New York City Sites

The terra cotta bas relief sculpture mounted above the front entrance to the Forest Hills Station post office on Queens Boulevard is titled, "The Spirit of Communication".  It was created by Sten Jacobson under the federal Treasury Department Section of Fine Arts program and installed in 1938.

On July 16, 1935, the Department of Parks announced that the Forest Park Golf Course in Queens had been "entirely rebuilt with new greens and tees in line with the most modern golf architecture." A later press release confirmed that this, and work on other golf courses, had been done with "relief funds provided by the C.W.A., T.E.R.A. and W.P.A." The course is still popular and has been named the "best New York City golf course" by Golf Guides USA.

In September 1941, the WPA completed the reconstruction of Victory Field in Forest Park in Queens. The press release announcing the completion of the work described the project: "This 12 acre athletic field dedicated to the unknown soldier of the first World War, replaces the former inadequate facilities which consisted of a cinder running track overcrowded with dirt surfaced baseball diamonds. The new development will provide a well rounded recreational area for the use of all the residents of this section of Queens. The entire field is enclosed by double fencing consisting of an outer wrought iron picket fence separated from a...

This large, lush Brooklyn park dates back 150 years. NYC Parks explains that "Another series of renovations made in the 1930s further enhanced the classical design of the park. Parks architect Gilmore D. Clarke regraded the grounds, added new trees and shrubs, replaced the winding paths with more formal walks, remodeled the playgrounds, and created new spaces for athletic activities." These and other activities were announced in several Department of Parks press releases at the time. In May 1936, a new playground was opened in the northwest corner of the park. In October of the same year, the children's garden in...

The WPA undertook several large-scale projects to improve and develop Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, New York during the 1930s and early 1940s. One project called for the WPA to repair and reconstruct buildings; improve the "water and lighting installations" as well as "sewer installation and other utilities" at; and "improve the roads and grounds" at the base. Per a Department of Defense (DoD) survey, the WPA did the following: Improve buildings, grounds, and facilities, including demolishing obsolete buildings, reconditioning roads and walks and water and sewer systems, regarding parade grounds landscaping, placing sewer pipe installing plumbing, heating, and electrical facilities, painting,...

The Work Projects Administration (WPA) conducted multiple large-scale projects to improve and develop Fort Jay on Governors Island in New York Harbor, New York, New York. Per a Department of Defense (DoD) survey, the WPA did the following: Improve buildings and grounds by constructing barracks, NCO quarters, roads, sidewalks, and utilities, grading, improving roads, sidewalks and utilities, landscaping; Project No. 713-2-21; Cost: $1,000,000.00; Sponsor: Commanding General, 2nd Corps Area, U.S. Army, and War Department Complete the construction of a theater at Fort Jay; 713-2-22; $111,000.00; Commanding Officer, Fort Jay, and War Department Recondition and make general improvements to buildings, facilities,...

The federal Work Projects Administration worked to improve the facilities at Fort Lafayette, located in an island off Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, during the early 1940s. One project involved "removing and replacing deck, sheathing, stringers, camps, bracing, fenders, and piles; improving baffles, painting, grading, filling," and performing other related work. "Upon the close of the War, Fort Lafayette no longer had a role in military operations, and fell in to a state of disrepair. In 1948, the Fort was transferred to the City of New York. It was demolished in 1960, and in its footprint was built a colossal tower rising...

The Work Projects Administration (WPA) undertook several sizable projects to improve Staten Island's Fort Wadsworth during the 1930s and early 1940s. One project called for the WPA to repair and reconstruct buildings; improve the "water and lighting installations" as well as "sewer installation and other utilities" at; and "improve the roads and grounds" at the base. Per a Department of Defense (DoD) survey, the WPA did the following: Improve roads and walks, and landscape; Project No. 165-2-97-19; Cost: $372,630.00; Sponsor: Commanding General, 2nd Corps Area, U.S. Army Improve facilities; 265-2-97-8; $178,880.00; Commanding General, 2nd Corps Area, U.S. Army Construct and improve...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) assisted in the paving of what was then Fourth Avenue (now Park Ave.) from 14th St. to 23rd St.

The WPA funded the removal of 33 miles of trolley tracks in New York City (The Encyclopedia of New York City: Second Edition). This image shows "WPA workers removing old street car tracks on Fourth Avenue . Picture shows 16th Street facing South" c. 1936 (WPA).

