New Deal Accomplishments

Above: A WPA-built barn in Washington Township, Scioto County, Ohio, ca. 1938. Photo from the National Archives . Above: A WPA-built barn at the University of Maryland College Park, 1939. The barn appears to still exist at the college's Department of Animal and Avian Sciences Campus Farm - a farm "considered to be the 'jewel' of the department as it provides essential hands-on learning opportunities for our students" (" Campus Farm ," University of Maryland, accessed July 12, 2025). Photo from the National Archives . Above: "Connecticut Barns in Landscape," an oil painting by Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), created while he was in the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project, 1934. Image from the Smithsonian American Art Museum . Above: The WPA constructed this dairy barn at the "Morris Memorial Hospital for Crippled Children" in Milton, West Virginia, 1938. Photo from the National Archives . Above: Racing stables at the 11th Agri...

Above: One of the first New Deal playgrounds, constructed by the Civil Works Administration (CWA), 1933-1934. In his book Spending to Save (1936), Harry Hopkins wrote: "Thanks to CWA... the United States expanded its recreational resources to an unprecedented extent, adding some 200 swimming pools, over 3,700 playgrounds" (p. 122). Photo from: Henry G. Alsberg, America Fights the Depression: A Photographic Record of the Civil Works Administration, New York: Coward-McCann Publishers, 1934, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes . Above: "City Playground," a lithograph by Harold Anchel (1912-1980), created while he was in the WPA's Federal Art Project, ca. 1938. Across the nation, WPA workers created 3,085 new playgrounds: 1,851 at schools and 1,234 at other locations--and improved another 9,688. Image above from the Baltimore Museum of Art . Above: The description for this photograph--taken in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, June 1938--reads, ...

Above: Home-visits by nurses do not seem to have been a large part of the Civil Works Administration (CWA) program, but there were still significant projects, such as this home-visit campaign in Wilmington, Delaware, to get children immunized against diphtheria, 1934. Diphtheria was once a major cause of death among children in the United States: "Until treatment became widely available in the 1920s, the public viewed this disease as a death sentence" ( Case Western Reserve University ).  Newspaper excerpt from the Wilmington Morning News, March 14, 1934. Image from newspapers.com , used here for educational and non-commercial purposes . Above: Public health nurses, funded by the Work Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), made 3,530,000 home visits to Americans in need of healthcare assistance. The nurse above is assisting someone recovering from mastoiditis, between 1934 and 1935. Mastoiditis is an infection of the mastoid bone (behind the ear), ...