Detroit Sites

The Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects (officially named the Frederick Douglass Homes, and alternately named Frederick Douglass Projects, Frederick Douglass Apartments, Brewster-Douglass Homes, and Brewster-Douglass Projects) were the largest residential housing project owned by the city of Detroit. It was one of 50 slum clearance, low income housing projects financed by the Public Works Administration nationwide in 1936. The Brewster Homes were 791 living units over 28 acres, at a cost of $5,500,000. Construction began in 1935, when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt broke ground for the 701-unit development; the first phase, consisting of low-rise apartment blocks, was completed in 1938. An expansion of the...

Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) was developed and improved during the Great Depression with New Deal work relief funds and labor. The groundbreaking for Wayne County Airport occurred April 1929. On September 4, 1930, Wayne County Airport opens at the corner of Middlebelt Road and Wick Road in Romulus, Michigan. The Detroit City Airport improvement project began under the Civil Works Administration (CWA). "With a total appropriation of $160,000.00 the entire interior of the huge hangar was painted; underground gasoline tanks were removed to less hazardous locations; obstructions bordering on the field were repainted to conform with Bureau of Aeronautics...

"The new armory opened in 1930, and was used as both a training facility and civic event site. The indoor drill floor was used for dances, USO mixers, auto shows, and political and sporting events. In 1932, future heavyweight champion Joe Louis fought his first career bout. With the onset of the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration funded numerous artistic additions to the armory, including three murals, plaster carvings, and extensive wood carvings; this collection of WPA art is the largest collection of federally-funded Depression-era artwork of any building in the state... The Detroit Naval Armory is a limestone structure...

The W.P.A. conducted restoration and preservation work at Fort Wayne in Detroit, Michigan.

The historic Jefferson Station post office in Detroit, Michigan was constructed in 1940 with federal Treasury Department funds. The building is still in use today.

"Parkside, a low-rent housing development in Detroit, Michigan, was built on an undeveloped 31-acre plot adjacent to Chandler Park. The site cost $170,000, or about 17 cents a square foot. The buildings, which are fireproof, consist of 2- and 3-story apartments and 2-story row houses, which cover 25 percent of the site area and provide an average of 93 rooms to the acre. There are 3,025 rooms, arranged to provide 775 family-dwelling units of which 6 percent are 2-room, 33 percent 3-rooms, 51 percent 4-room, and 10 percent 5-room units. All apartments are supplied with heat, hot and cold water, and...

Completed in 1937 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), what was originally a Michigan State Police Post, and Second District Headquarters, was located at West Seven Mile Rd. and Grand River Ave. in Detroit, Michigan. The building has been replaced with a facility in Northville, and the WPA-built facility has since been demolished.

The oil-on-canvas mural "Automobile Industry" by William Gropper was funded by the Section of Fine Arts in 1941. It was originally installed in Detroit's Northwestern Branch post office, but has since been relocated to the Wayne State University Student Center.

"The new Western High School replaced, on a greatly enlarged scale, a high-school building was that destroyed by fire in the winter of 1935. It occupies the same site as this former building. The building is three stories and a partial basement in height and is approximately 300 feet square. The auditorium, which is 96 by 110 feet, occupies the core of the structure and is entirely surrounded by corridors from which open the classrooms and laboratories. The auditorium is on the first floor. It seats 1,300 on this floor, and its balcony, which is entered...