Francis Lewis Park sits at the base of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge in Queens. The park was named after an American "merchant, patriot, and signer of the Declaration of Independence"(nycgovparks). Researcher Frank Da Cruz has compiled evidence of the WPA's key role in developing this park: Like Ferry Point park, Francis Lewis Park was part of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge construction project, 1937-41. A New York Parks City Department press release on April 25, 1940, confirms that it was built by the WPA: The Department of Parks announces that exercises in connection with the dedication of Francis Lewis Park, Third Avenue and 147...

Today's NYC Parks website explains that the "history of the playground begins in 1935, when the Board of Transportation permitted the Department of Parks to use two parcels on the east and west sides of 78th Street for recreational purposes. The property was developed by the Works Progress Administration in 1937 as a neighborhood playground and sitting park." In fact, work on the park started a bit earlier than that. A Department of Parks press release from December 30, 1936 announced the opening in this park of a "new playground is equipped with swings, jungle gyms, sand tables, play houses...

"Mosholu Baseball Field on Webster Avenue between East 201st Street and Mosholu Parkway, July 2014. A May 21, 1935, Parks Department press release says (referring to this field by original name, and by its location): This field, recently reconstructed by relief workers assigned to the Park Department, is one of the finest baseball plants in the entire park system, with seating accommodations for 3500 plus 1000 park benches. The diamond has been constructed according to big league specifications... The same press release (which announces a game between Manhattan College and the Bronx Elks) goes on to say, “The Park Department band...

The WPA provided resources to conduct repairs at the Franklin Avenue Armory in the Bronx during the 1930s. The armory was then home to the 105th Field Artillery (Second Battery). The National Guard utilized the building until 1988, at which point it was sold to the City of New York. WPA Official Project No. 65-97-378.

"During the year 1936 the WPA built East River Drive from Grand Street to 14th Street, demolishing structures in the line of the driveway, backfilling and grading low areas, rebuilding and extending sewers to new outfalls in the East River, building new catch-basins and inlets, and laying a nine-inch concrete base on the drive."

Franklin K. Lane High School, located in the Cypress Hills neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, was constructed with the assistance of federal Public Works Administration funds during the 1930s (PWA Docket No. NY 8884-R). Short and Stanley-Brown write: "This is one of the largest and most modern schools in New York City and has been highly rated by the Municipal Art Commission. It is in a residential district. It contains the usual administrative offices, service rooms, 84 classrooms, library, commercial museum, 4 gymnasiums, rooms for social activity, homemaking, artcraft, 8 drawing rooms, a swimming pool, and an auditorium. The student capacity is...

The Department of Parks announced the opening of what is now the Fred Samuel Playground on March 31, 1939. The press release explained: "The area located on the west side of Lenox Avenue between 139 and 140 Streets is adjacent to Public School 139, Manhattan and was the first parcel of ground purchased jointly by the Park Department and the Board of Education and developed in collaboration to the advantage of both departments. Besides being completely equipped with play apparatus the area also provides facilities for handball, basketball, paddle tennis, roller skating hockey and ice skating in the winter when subfreezing...

NYC Parks describes the origins of this playground: "South Ozone Park grew into a bustling community, and the neighborhood’s many residents needed recreation space. Parks acquired the playground land in a purchase from William Zagarino in 1936, and soon after developed the area into a play space." Indeed, on April 3, 1937, the Department of Parks announced the completion of this new playground: "It has been equipped with swings, see-saws, slides, sand tables, play-houses and a wading pool for small children. Handball, shuffleboard and table tennis courts, a large play area with a soft ball diamond and an oval roller skating...

The Department of Parks announced the opening of what is now the Frederick Johnson Park on March 31, 1939. The press release explained: "The 150 Street and Seventh Avenue area obtained by the Department of Parks from the Board of Transportation for an indefinite period has been developed to include 8 tennis courts, 9 handball courts, a volley ball court as well as a sitting area for mothers and guardians of small children. The sitting area is surrounded by continuous rows of benches under shade trees with two separate sand pits for youngsters to play in. This area is adjacent to...

