Notable New Deal Projects in New York City
Frank da Cruz, Bronx NY
Last update:
Tue Jul 26 07:38:21 2022
This page was written in 2015 as a starting point
for the Living New
Deal NYC New
Deal Map, which appeared in April 2017.
“What would be the 20 or 30 most significant New Deal Projects in New
York City?”. Obviously a matter of taste and opinion, especially when
there are so many to choose from — more than 1000 at last count. And by what
criteria? Most famous? Most beautiful? Most used? Most ambitious? Most
expensive? Most influential? Most typical of a certain style? Employed
the most people? Is the list fair to all boroughs? Any selection is bound
to be arbitrary, and furthermore is complicated by deliberate measures taken
by Robert Moses to obscure the New Deal connections of many of
them, which I have tried to untangle (e.g. for
the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge). Here are my
nominations:
The first group I researched, documented, and photographed myself
(click each link):
Project and Link
| Borough
| Attraction
|
Central Park
| Manhattan
| The Jewel of Manhattan: New Deal projects include
the Zoo, Tavern on the Green,
Conservatory Garden,
Great Lawn, North Meadow,
Harlem Meer, 23 playgrounds, various statues;
see table.
|
Bryant Park
| Manhattan
| Jewel #2 of Manhattan, completely redesigned and rebuilt by the CWA in
1934.
|
Riverside Park
| Manhattan
| (and the 79th Street Boat Basin) Six miles of greenery and playgrounds
along the Hudson River, a 7-year project of the PWA, CWA, and WPA.
|
The Triborough (RFK) Bridge
| Queens, Manhattan, Bronx
| One of the New Deal's largest Projects nationwide, connecting three of
NYC's five boroughs, serving more than a million vehicles daily.
|
Orchard Beach
| Bronx
| The Bronx Riviera: created by the WPA.
|
Eleven WPA Swimming Pools
| All five boroughs
| 100% WPA, all in one year (1936). So far I have photographed
the Crotona,
Astoria,
Colonial
(Jackie Robinson), and Highbridge pools.
|
Henry Hudson Parkway and Bridge
| Manhattan-Bronx
| A major artery of Manhattan and the Bronx
|
Brooklyn Navy Yard
| Brooklyn
| Almost completely reconstructed by the New Deal during the runup
to World War II.
|
Williamsbridge Oval Park
| Bronx
| 100% WPA; See history,
prototypical WPA park, emblematic of hundreds of WPA neighborhood
parks and playgrounds in NYC. But this one wasn't just "improved"
by the WPA, it was created, top to bottom. And the recreation
center building is absolutely classic WPA style.
|
Bronx County Courthouse
| Bronx
| Architecture, sculptures. The provenance of this one is a little iffy,
but since an official NYC
government page says it was constructed with New Deal public funds,
I think it's OK. Plus it is a beautiful building.
|
The Bronx General Post Office
| Bronx
| Architecture, sculptures, murals, recently privatized.
|
The Bronx-Whitestone Bridge
| Bronx, Queens
| Has been called the world's most beautiful bridge.
|
Randall's Island
| Manhattan
| An oasis in the middle of New York City.
Its historic WPA NYC Municipal Stadium there was torn down
in 2002, but numerous New Deal baseball fields and infrastructure
(including a waste treatment plant) remain.
|
SUNY Maritime College
| Bronx
| The WPA converted Fort Schuyler into
the USA's first nautical academy.
|
DeWitt Clinton High School Murals
| Bronx
| A monumental WPA mural depicting the history of the world beneath the
cosmos. In the news in 2018
when part of the mural was
painted over.
|
Hillside Homes
| Bronx
| One of the first subsidized middle-income housing projects in the country,
financed by the PWA.
|
The second group I researched and documented here on this page,
just below these tables, but haven't
photographed yet.
|
Project and Link
| Borough
| Attraction
|
La Guardia Airport
| Queens
| 100% WPA, NYC's first commercial airport. The Marine Air Terminal is
the only surviving New Deal piece.
|
11 WPA swimming pools
| All
| (I still haven't photographed 7 of them)
|
The third group I haven't photographed or researched or documented except to
get minimal verification that each is, indeed, a New Deal project:
|
Project
| Borough
| New Deal verification
|
Manhattan Criminal Courthouse
| Manhattan
| Living
New Deal. "The Tombs" at 100 Centre Street
|
Federal Office Building 90 Church Street
| Manhattan
| Living
New Deal
|
Lincoln Tunnel
| Manhattan-NJ
| Short[1], p.546
|
Queens-Midtown Tunnel
| Manhattan-Queens
| Leighninger[2], p.86
|
East River (FDR) Drive
| Manhattan
| Leighninger[2], p.86
|
8th Avenue IND Subway Line
| Manhattan
| Leighninger[2], p.86.
