New Deal Accomplishment: Over 4,000 historic structures restored

Above: WPA workers restoring Fort Negley, Nashville, Tennessee, March 1936. Preservation projects like Fort Negley (just one of a large number of historic forts restored by the New Deal) could employ a large number of jobless workers. Further, the WPA believed that unemployed workers should be placed on projects that matched their skills whenever possible (a common sense idea that was certainly shared by most local sponsors of WPA projects) and many of the men you see here were probably out-of-work stonemasons and construction workers. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: The description for this photograph--taken in Massachusetts, March 1937--reads: "Eastham, Mass. Windmill - 1793 - restored by WPA." Photo from the National Archives.

Above: Castille San Felipe del Morro, or just "El Morro," in San Juan, Puerto Rico, built in the 16th century. The New Deal's WPA and Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA) carried out a huge preservation project at the historic fort, employing more than 7,000 workers. El Morro was seen as a tourist attraction and also an important position of national defense. Nonetheless, there was also a desire to restore the fort to a historically accurate site. An army officer in charge of the restoration said, "Practically the whole structure was threatened due to the ravages of sea and age. We had the job of not only restoring the fort but preserving its original beauty. El Morro is a great historic shrine. Sir Francis Drake, Captain Kidd, the British and the Dutch all attacked it at various times without success... In the restoration of the walls cement and steel are replacing the original 'mamposteria,' a binder of lime, clay, and sand, used by the Spaniards. However, we are carefully preserving the appearance of the outer surface by replacing the original rocks" ("Dwyer Aids Restoration Of Fort in Puerto Rico," The Macon Telegraph (Macon, Georgia), January 20, 1939, p. 6A). Photo by "Thank You (23 Millions+) views," courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, and used here under the CCA 2.0 Generic License.

Above: The WPA restored this fort in Fort Ashby, West Virginia, 1939. Photo by Brent McKee, 2011.

Above: A roadside historical marker for Fort Ashby. Incidentally, the New Deal created West Virginia's highway marker program too, first through FERA, and then continued by WPA. Photo by Brent McKee, 2011.

Above: This plaque on the building highlights the WPA's work and shows that the local sponsors were the Mineral County Court and the Potomac Valley Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. Photo by Brent McKee, 2011.

Above: The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) restored thousands of historic structures, such as Fort Frederick in Maryland (seen above), now a National Historic Landmark. Photo by Brent McKee, 2011.

Above: Between 1933 and 1941 the CCC restored many historic structures at Colonial National Historical Park (Jamestown and Yorktown). Here we see enrollees rebuilding a battlefield fraise (a spiked fortification) at the park. Photo from the National Park Service.

Above: A Navajo man in the CCC-Indian Division working to restore Pueblo Bonito, a site that is today part of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico. Photo from the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, Indians at Work, August 1939 edition, front cover.

Above: Other members of the CCC-ID that worked at Pueblo Bonito. Their work included fixing and fortifying walls, creating drainage areas to prevent standing water, clearing rooms of sand, and repairing areas damaged by vandalism. "Archaeologists who come from many parts of the world to do research work and excavation among the ancient pueblos of Chaco Canyon are loud in their praise of the job being performed by the Navajos." Quote and photo from the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, Indians at Work, August 1939 edition, pp. 8-10.

Above: The WPA and the National Youth Administration (NYA) restored the Frederick Douglass house and grounds. Today, the home is a National Historic Site. Photo by Brent McKee, 2019.

Above: Young men in the NYA restore Frederick Douglass's "Growlery," a small private study room behind Douglass's house. These men also attended a vocational school to learn these types of trades and skills. Photo from the National Archives.

Above: The Growlery today. Photo by Brent McKee, 2019.

Above: A brochure from the city of San Antonio, Texas, printed sometime between 1949 and 1953, promoting travel to La Villita, a historic village restored by the NYA. Image scanned from a personal copy.

Above: A section from inside the brochure, acknowledging the NYA's work.

Above: In Restoring America (University of Massachusetts Press, 2025), Stephanie Gray provides an overview of the historic preservation movement before and during the New Deal, and then examines four instances of New Deal preservation, including the NYA's restoration of La Villita (also shown on the cover of the book). Image scanned from a personal copy.

Above: The description for this photograph, taken between 1933 and 1941, reads: "The Palace of Fine Arts, a memorial of San Francisco's 1915 Exposition. PWA [the New Deal's Public Works Administration] funds renovated and restored this fine building." Photo from the National Archives.

Above: A close-up view of a section of the previous photo, showing some of the amazing and intricate artwork.

Above: Shoppers at the French Market in New Orleans, ca. 1938. The PWA provided funding for both improvements and historic preservation at the market: "PWA made a loan of $300,000 to a nonprofit association which operates the market and by 1938 the rehabilitation of the historic old buildings was complete. The buildings were strengthened and extended, sanitary floors installed, and other improvements, including sheds for the long lines of trucks which appear at the market every morning  before dawn, were made but the original lines of the buildings have been kept intact" (Public Works Administration: America Builds: The Record of PWA, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939, pp. 203-204). Photo from the National Archives.

The New Deal's Patriotic Preservation of Historic Structures

As with several other types of projects, e.g., zoos and museums, complete statistics for the New Deal's preservation of historic structures are hard to find. They were either not well-recorded, not well-preserved, or they're not easily-accessible (e.g., buried in a repository somewhere, in hard-copy or perhaps microfilm format only). They may have been lumped into more general categories, such as "Other" public buildings (see pp. 52 and 131 of the WPA's final report). The CCC seems to be the only agency that reported a precise number - 3,980 "Restoration[s] of historic structures" (p. 107 of Director James McEntee's final report).

Author and historian Stephanie Gray reports "During the WPA's existence (1935 to 1943), the agency ultimately funded nearly two hundred architectural restorations... (see Restoring America, 4 images above, p. 7). Presumably, these 200 restorations often involved multiple structures on the same site. 

From these two statistics we can say (at the very least) that the New Deal restored over 4,000 historic structures. These restorations ranged from simple sheds to battlefield fortifications to historic homes to ancient ruins. More importantly, these restorations--along with all the other massive New Deal preservation activities (e.g., HABS; government and vital record surveys; cemetery improvements and headstone documentation; history publications; protective legislation; the recording of folk music and American designs; oral histories; the construction and repair of museums; the installation of historic markers and monuments; and the establishment and expansion of the National Archives)--highlight how patriotic the New Deal was. FDR, his administrators, and the local communities that took advantage of New Deal opportunities, were supremely concerned about preserving our national and local heritage. Other governmental efforts to record and preserve American history--though important and significant--pale in comparison.