New Deal Accomplishment: Over 400 new firehouses


Above: The Monte Vista Fire Station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, built by the WPA in 1936. Between 1935 and 1943 WPA workers constructed 325 new firehouses, and carried out 2,384 other projects to improve existing firehouses. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: The description for this photograph, taken in Mississippi, June 1938, reads: "Fire House - one of three constructed by the WPA for city of Biloxi." Photo from the National Archives.


Above: Firemen are enjoying a new recreation area, in a WPA-built addition to their firehouse in Rutland, Vermont, 1937. The addition also included a kitchen, library, and dormitory. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: WPA workers putting the finishing touches on a new firehouse for La Jolla, California, 1937. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: The New Deal's Public Works Administration (PWA) funded many firehouses too, such as this one in Williamson, New York, ca. 1936. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: A new firehouse for Winnemucca, Nevada, courtesy of the PWA, 1938-1939. Photo from the National Archives.


Above: Another PWA-funded firehouse, this one built in Honolulu, Hawaii, 1934-1935. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: A fresh coat of paint for the fire headquarters in Salisbury, Maryland, 1933-1934. Workers paid by the Civil Works Administration (CWA) performed this job. Photo from the University of Maryland College Park Archives.


Above: Between 1934 and 1935, the Work Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) built 91 new firehouses and engaged in 1,468 projects to improve existing firehouses. Photo from the final report of the Work Division, 1935.


Above: The New Deal's National Youth Administration (NYA) built and improved firehouses too. This headline is from the San Bernardino Daily Sun (San Bernardino, California), January 20, 1940, p. 12. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

400+ New Firehouses

The most readily available statistics for New Deal firehouse projects are in the final reports of the WPA and the Work Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). From these statistics (see captions above), and our knowledge that other New Deal agencies worked on plenty of firehouses too, we can confidently say that the New Deal constructed over 400 new firehouses across America, and carried out over 3,800 other projects to improve existing firehouses.

(Statistical note: Due to a variety of factors--such as (a) single work projects that spanned over the course of multiple work-relief agencies, (b) more than one agency working on the same project at the same time, and (c) inadequate reporting--calculating the total New Deal work product for any category of projects can range from mildly challenging to extraordinarily difficult. I therefore use several methods--for example, leaving out the work product of one or more agencies--to keep the estimates modest, as opposed to overblown. My earliest blog posts go into these difficulties and methods in more detail.)

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