Also
the Sixth
Avenue Line, the Fulton Street Line, and the IND Queens Branch
(at Living New Deal, search "New
York City Subway").
|
Canal Street Station Post Office
| Manhattan
| Living
New Deal. One of the few New Deal NYC post offices in Moderne style.
National Register Reference number 88002358. This would be my pick to stand
for all the New Deal post offices in the City. Other links:
A,
B,
C.
|
First Houses
| Manhattan
| Living
New Deal. On the Lower East Side. The USA's
first low-income public housing project
(see Landmarks Preservation document).
|
Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel | Manhattan-Brooklyn | Encyclopedia
of Bridges and Tunnels,
Living
New Deal.
|
Brooklyn College
| Brooklyn
| Short[1], p.280
|
Franklin K. Lane High School
| Brooklyn
| Living
New Deal. I think this is the most impressive surviving NYC
New Deal school, even though (like almost every other big NYC school) it has
now been chopped up into charter schools.
|
Belt Parkway
| Brooklyn-Queens
| Living
New Deal
|
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
| Queens
| Living
New Deal (created for the 1939 World's Fair).
|
Jacob Riis Park
| Queens
| Living
New Deal.
|
Boulevard Gardens Apartments
| Queens
| Living
New Deal. A complex of 10 six-story buildings with a total of 960
apartments for low-income families.
|
Staten Island Technical High School
| Staten Island
| Living
New Deal
|
Staten Island Zoo
| Staten Island
| Living
New Deal
|
US Marine Hospital
| Staten Island
| Living
New Deal (now Bayley Seton campus of Richmond University Medical Center).
|
References:
- Short, C.W., and R. Stanley Brown, Public Buildings, A Survey of Architecture of Projects Constructed by
Federal and Other Governmental Bodies between the Years 1933 and 1939 with
the Assistance of the Public Works Administration, United States Government
Printing Office, Washington (1939).
- Leighninger, Robert D. Jr., Long Range Public Investment, University of South Carolina Press (2007).
Central Park
Although Central Park was created in the 1850s from plans by Frederick Law
Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, many of the features we see there today are New
Deal projects:
- Renovation of the entirety of Central Park in 1934, thousands of men
working in three shifts around the clock in all weather on the construction
of walls, new park entrances; removal of dead trees; plowing, seeding,
planting, pruning, landscaping; installing footpaths and trails, drinking
fountains, drainage, lighting, plus standardized benches, wastebaskets, and
fences to be used throughout the Parks system. [1] [2,pp.368-372] [3].
- The Central Park Zoo.
In 1934, the original Central Park Menagerie, which was just wooden sheds
and some cages, was torn down and replaced by nine brick and concrete
buildings and with landscaping and seal pool, designed by CWA-paid Parks
Department architects [11] [12] [15,p.352], the materials paid for by the
CWA [2,pp.383-385], and the labor also[3]. The Zoo was renovated in 1988;
this page shows the the
original parts that still remain, including two buildings and the Dancing
Bear and Dancing Goat statues by Frederick Roth[13], plus numerous friezes.
By the way, the Delacorte
Clock, which was added in 1965... one of its designers was Edward Coe
Embury, son of lead architect Aymar Embury, who designed the 1934 Zoo and
hundreds of other WPA projects.
- The
Great Lawn, previous site of the Lower Reservoir that had been
drained and in the early 1930s was a "Hooverville" of people left unemployed
and homeless by the Great Depression.[3]
- Destruction of the Central Park Casino, an exclusive club for the rich
and powerful[2,pp.397-401], and conversion of the Sheep Fold (a fancy sheep
barn; real sheep used to graze on the Sheep Meadow) into Tavern On The
Green, a moderately-priced public restaurant for ordinary people.[3]
- Design and construction of the Conservatory Garden at 105th
Street and Fifth Avenue[6].
- 21 new playgrounds and numerous baseball fields[1].
