Photo: LOC LC-H22- D-1770
Draftsmen, engineers, architects working at the Brooklyn Navy
Yard, June 23, 1937. They might very well be on the WPA payroll[
4]
Caption from Library of Congress: "Rush plans for new
U.S. Battleships. Washington, D.C., June 23. Scene in Construction and
Repair Division of the U.S. Navy Department where plans for the two new
35,000 ton battleships are being rushed to completion. Work on the ships
will get underway in four to six months, Charles Edison, Assistant Secretary
of the Navy, announced. One will be built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the
other at Philadelphia, 6/23/37."
New York Times, 22 Dec 1940,
p.27: "As evidence of the efficiency of a special WPA training program
intended to create a reservoir of draftsmen for national defense ... more
than 200 former relief workers were employed as full-time draftsmen and
tracers at the Navy Yard in Brooklyn". The Brooklyn Navy Yard housed the
Navy's Central Drafting Office from 1929 to 1937, which had responsibility
for designing all of the Navy's surface fleet except for aircraft carriers:
Four battleships, 11 cruisers, and more than 50 destroyers were designed at
BNY during this period[14,p.75].