Williamsbridge Oval construction about 1936, with Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers, trucks, cranes, and shacks. The photo looks northeast along Reservoir Oval West between East 208th Street and Wayne Avenue. You can make out the banks, the promenades, the tennis courts, the athletic field with cinder quarter-mile track around it to the right, and the baby trees newly planted which are now huge. For more Oval Park history, click here. Oval Park was one of countless projects sponsored by the federal government during Great Depression to provide jobs for the unemployed. About 400 parks and playgrounds in NYC were created, rehabilitated, or improved by the WPA.