Previously Heckscher Playground was the only playground in the whole park,
and it was remodeled in 1935[7].
- Reconstruction of the entire Harlem
Meer area; construction of the promenade around the lake and of the
Harlem Meer boathouse (now the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center) [8].
- The Mother
Goose statue statue by FrederickRoth[13], plus refurbishing and
remounting of the Still Hunt (crouching panther) statue by Edward Kemeys[9].
- WPA murals in the lobby of the Arsenal[14], and renovation of the
Arsenal itself (prior to Moses' appointment, when the five borough parks
departments were consolidated into a single one, and the Arsenal was chosen
as its headquarters, remodeled by CWA and TERA workers already on hand before
Moses signed on)[17].
- The Sophie Loeb
Fountain by Frederick Roth, originally in Heckscher Park, later moved to
the Levin Plaground in Central Park (near the "other" Alice in Wonderland
statue).
References:
- Rosenzweig, Roy, and Elizabeth Blackmar,
The Park and the People: A History of Central Park, Cornell University Press
(1992) [website].
- Caro, Robert A., The Power Broker - Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Vintage Books (1974).
- The
Report of the Department of Parks to August 1934: Memorandum on 1935
Budget Request of the Department of Parks, NYC Department of Parks archive.
“Since January 19th of this of year the Department of Parks has spent
$26,000,000.00 on new construction from Work Relief funds ... New
construction projects include ... Complete new zoos will be finished in
Central Park... The sheepfold in Central Park has been converted into a
modern tavern ... The lower reservoir area in Central Park will be rebuilt
and opened to the public...”
- Central
Park Zoo at the NYC Parks Department website, gallery of pictures and
some information (incorrectly identifies the WPA as the New Deal Agency
that built the new Zoo in 1934; in fact it was the CWA).
- Moses, Robert, Memorandum on
Organization of Work Relief Projects under the Supervision of the Department
of Parks, NYC Parks Department press release, October 29, 1934.
- Williams, Mason B. City of Ambition, W.W. Norton & Company (2013): ”Using WPA labor,
the Parks Department built ... Central Park's Conservatory Gardens...”.
- NYC Parks Department press releases
of March 24, 1935 and December 30,
1936 (Heckscher Playground).
- NYC Parks Department press release,
March 13, 1943 (Harlem Meer).
- Still
Hunt History, NYC Parks Department website.
- WPA
Does Its Bit to Make Central Park a Hodgepodge,
Chicago Daily Tribune, March 21, 1939, p.10.
- Aymar
Embury, Wikepedia. He was the chief or consulting architect for the
Central Park and Prospect Zoos, the Prospect Park Bandshell, the Corona Park
Pool and Bathhouse (and three others), the New York Pavilion at the 1939
World's Fair (now the Queens Museum of Art) and the Argentine Pavilion, the
Triborough Bridge, the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the
Little Hell Gate Bridge, Orchard Beach, Bryant Park, the Hofstra University
campus, Jacob Riis Park, and nobody even knows how many more New
Deal projects.
- Aymar
Embury II Papers, Syracuse University.
- Central
Park: Mother Goose, NYC Parks Department website: "In 1934, Roth was
hired through the Works Progress Administration as the chief sculptor for
Parks. In that year, the new Central Park Zoo opened, and Roth oversaw a
team of artisans who carved the limestone animal reliefs that adorn the
animal houses. The following year the same team worked on the sculptural
embellishments for the Prospect Park Zoo, and in 1936 Roth completed the
granite statues of figures from Alice in Wonderland which stand at the
center of the Sophie Irene Loeb fountain in Central Park's James Michael
Levin Playground. In the spring of 1937 Roth's Dancing Goat
and Dancing Bear sculptures
were placed in basins which flanked Kelly's Cafeteria at the western
terrace of the Central Park Zoo, and now stand in niches near the north and
south entrances to the zoo.
- Central
Park: Mother Goose, NYC Parks Department website: "In 1934, Roth was
hired through the Works Progress Administration as the chief sculptor for
Parks. In that year, the new Central Park Zoo opened, and Roth oversaw a
team of artisans who carved the limestone animal reliefs that adorn the
animal houses. The following year the same team worked on the sculptural
embellishments for the Prospect Park Zoo, and in 1936 Roth completed the
granite statues of figures from Alice in Wonderland which stand at the
center of the Sophie Irene Loeb fountain in Central Park's James Michael
Levin Playground.