French Charley’s Playground is located within the northern part of Bronx Park, near the park entrance at East 204th Street by Webster Ave. "In June of 1941, Parks developed this playground and the fields, and the WPA (Works Progress Administration) provided the labor force for the new construction."   (www.nycgovparks.org) WPA work included the playground itself, as well as footbridge to the park at East 204th St., landscaping, paths and a large, rounded stone retaining wall. "The park is about 16 feet below street level and the WPA had to convert the sloping landscape into two levels that are flat, which involved moving...

This bridge was constructed with funds and labor provided by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

In 1940 the Department of Parks announced the opening of a new playground was opened in what is today Fulton Park, located in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. The playground was "designed by the Park Department and built and landscaped by the Work Projects Administration," and describes the playground as follows: "This small children's playground consists of kindergarten swings, see-saws, slides, a sand pit and a free play space with a shower basin and has been surfaced with bituminous material to provide for all year round usage. The entire area is landscaped with shade trees and concrete benches have been provided." Fulton...

The Department of Parks acquired this land, later named the Galapo Playground, in 1940 and announced the completion of a playground on the site in July 1941: "New concrete walks have been centered in the 24' sidewalk area along Avenue "V" and Bedford Avenue with a row of pin oaks on each side in panels of concrete blocks. Continuous sections of benches have been placed against the Avenue "V" property line fence adjacent to the entrances. A concrete walk extends along East 24 Street and Gravesend Neck Road with a single row of trees spaced in a concrete block strip adjacent...

The WPA constructed a half-million-dollar garbage dump facility at the East River Drive and 91st Street, jutting out into the East River. The facility is reached by a "vamp" over the now-FDR Drive. The "building, which resembles an airplane hangar, covers 11,700 square feet and accommodates two barges at a time."

  The PWA played a crucial role in improving New York City's health and sanitation facilities at a moment of growing strain on existing infrastructure. The city's need for better ways to deal with garbage was particularly acute after 1934 when nearby New Jersey cities sued to stop New York from ongoing ocean dumping. Professor Robert Leighninger describes the results of PWA involvement: "Four garbage-disposal projects improved the city's health and cleanliness at a cost of $34.6 million. The garbage incinerator at Fifty-sixth Street and Twelfth Avenue and the attached garage that houses 350 garbage trucks is still vital to keeping...

This property in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, just next to Milestone Park, was acquired by Parks in 1937. In March, 1939, Parks announced the completion of a new playground on the site "equipped with swings, see-saws, jungle gym, slides and a shower basin which can also be used as a roller skating rink." The new playground also contained a "brick comfort station" and "concrete benches and shade trees." The work "was performed by the Works Progress Administration but planned and inspected by the Department of Parks." The site remains a functioning playground today.

Researcher Frank da Cruz makes a convincing argument that this former playground was built with New Deal funds: "According to a present-day NYC Parks Department web page, 'This property, bounded by East 146th Street, Walton Avenue, and the Grand Concourse, was acquired by the city in 1913 and assigned to Parks in 1934. Garrison Playground opened in 1936, and reopened in 1940 after the widening of the Grand Concourse' (which was a WPA project). The playground was open as recently as June 2014 (next image) but in June 2015 when I took these photos the entire block was being demolished,...

The federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) undertook a sizable public building improvement project in Brooklyn, New York beginning in 1935.  The project involved the "Improvement of Public Buildings and Offices" at more than 30 locations, including the old Gates Avenue Court Building.

"This monumental bronze portrait bust, dedicated in 1893, depicts Civil War General Winfield Scott Hancock (1824–1886), and was created by American sculptor James Wilson Alexander MacDonald (1824–1908)." (www.nycgovparks.org) In the 1930s, the bust was restored with federal funding under Karl Gruppe, "chief sculptor of the Monument Restoration Project of the New York City Parks Department, from 1934 to 1937." The program was initially supported by federal funding from the Public Works of Art Project (Lowrey, 2008), and later by the WPA.

"In 1934, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) converted an eleven-year-old pier into a waterside recreation center at a cost of one million dollars. ... Opened in 1936, the George Cromwell Recreation Center soon came to play a vital role in Staten Island’s sports and recreational activities. President Roosevelt hosted a gala ball there in 1939, and Sugar Ray Robinson fought his last amateur fight there in 1940." "(...) the city took $1 million from the federal Works Progress Administration, which was headquartered at the pier, to convert the structure — known as Pier 6, located on Murray Hulbert Avenue — into a...

