New Deal Garages, Hangars, and Warehouses. Places to put our stuff.

Above: A WPA-built garage at the Patuxent Research Refuge in Maryland. Photo by Brent McKee, 2011.

Above: A WPA-built airplane hangar, in Grand Island, Nebraska, July 1937. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.

Above: A warehouse in Stockton, California, funded by the New Deal's Public Works Administration (PWA), ca. 1935-1940. This is probably the warehouse referred to in the PWA publication America Builds (1939), where it is reported: "The city of Stockton, Calif., received an allotment to help build a $60,000 cotton warehouse, to be leased to the Port Authority to afford adequate facilities for handling, warehousing, baling and shipping of California's long staple cotton. The project is of benefit to farmers and pickers in the State and is scheduled to pay for itself in 20 years" (p. 204). Photo courtesy of the National Archives.

Above: "Warehouses," an oil painting by Haldane Douglas (1893-1980), created while he was in the New Deal's Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), ca. 1933-1934. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Between 1933 and 1943, the New Deal gave us plenty of places to put our stuff. For example, WPA workers built 2,500 new garages, 2,300 new storage buildings, and 244 new airplane hangars. In our state & national parks & forests, the CCC built 2,484 new garages. And the PWA funded warehouses and garages all across the nation for various state & local needs (police, prisons, hospitals, docks, etc.).