Lautenberg’s youth.
When he introduced his “21st Century WPA Act” two years ago, Lautenberg declared: “Our economy will not recover and our nation will not move forward until we put jobs first. Establishing a 21st Century Works Progress Administration would immediately put Americans to work rebuilding our nation and strengthening our communities. Across the country, we continue to benefit from projects completed under President Roosevelt’s WPA, which employed more than 3 million Americans during a time of great need. A 21st Century WPA would tackle our nation’s job crisis head-on and accelerate our economic recovery.”
A self-made millionaire who paid his own way into politics at age 58, Lautenberg never forgot that government programs lifted him out of poverty. And he refused to bend to the austerity fantasies of official Washington. Indeed, he attacked them with gusto, especially after returning to the Senate in 1983 following a bizarre turn of political events in the early years of George W. Bush’s presidency. …
Read more here.
President Franklin Roosevelt once remarked to his Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., “One hundred years from now my administration will be known for its art, not for its relief.”
You could not choose a better guide to the centrality of aesthetics to the New Deal’s legacy than Roger G. Kennedy’s When Art Worked: The New Deal, Art, and Democracy.
Kennedy, who died in 2011 at age 85, is an erudite and engaging docent, having served both as director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and as Director of the National Park Service.
In this tome lavishly designed by David Larkin, he walks the reader through the vast gallery of New Deal art initiatives. Here are paintings and sculptures, the post office murals, the WPA posters, and the great Farm Security Administration photographs that barely escaped destruction by Congressmen angered by their depiction of poverty and racism, the finely crafted park structures built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the landscape architecture that unobtrusively opened vast tracts of land to democratic recreation.
Kennedy introduces the reader to the music, theater, writing, historical records, and restoration projects through which Native Americans, blacks, women, and others were given unprecedented opportunities to express themselves.
Kennedy also explains the labyrinthine organization of the various art programs and the extraordinary cast of artists and officials that envisioned an American Renaissance that would involve, touch, and uplift all the people for generations.
He describes Roosevelt himself as a self-created work of art, citing, among others, FDR’s friend John Collier who described the president as “an artist to the core.”
“His medium as an artist was the lives of men and the life of man…. Not poetry, or painting, or music, or physical architecture, but life itself in human society.”