Lucienne Bloch's mural, "The Evolution of Music", encircles the upper wall of the old music classroom at the former George Washington High School.  As the NY Public Schools Public Art for Public Schools website states: "Among New Deal New York City public school murals, the most outstanding example by a female artist is Lucienne Bloch’s The Evolution of Music, painted in a former high school music room. Bloch was one of the few WPA/FAP artists who had prior training painting murals, and she was well suited to her assignment at George Washington High School.  She had already successfully completed one WPA/FAP fresco...

Gertrude B. Kelly Playground was one of five model playgrounds designed after Robert Moses assumed control of the New York City Parks Department in 1934. These playgrounds were "meant to serve as templates for further playground designs and included standard features such as a play house, flagpole, chlorinated footbath, wading pool, handball and basketball courts, play equipment, drinking fountains, shade trees, and shrubs." (nycgovparks) Mayor LaGuardia presided over the dedication ceremony for this playground in August, 1934. A Parks Department press release announcing the opening of this and several other playgrounds explained that "The labor and materials for the construction of...

A March 27, 1936 Department of Parks press release announced the opening of this new WPA playground: "The Department of Parks will open ten new playgrounds Saturday, March 28, making a total of 125 added to the recreational system in two years. …at White, McKibben and Bogart Streets there will be three hand-ball courts, three shuffle-board courts, three horseshoe pitching courts, three basketball courts and swings… All of these playgrounds were constructed as Works Progress Administration projects." In July of the same year, Parks announced the further completion of "a large game area, a wading pool and complete apparatus for children" and benches "placed...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) worked to restore the Giuseppe Verdi Monument during the mid-1930s.

The federal Work Projects Administration (WPA) constructed a new public library in Glendale, Queens. The WPA also constructed additions to other libraries in the borough.

In Sept. 1941 the New York Times described a playground being constructed by the WPA in Queens at "Central Avenue and Seventieth Street." This site, Glendale Playground, is still in use today. The site is also known as the "Uncle" Vito E. Maranzano Glendale Playground. New York City's Parks Department writes: "In 1940-41 Parks acquired the school property and an adjacent parcel for a new playground, which opened in 1942. On the cleared site, laborers from the Federal Works Projects Administration built handball and basketball courts, a softball diamond, swings, slides, seesaws, a jungle gym, a comfort station, and a free play...

Then known as the Welfare Hospital for Chronic Disease, this hospital on New York's Roosevelt Island opened in 1939. The hospital soon received three rare 7 x 50 foot WPA murals by Ilya Bolotowsky (1907-1981), Joseph Rugolo (1911-1983) and Albert Swinden (1901-1961). "The murals must have caused a sensation in the early 1940s, when they were installed in the patients’ circular day rooms by the federal Work Projects Administration. Not your standard W.P.A. social-realist allegories, these were works of almost pure, jazzlike abstraction, bold fields of color that barely suggested any literal imagery."   (nytimes.com) At some point in the following years, all three...

In 1936, Abram Champanier painted a large, multi-panel mural, entitled "Alice in Wonderland," in the children's ward of the old Gouverneur Hospital on Water Street, with funds provided by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The oil-on-canvas murals were all seven feet high, of varying widths, with subjects such as, "Alice Steps Out of a Book," "Alice Flies Over the East River Bridges" and "Alice and Her Friends in the Subway," with imaginative images in the social-realist style. Unfortunately, "the murals were left behind, exposed to rain and other infelicities, when the hospital was abandoned in 1961. Nearly two decades later, the building was sold, and demolition threatened. On the...

From 1794 to 1966, Governors Island housed US army facilities. The whole island is now a National Monument and remains a "vibrant summer seasonal venue of art, culture and performance against the backdrop of two centuries of military heritage and the skyline of one of the great cities of the world" (https://www.nps.gov). According to a 1939 Federal Writers' Project publication, "the WPA ha constructed and repaired officers' dwellings, and beautified the grounds ."

In addition to WPA improvements made around Governors Island, "a mural in the Administration Building, depicting scenes from six American wars, was painted by artists of the Federal Art Project." The Administration Building is better known today as Pershing Hall. The Governors Island Blog states: "Pershing Hall benefited from a FAP commission to Tom Loftin Johnson for murals to adorn its principal hallways. Johnson’s 90 foot mural in Pershing Hall depicts American military history. A close look at these detailed murals reveals many notable national characters, some with particular connections to Governors Island."