New Deal Accomplishment: 6,098 projects to build or improve auditoriums

Above: The New Deal's Public Works Administration (PWA) helped fund this massive municipal auditorium in Kansas City, Missouri, 1934-1935. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: An audience inside the new PWA-funded auditorium in Kansas City, Missouri, ca. 1936 (see previous photo). Photo from the National Archives.

Above: A PWA-funded auditorium for Fremont, Nebraska, ca. 1938. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: A postcard depicting the PWA-funded municipal auditorium in Charleston, West Virginia. The total cost of the auditorium was $487,315, with PWA providing a grant of $211,927. It was completed in 1939. According to the Wikipedia page for the auditorium, performers such as Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Billy Joel, and AC/DC have played at the venue. Postcard credited to "A.W. Smith News Agency, Charleston, W.Va." and "Tichnor Quality Views... Tichnor Bros., Inc. Boston, Mass." Scanned from a personal copy, and used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

Above: A PWA-funded auditorium for the new Susan Dorsey High School in Los Angeles, California, ca. 1936-1937. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: The interior of the Susan Dorsey High School auditorium. Photo by Richard Walker, 2024, creative commons.

Above: WPA workers built this combination auditorium and fire hall in Deerwood, Minnesota, 1937. Photo from the National Archives.

More Places for Our Music, Plays, and Gatherings

Between 1933 and 1939, the PWA funded about 4,350 auditorium projects (America Builds, pp. 132 and 203), most of these for schools.

Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA built 422 new auditoriums and carried out 611 other projects to improve existing auditoriums (WPA final report, p. 131). During this same times frame, the National Youth Administration (NYA) had 287 projects to build, expand, reconstruct, or improve auditoriums (NYA final report, p. 139).  

The Work Division of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) built 106 new auditoriums and improved another 322 between 1934 and 1935 (Work Division final report, p. 91).

The numbers from these four agencies add up to 6,098 projects to build or improve auditoriums.

(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.)