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].