In the spring of 1937 Roth's Dancing Goat and Dancing Bear sculptures
were placed in basins which flanked Kelly's Cafeteria at the western
terrace of the Central Park Zoo, and now stand in niches near the north and
south entrances to the zoo.
- The
Arsenal at the NYC Parks Department Website.
- Federal Writers' Project, The WPA Guide to New York City, Random House (1939).
- Robert
Moses and the Modern Park System (1929-1965),
timeline, NYC Parks Department website.
- Thomas
Jefferson Play Center, Landmarks Preservation Commission, July 24, 2007
Designation List 394 LP-2236: ”When Moses took over the Parks
Department, it was already employing 69,000 relief workers funded mainly by
the federal Civil Works Administration (CWA) and the Temporary Emergency
Relief Administration (TERA).”
- History
of the Arsenal, New York City Parks Department website. ”Having
served off and on as the borough park offices, the Arsenal underwent another
complete renovation in 1934 as the first and only headquarters of a citywide
unified Parks Department. From his command posts at the Arsenal and at
Randall's Island, Commissioner Robert Moses set about directing an
unprecedented expansion of the parks system and the modernization of New
York City's public facilities. In 1935-36 the Arsenal lobby murals were
painted under the direction of Allen Saalburg. Saalburg depicted a series of
scenes depicting recreational activities, notable park structures, and
flagship parks. The project was funded by the Federal Works Progress
Administration. Also at this time, a new entryway was designed for the front
of the Arsenal, including military drums over the doorway and cast-iron
musket replicas as supports for the banisters.”
- The 1934 Zoo
at cpzbook.com/.
Riverside and Fort Washington Parks
Riverside Park Construction 1934.
Photo: NYC Parks Department Archive.
Click to enlarge.
|
Prior to the New Deal, the New York Central Railroad ran along the Hudson
River on the west side of Manhattan, not only cutting residents off from the
river, but also spewing coal smoke and soot into the residential areas. A
project was launched in 1929 to bury the railroad tracks under parkland but
it never got off the ground due to lack of funding, and by 1934 what we know
as Riverside Park today was a "wasteland ..." stretching from 72nd Street to
181st Street ... "a vast low-lying mass of dirt of and mud ... unpainted,
rusting, jagged wire fences along the tracks barred the city from its
waterfront; in the whole six miles, there were exactly three bridges on
which the tracks could be crossed, and they let only to private boating
clubs ... [a] stench [hung] over Riverside Drive endlessly after each
passage of a train carrying south to the slaughterhouses ... carload after
carload of cattle and pigs..."[1, pp. 65-67] Plus "fifty-two shacks
comprising the veterans' camp between 72nd and 79th Street ... [and]
eighty-three other shacks along Riverside Drive on the Hudson River
... [plus] a reinforced coal hopper at the foot of 96th Street... [plus] old
docks [plus] eleven shacks built around the piling tinder [at] the dock at
96th Street ... these wharf dwellers are literally clinging to the
underpinnings of the rotting dock structure"[2].
West Side Improvement 1937.
Photo: NYC Parks Department Archive. Click to enlarge.
|
In 1934 Robert Moses launched the West Side Improvement Project to create
from this a mess a 5½-mile-long park, an express highway, and two
boat basins. He obtained funding from “many sources ... Governor
Lehman approved a loan of grade-crossing-elimination money to the New York
Central. Federal, state, and City grade-crossing moneys, City street and
park funds raised by assessment, railroad funds, money obtained through the
sale of bonds of a municipal authority, Federal and state highway money and
relief funds were also included.”[3] Moses is (as always) deliberately
vague about the funding, and doesn't even mention the labor. But this was a
massive work project and Moses commanded an army of as many as 80,000 relief
workers during this period: if they didn't build it, who did?
Robert Caro, as usual, to the rescue [1,pp.526-540]: Moses calculated
that he had to find $109 million for the project, and Caro recounts how he
did it; it's the kind of feat only Moses could pull off and Caro's pages are
worth a read if you want to make your head spin. But as far as New Deal
alphabet soup is concerned, Moses characterized the 79th Street Boat Basin as a
"grade crossing elimination" and received $1,7660,000 for the materials from
a PWA fund designated for that purpose, and then since he had the materials
covered, the CWA gave him $3,000,000 to pay for labor, and then on the
strength of that another $20,000,000 for labor to build the rest of
Riverside Park, because the Henry Hudson Parkway was in it and Moses told
them it was a "park access road". Or maybe it was $30,000,000, it's hard to
tell but who's counting.
