Carrizozo Women's Club

Built by the WPA in 1939

Estella García

(Wikipedia) Estella R. Garcia was an American artist who was a part of the Federal Art Project. Garcia was a teacher at the Melrose Federal Art Center in Melrose, New Mexico where she taught colcha, a traditional form of wool embroidery, to both Hispanic and Anglo students. The facility was considered to be located in the smallest town to have such a federal art center. Continued

Causey School

The school in Causey, New Mexico, built by the WPA, back when
the homesteads were smaller and the families larger, sits abandoned.

Tankhouse: Nara Visa

I'm guessing this unusual design was the work of the WPA.
It sits on the old Nara Visa School grounds.

Trementina School

Trementina, New Mexico

The WPA

Wheatland School was completed by the WPA in 1939.

(Wikipedia) The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was the largest and most ambitious American New Deal agency, employing millions of people (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. In a much smaller project, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.
Almost every community in the United States had a new park, bridge or school constructed by the agency. The WPA's initial appropriation in 1935 was for $4.9 billion (about 6.7 percent of the 1935 GDP). Continued

Wheatland School

Wheatland School was completed by the WPA in 1939.

New Mexico’s New Deal legacy gets second look

Sidewalk built by the WPA in Tucumcari.

(Albuquerque Journal) Amid the misery of the Great Depression, Rupert Lopez gratefully worked for $1 a day for the Civilian Conservation Corps, making adobe-block walls for a new regional National Park Service administration building in Santa Fe.
The 100th anniversary of the National Park Service is igniting new interest in the majestic Spanish pueblo-themed building that Lopez and other “CCC boys” built, along with other remote cabins, furniture and artwork of the 1930s that transformed and popularized national and state parks while putting millions of impoverished Americans back to work. Continued

A Small Monument to a Job Well Done

 

If you walk around Tucumcari, New Mexico, you'll probably come across a sidewalk inscribed like the one above: "WPA 1939." These sidewalks were constructed by the WPA (Works Progress Administration), a New Deal jobs program instituted during the Great Depression.
There were people, back then, who criticized the program as being a worthless program that paid bums to "lean on shovels." But here we have evidence to the contrary, sidewalks installed almost 3/4 of a century ago that are still intact, and still in use today. History is all around us - truth too.

Old House 12

Another in our tour of downtown Wheatland, the larger, square part of this house is one of the iconic homestead designs found in this region. (The other being a smallish saltbox house, which I'll illustrate in the next installment.) Many of these square houses are still in use today, often with additions and improvements. I don't know if they were kit houses or merely copied from a design book, but I'm sure it was one of the two.
The buildings behind the house are part of the old Wheatland School, built in 1938 by the WPA and abandoned some decades later.

School Gym: Amistad, New Mexico

The school gymnasium at Amistad, New Mexico was built by the WPA in 1937 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.