New Deal New York City Annual Reports

Frank da Cruz, Bronx NY, May 2018
Most recent update: Mon Jun 4 14:00:22 2018
There is, at present, no single source that lists all the projects that were carried out in New York City with federal assistance (funds, design, engineering, and/or labor) during the New Deal, 1934-1943. There are, however, some broad-brush summaries for certain years or periods that give an idea of the massive scope of expenditures and the work.

Here is a short table of the ones I've located so far. Most of these are for the WPA, and therefore do not show the significant contributions of other agencies such as CWA, PWA, RFC, Treasury Department, etc. Finding and consolidating all the reports from all the agencies would be a daunting task. In general, these reports only give totals of things — schools or ships or bridges built, miles of highway or sewers constructed, dollars spent — rather than listing specific projects.

Period Report Author Comments
1933 to 1936 Public Works of the Navy, US Government Printing Office, Washington DC, Bulletins 38 and 39, May and June 1937. Commander R.D. Spalding, US Navy Survey of New Deal assistance to the Navy 1933-36 nationwide, including details for Brooklyn Navy Yard. Link is to a Hathi Trust document that includes both bulletins.
1934 to mid-1937 WPA Administrator Here Reviews Expenditure of $409,195,154 Federal Funds Brehon Somervell, NYC WPA Administrator, report to Harry Hopkins, July 27, 1937, printed in the New York Times, 16 August 1937. A full-page 8-column article. Also includes projects by other New Deal agencies such as CWA.
FY 1936-37 Administration of work relief in the city of New York, August 1936 - December 1937 / Works Progress Administration for the City of New York Brehon Somervell Princeton University Library holding; Not online as far as I can tell.
FY 1937-38 WPA Projects in New York City, 1 July 1938 - 30 June 1939 Brehon Somervell NYC Parks Department Press Release, 16 August 1939.
1939 The Record for 1939 in New York City Brehon Somervell Archived at Hathi Trust.
1934-1939 Public Works Administration Dockets for New York City US Public Works Administration Scanned from paper at the US National Archives by Evan Kalish [see scans] and transcribed by me.
1934-1939 America Builds, the Record of the PWA Harold L. Ickes. US Government Printing Office, Washington DC (1939), 298 pages. Summary of the accomplishments of the Public Works Administration; has sections on New York City.
1935-1943 Final Report on the WPA Program 1935-1943. The Works Progress Administration. US Federal Works Agency, Government Printing Office (1947), 145 pages. Link is online version at Hathi Trust. Contains only one relevant table, reproduced below.
1933-1943 Nationwide Context, Inventory, and Heritage Assessment of Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps Resources on Department of Defense Installations US Department of Defense Survey 2009 Archived locally, see table of NYC WPA projects

Brehon Somervell was an Army Colonel, and later a General. He served as New York City CWA and then WPA Administrator from 1934 to 1940, at which time he returned to active duty in the Army and served in World War II. Harold L. Ickes was US Secretary of the Interior in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, responsible for (among other things) the PWA.

The Final Report on the WPA Program includes one table showing numbers of certain work activities in New York City. It's the only place in the report where data is given for New York City rather than the state as a whole. Thanks to Brent McKee at Living New Deal for pointing out this table.

Table XVII - Selected Activites on WPA Service Program (1934-43) (entry for New York City)