Today Riverside and Fort Washington Parks are an essential fixture of
Manhattan's West Side. They include not only parkland, but a mall
overlooking the Hudson River; baseball, football, and soccer fields,
playgrounds, sprinklers, wading pools, running tracks, volleyball courts,
tennis courts, bicycle paths, skate parks, and boat basins. It's really one
big long park from 72nd Street to 181st Street, but there is an invisible
boundary at 155th Street with Riverside Park to the south and Fort
Washington Park to the north (where the Dominican population of Washington
Heights stages massive cookout parties every weekend during the summer).
References:
- Caro, Robert A., The Power Broker - Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Vintage Books (1974).
- NYC Parks Dept press release
of April 27, 1934.
- Moses, Robert, Public Works, McGraw Hill (1970), p.183-188.
- NYC Parks Dept press release archive for
July-December 1934: numerous documents regarding the Columbia University
Yacht Club in Riverside Park, which Moses demolished.
- The
Columbia Yacht Club (gallery), Tours by Gary at
blogspot.com.
- NYC Parks Dept press release of July
31, 1934, "West Side Improvement", the first phase of the construction
of Riverside Park, which states that after the retaining walls for the
railroad are built, "it will be possible to proceed with the landscaping
work wilth relief labor."
- NYC Parks Dept press release of
April 27, 1934, announcing commencement of work on the extension of
Riverside Park along the west side of the New York Central Railroad tracks
as part of the West Side Improvement Project using relief labor.
- NYC Parks Dept press release of
October 11, 1937, announcing the opening of the West Side Improvement
in Riverside and Fort Washington Parks, a $24,340,000 project.
- NYC Parks Dept press release of
March 2, 1940, announcing the opening of the 79th Street
Boat Basin.
- Riverside
Park Construction 1934-37 (gallery), New York City Department of Records
at
nycma.lunaimaging.com.
- Klein, Milton M., The Empire State: A History of New York, Cornell University Press (2005).
"...and [Moses] strung together federal and state grants for New York
State's largest public work, the $205 million West Side Improvement which
extended Riverside Park over the New York Central Tracks and built the Henry
Hudson Parkway to connect with the Saw Mill River Parkway." (Obviously
there were cost overruns after his original $109 million estimate.)
- New York City Parks
Department press release, July 15, 1941, Hudson River overlook
at 149-150 Street "which was built by the Works Projects
Administration".
WPA Swimming Pools
April 2022:
New Signage for NYC's 11 1936 WPA Pools
Eleven enormous public swimming pools with magnificent full-service
bathhouses opened in July and August 1936.
These were 100% WPA projects, soup to nuts, all new and original,
paid for by a $10,000,000 WPA grant. With innovations such as filtered,
treated, temperature-controlled recirculating water, underwater floodlights
and above-deck illumination, showers, and sanitary foot baths, these pools
set the standard for decades to come, and they were an extremely welcome
addition to the urban landscape at a time when hardly anybody had air
conditioning. Furthermore, free diving and swimming lessons were given in
each pool. Together the new pools had a capacity of about 50,000 people.
In the off-season, they served as skating rinks or game courts, and the
bathhouses as gymnasiums. The project was headed by Aymar Embury, the chief
architect of the NYC Parks Department, paid by the New Deal (the PWA at
first and then other agencies). Embury also designed four of the pools
personally: Astoria, Colonial, Crotona, Sunset. The Astoria pool was the
site of the 1936 Olympics Trials for the US swimming and diving teams.
