New Deal Accomplishment: Over 2,100 new libraries


Above: The New Deal's Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA) built this library for the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus, ca. 1935-1937. It is in the quadrangle behind Roosevelt Tower (also built by PRRA) and today appears to serve other functions (these National Register of Historic Places materials suggest it was more recently used as the Registrar's Office, "Building No. 9"). Photo from the Puerto Rico Architectural Heritage Archives and the Archive of Architecture and Construction of the University of Puerto Rico; used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.


Above: Workers in the New Deal's Civil Works Administration (CWA) expand the Wicomico County Free Library in Salisbury, Maryland, 1934. Walter S. Sheppard, a resident of Wicomico County, "pointed out that until the CWA came into being, the only hope Salisbury had of getting a new library was for some rich man to provide the necessary funds and... 'for the past two or three years there do not seem to have been any more rich men'" ("Campaign for Free Library Fund Opened," The Salisbury Times, April 7, 1934, p. 1). Photo from the University of Maryland College Park Archives.


Above: This photo comes from: Federal Emergency Relief Administration, The Emergency Work Relief Programs of the F.E.R.A., April 1, 1934 - July 1, 1935 (1935), p. 6. Workers in FERA constructed 98 new libraries and improved 261 existing libraries.

Above: The New Deal's Public Works Administration (PWA) provided funds for this new library at Howard University, a historically black university. At its dedication, PWA Administrator Harold Ickes said: "A library is more than a building, it is more than the volumes that rest upon its shelves...We can hardly over-estimate the role of libraries in modern life. They constitute perhaps the most important single agency for the perpetuation of civilization. To the libraries we entrust for safe keeping our accumulated social, artistic and scientific knowledge. It is upon their resources that we largely depend for knowing and understand[ing] the past; it is by their help that we may undertake to absorb the knowledge and develop the intellectual habits necessary for effective participation in the democratic way of life; and it is mainly through them that we hope to be able to project our own contributions into and influence the future" ("How The Founders Library Came To Be...," Howard University, accessed June 22, 2025). The PWA financed about 1,800 new libraries (Public Works Administration, America Builds: The Record of PWA, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939, p. 132). Photo from the National Archives.


Above: A WPA-built library in Jasper, Alabama, 1938. Workers in the WPA, formerly jobless and ridiculed, built 151 new libraries, and repaired or improved another 923, all across the nation. Alongside the many hundreds of libraries built by other New Deal agencies, these libraries served--and in some case still serve--millions of Americans. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: The WPA constructed this library at the Indiana State School for the Deaf, Indianapolis, ca. 1937. The WPA had many public works projects, training opportunities, and jobs for the disabled. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: Workers in the New Deal's National Youth Administration (NYA) built 59 new libraries and repaired or improved another 362. NYA workers also staffed libraries, such as these young NYA enrollees working at the Morgan State College Library in Baltimore, Maryland, ca. 1939. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: Most CCC camps had libraries. Here are members of CCC Company 766 enjoying theirs, at Camp BF-4, near Kramer, North Dakota, ca. 1937 ("BF" was a designation for CCC camps in federal wildlife game refuges). Photo from: Official Annual, Civilian Conservation Corps, North Dakota District, Seventh Corps Area, 1937 (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Direct Advertising Company, 1937). Used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

2,100+ New Libraries

Using the numbers and information above, we can say that the New Deal built over 2,100 new libraries... and perhaps way over, if one were to count libraries installed at CCC camps, libraries that came with schools built by WPA (there were many thousands of schools built by WPA), and projects by other New Deal alphabet soup agencies.

We also see that the New Deal had over 1,500 projects to improve existing libraries.

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