Above: The Elephant House at the National Zoo, Washington, DC. This building was constructed with funds from the New Deal's Public Works Administration (PWA), 1936-1937. How many people have walked through its doors during the past 80 years? Photo by Brent McKee, June 2019.
Above: Caretakers and elephants in the PWA-funded Elephant House. The inside of the Elephant House has changed drastically since it initial construction, which I'll describe in greater detail in a future blog post. Photo by Brent McKee, June 2019.
The New Deal provides an "outstanding" year for the Zoo
In its 1937 annual report, the National Zoo in Washington, DC, noted that "fiscal year 1937 was probably the most outstanding in the history of the Zoo. The construction under the Public Works Administration grant of $892,920 was completed. These improvements include a brick exhibition building for small mammals and great apes; a stone exhibition building to house large mammals [today's Elephant House]; a new wing to the bird house; a two-story building for machine and carpenter shops; a stone garage; the installation of three 250-horsepower down-draft boilers in the central heating plant; an extension of the conduit system to the small mammal house and large mammal house; and rearrangement of the electric supply distribution system, a portion of which was put underground" ("Report on the National Zoological Park," Appendix 6 in the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, fiscal year 1937, p. 69).
From 1933 through 1940, various New Deal programs improved our National Zoo: The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Public Works Administration (PWA), The Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), the Treasury Section of Fine Arts (SFA), the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP). I'll be detailing all this work, on my blog, over the next few weeks.
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