Date
| Borough
| Original name
| Location or new name
|
24 Jun 1936
| Manhattan
| Hamilton Fish Swimming Pool
| E. Houston St and Avenue C
|
24 Jun 1936
| Manhattan
| Thomas Jefferson Swimming Pool
| East 111th Street and First Avenue
|
24 Jun 1936
| Brooklyn
| Red Hook Pool
| Bay Street, Henry and Clinton Streets
|
1 Jul 1936
| Queens
| Astoria Swimming Pool (see gallery)
| Hoyt and Ditmars Avenues
|
5 Jul 1936
| Richmond
| Tompkinsville Swimming Pool
| Lyons Pool
|
13 Jul 1936
| Manhattan
| Highbridge Swimming Pool in Highbridge Park
(see gallery)
| 173rd St & Amsterdam Ave
|
19 Jul 1936
| Brooklyn
| Sunset Swimming Pool in Sunset Park
| 7th Ave & 41-44rd St
|
23 Jul 1936
| Bronx
| Crotona Park Swimming Pool (see gallery)
| Crotona Park
|
30 Jul 1936
| Brooklyn
| McCarren Park Swimming Pool in Greenpoint
| Lorimer and Bayard Streets
|
5 Aug 1936
| Brooklyn
| Betsy Head Swimming Pool in Brownsville
| Dumont Ave & Boyland St
|
7 Aug 1936
| Manhattan
| Colonial Swimming Pool, Bradhurst Park, Harlem
(see gallery)
| Jackie Robinson Pool
|
References:
- New York City Parks Department Press Release
Archive for 1936 (the dates in the table above are links to specific
press releases).
- Gutman, Marta, Race,
Place, and Play: Robert Moses and the WPA Swimming Pools in New York
City, City College of the City University of New York, JSAH 67:4,
December 2008.
- Caro, Robert A., The Power Broker - Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Vintage Books (1974), pp. 456-457, 512-513.
- Commission
Grants Landmark Status to Three More Parks Department Swimming Pools,
NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission press release, July 24, 2007.
- Lowry, Richard, Astoria
Park Pool and Play Center, August 2012, at docomo-us.org.
- Aymar Embury,
Wikipedia.
- Parks' Swimming
Pools (section WPA-Era Pools), NYC Parks Department website.
- Astoria Park: Astoria
Pool, NYC Parks Department website.
- 10
Play Centers: Testimony before the Landmarks Preservation Commission,
Designation Hearing, April 3, 1990. “Any discussion of the WPA pools
has to begin by noting the sheer scale of the undertaking-not one but eleven
public pools, each of them enormous and each not merely a pool but an entire
complex of buildings and public spaces. For such a program there was no
precedent anywhere in the country. Moses' idea, which emerged during the
height of the Depression, was both socially and technologically
innovative. Using Works Progress Administration (WPA) funding, Parks
Commissioner Moses was able to secure $10 million for the pool complexes. To
keep costs down, they were set in existing parkland. To complete this
enormous design and construction project in a remarkably short period of
time, Moses recruited hundreds of professionals — architects, landscape
architects, engineers, urban planners, and artists — from the relief
roles. Begun in 1934, the play centers were completed in 1936.”
- Betsy
Head Play Center, NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission,
Designation List 405 LP-2240.
- Crotona
Play Center Bath House Interior Center, NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, Designation List 393 LP-2233.
-
Highbridge Play Center, NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission,
Designation List 395 LP-2237.
- Thomas
Jefferson Play Center, NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, July 24, 2007
Designation List 394 LP-2236.
- Shattuck, Kathryn,
Big
Chill of '36: Show Celebrates Giant Depression-Era Pools That Cool,
New York Times, 14 August 2006.
- Aronson, Michael,
Once,
New York dared to be great: 75 years ago, the city opened 11 giant pools in
one summer, New York Daily News, August 14, 2011.
La Guardia Airport and the Marine Air Terminal
La Guardia Airport was York City's first commercial airport and
when it opened on December 2, 1939, the nation's most modern commercial
aviation complex. It was a 100% WPA project and one of its largest ever
[1,pp.2,439-442].
From the Federal Writers' Project, WPA Guide to New York City, p.567 (written shortly before opening day):
NORTH BEACH AIRPORT. Grand Central Parkway and Ninety-fourth Street,
scheduled for opening in the summer of 1939, is New York's second
municipal airport -- Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn is the first --
and the most important land- and seaplane terminal in the East.
Situated on a 432-acre tract projecting into the East River between
Bowery and Flushing Bays, the field is only twenty minutes ride, by
way of Grand Central Parkway and Triborough Bridge, from mid-town
Manhattan.
