If you’ve traveled the nation’s highways, flown into New York’s LaGuardia Airport, strolled San Antonio’s River Walk, or seen the Pacific Ocean from the Beach Chalet in San Francisco, you have experienced some part of the legacy of the Works Progress Administration (WPA)—one of the enduring cornerstones of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.
When President Roosevelt took the oath of office in March 1933, he was facing a devastated nation. Four years into the Great Depression, a staggering 13 million American workers were jobless and many millions more of their family members were equally in need. Desperation ruled the land.
What people wanted were jobs, not handouts: the pride of earning a paycheck; and in 1935, after a variety of temporary relief measures, a permanent nationwide jobs program was created. This was the Works Progress Administration, and it would forever change the physical landscape and the social policies of the United States.
The WPA lasted for eight years, spent $11 billion, employed 8½ million men and women, and gave the country not only a renewed spirit but a fresh face. Under its colorful head, Harry Hopkins, the agency’s remarkable accomplishment was to combine the urgency of putting people back to work with its vision of physically rebuilding America. Its workers laid roads, erected dams, bridges, tunnels, and airports. They stocked rivers, made toys, sewed clothes, served millions of hot school lunches. When disasters struck, they were there by the thousands to rescue the stranded. And all across the country the WPA’s arts programs performed concerts, staged plays, painted murals, delighted children with circuses, created invaluable guidebooks. Even today, more than sixty years after the WPA ceased to exist, there is almost no area in America that does not bear some visible mark of its presence.
Politically controversial, the WPA was staffed by passionate believers and hated by conservatives; its critics called its projects make-work and wags said it stood for We Piddle Around. The contrary was true. We have only to look about us today to discover its lasting presence.
Chapter 2. THE PEOPLE ON THEIR OWN
Chapter 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF “RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM”
Chapter 5. HOOVERVILLES AND HUNGER
Chapter 6. THE PROBLEM WITH LAISSEZ-FAIRE
Chapter 7. RUMBLES ON THE LEFT
Chapter 8. THE GUNS OF DEARBORN
Chapter 10. ROOSEVELT ONTO THE STAGE
Chapter 11. THE BATTLE IS JOINED
Chapter 1. JOBS FROM THE SKY (AND NOWHERE ELSE)
Chapter 2. AN AGONY OF WAITING
Chapter 5. THE PASSION OF HARRY HOPKINS
Chapter 8. THE BIRTH OF THE CIVIL WORKS ADMINISTRATION
Chapter 10. EMPLOYMENT POLITICS
Chapter 11. THE JOBS THAT PAID TOO MUCH
Chapter 12. THE BRIEF SHINING LIFE OF THE CWA
Chapter 1. TOWARD A PERMANENT JOBS PROGRAM
Chapter 2. PROTESTS LEFT AND RIGHT
Chapter 4. “WORK MUST BE FOUND…”
Chapter 6. THE MACHINERY TAKES SHAPE
Chapter 8. “CAN YOU SPEND MONEY?”
Chapter 9. THE DIRT FLIES: PRELIMINARIES
Chapter 1. DEATH OF A POPULIST
Chapter 3. HURRICANES AND PIPE DREAMS
Chapter 4. A LODGE AT THE TIMBERLINE
Chapter 6. KENTUCKY’S PACKHORSE LIBRARY (LIBRARIAN GRACE OVERBEE)
Chapter 8. HOPKINS IN LOUISIANA
Chapter 9. AT WORK ON THE TIMBERLINE (LABORER AND HELPER HENRY MOAR)
Chapter 1. THE DILEMMA OF ART AND POLITICS
Chapter 2. THE FEDERAL THEATRE PROJECT: PRELUDE
Chapter 5. SELLING THE THEATER (YOUTH PUBLICIST FRANK GOODMAN)
Chapter 6. THE ART PROJECT: MURALS AND INTRIGUE
Chapter 7. THE INDEX OF AMERICAN DESIGN (AND COMMUNITY ART CENTERS)
Chapter 8. THE MUSIC PROJECT: “REAL MUSIC” FOR AMERICA
Chapter 9. THE WRITERS’ PROJECT
Chapter 10. AT WORK FOR THE WRITERS’ PROJECT (RESEARCHER THOMAS C. FLEMING)
Chapter 11. ONE NATION, ONE PLAY
Chapter 12. AT WORK OFFSTAGE (ANTHONY BUTTITTA AND MILTON MELTZER)
Chapter 13. THE AMERICAN GUIDES: IDAHO VERSUS WASHINGTON, D.C.
Chapter 14. LAYOFFS AND PROTESTS
Chapter 2. WPA FIGHTS THE “FEROCIOUS FIRE DEMON”
Chapter 3. THE COURT-PACKING DEBACLE
Chapter 4. WPA CUTS AND THE “ROOSEVELT RECESSION”
Chapter 5. THE ROOSEVELTS AT TIMBERLINE
Chapter 6. DECLINE AND REVIVAL
Chapter 7. BUILDING ROADS IN NORTH CAROLINA (JOHNNY MILLS)
Chapter 8. KENTUCKY ARCHAEOLOGY (JOHN B. ELLIOTT)
Chapter 1. WAR AMONG THE DEMOCRATS
Chapter 2. THE RISE OF THE RED-BAITERS
Chapter 3. THE “RUNAWAY OPERA”
Chapter 7. CHANGES IN THE WIND
Chapter 8. CAN ANYBODY SPARE A HOT SCHOOL LUNCH?
Chapter 9. THE DEATH OF THE THEATER
Chapter 10. A DIFFERENT PLAYING FIELD
Chapter 2. THE PICATINNY ARSENAL
Chapter 3. RACE AND ISOLATIONISM
Chapter 4. HOLD THE JOKES, PLEASE
Chapter 5. PINK SLIPS AND PINKOS
Chapter 6. BEFORE THE DELUGE (VINCENT JAMES “JIMMY” BONANNO)
Chapter 7. A “HURRICANE OF EVENTS”
Chapter 9. THE THIRD-TERM EQUATION
Chapter 11. A FEVER OF PREPARATION
EPILOGUE: THE LEGACY OF THE WPA