Works Progress Administration (WPA) Sites

Selected USA Works Progress Administration (WPA) Sites

Give a man a dole, and you save his body and destroy his spirit.
Give him a job and you save both body and spirit.
Harry Hopkins, WPA Administrator

The early years of the Great Depression saw one in four Americans without work and economic activity nearly halved. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) created under the Roosevelt administration hired more than 8.5 million people to work on 1.4 million projects. Nearly a century later, over 15,000 sites remain and many still operate, including schools, government facilities, parks, and murals.

These images comprise a documentary survey of selected extant and abandoned WPA sites in different parts of the United States. Of course, these images constitute a very small sample of WPA sites. The intent of this project is to illustrate at least two benefits, namely, near-term job creation that helped people back then, and the longer-term transformation of place evident today.