The seaplane division is designed to accommodate regular
transatlantic airplane travel and will be used by Pan American
Airways, Air France Transatlantique, Imperial Airways, Royal Dutch,
and Deutsche Lufthansa. Its facilities will eventually include two
hangars holding twelve to fourteen planes; a marine traffic terminal
connecting with the hangars by tunnel; an administration building
containing waiting and baggage rooms, and offices for navigation,
flight control, health, customs, and immigration; and a platform
ramp on Flushing Bay for landing passengers.
The landplane field will be used as the eastern terminus for the
planes of the Transcontinental and Western, the American, the
United, and the Eastern air lines, replacing Newark Airport in this
respect. Its facilities will comprise four concrete runways
measuring 4,688, 4,168, 3,900, and 3,532 feet, unobstructed runway
approaches of several hundred feet, and an administration building
flanked by six hangars.
The cost of the airport is estimated at $22,000,000, of which 70 per
cent will be borne by WPA. Work was begun early in 1938.
The "landplane field" is what we now call La Guardia (or LaGuardia) Airport,
the seaplane division is what we now call
Marine Air Terminal. They were a
single project at the time, although now they are considered sort of
separate. For example, if you take a taxi you have to say either La Guardia
or Marine Air Terminal; they have different exits on the Grand Central
Parkway.
Mason Williams, in City of Ambition (2013), writes:
Despite its relatively light use of capital, the WPA made a considerable
contribution to the city's economic development — above all in the
construction of La Guardia Airport, which connected New York not simply to
the metropolitan area and to the surrounding regions but to other world
cities ... Roosevelt gave his full support to the project ... eventually the
cost would rise to $40 million, of which the WPA contributed $27 million ...
and New York became ... one of the world's air traffic centers.
From Edward Lawson, ”WPAirports”,
Flying Magazine,
Vol.16, No.4, April 1940 [read the whole article
here
as long as the link lasts]:
Believe it or not ... WPA workers have built at least 160 brand new airports
since 1934, extended or improved at least 500 others and set up field
lighting standards and boundary lights by the thousands ... When the
Depression came along, the need for larger airports was already apparent.
But nothing was done about it and, as years went by and the number of
scheduled airlines increased, it became pretty clear that unless the
Government helped to develop ground facilities, aviation as a whole would be
seriously retarded. So the WPA stepped in — where both fools and
angels feared to tread — and did a job in four years that othewise
might have required from 14 to 24 ... Every airport touched by WPA's
miracle-working shovel leaners is publicly owned and will be available
should a national emergency arise ... To build New York's tremendous new
LaGuardia Airport they transported 14,000,000 cubic yards of fill across
Long Island Sound by means of trucks which traveled across a temporary
bridge span at the rate rate of one every nine seconds. They increased a
landing surface, originally only 100 acres in area, five times by extending
it into Flushing Bay. They built four asphalt runways for landplanes, a
vast seaplane base for clipper ships, two administration buildings and
seven hangars. Constructed under a constant fire fire of criticism, in
adverse weather part of the time, with some actual sabotaging and always
under the lash of necessity to get it finished in a hurry, this mammoth
field already has been adjudged by the pilots [of] American Air Lines and
Transcontinental and Western Air — who use it daily — as one of
the safest in the United states ... [It] became the WPA's biggest and most
outstanding project.
As of Spring 1939 the project employed more than 20,000 workers[1,p.31].
The Marine Air Terminal contains the largest WPA mural of all time, called
Flight, completed in 1942. It was completely painted over by the
Port Authority of NY and NJ in the 1950s during the Red Scare, but was
restored in 1980 and in 1995 the building was declared a historic
landmark[4]. In the XXI Century, LaGuardia Airport has been the subject of
much dirision and ridicule, and on July 27, 2015, Governor Cuomo announced
it would be torn down and replaced by a whole new airport. The main
buildings all date from the 1980s and 90s. “The Marine Air Terminal
[The building itself] is a designated New York City landmark so it seems
unlikely that it will literally be torn down.”[5]
Other references:
- Report on Progress of the WPA Program,
Federal Works Agency, Works Progress Administration, June 30, 1940, pp.29-31.
- Taylor, Nick, American Made, Bantam (2008).
- LaGuardia
Airport's Mural Has a Secret Communist Message, Business Insider,
Dec 1, 2010.
- LaGuardia
Airport, Wikipedia (accessed on 18 July 2015).
- $4
Billion Plan To Completely Rebuild LaGuardia Includes A Ferry Terminal,
The Gothamist, July 27, 2015.