Etched deep but legible on the sidewalk facing Fountain City Presbyterian Church: US WPA.
On May 6, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) through an executive order as part of his New Deal plan to lift the country out of the Great Depression.
WPA was designed to relieve the 20% unemployment rate by providing jobs and income for millions of Americans and by late 1938, more than 3.3 million Americans worked for the WPA.
The WPA built school buildings, hospitals, bridges and air fields. Workers laid storm drains, sewer lines, and paved or repaired roads and planted millions of trees to alleviate loss of topsoil during the infamous Dust Bowl.
Below are a few of the many WPA builds in Knoxville:
- Central High School which is now Gresham Middle School, was built in 1931. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) added an equipment room, worked on the football field and improved the grounds.
- The Luttrell Street Bridge over First Creek was built by the WPA but has been demolished and replaced with a pedestrian bridge.
- WPA constructed McGhee Tyson Airport, a New Deal program and one of many major airports built in Memphis, Chattanooga, Nashville and at the Tri-Cities.
- The Sprankle Building, former TVA headquarters, also known by later names of The Pembroke and The Daylight Building, was built in 1927. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Daylight Building in 2009.
- The WPA built a retaining wall to support the residential properties along the length of a sidewalk on Whittle Springs Road in North Knoxville. The wall, as well as a WPA inscription, can be found on the east side of Whittle Springs Road just south of Avondale Ave.
No, there is no record of the WPA workers assigned to the Fountain City Presbyterian sidewalk location. Was it to create an entrance leading to the manse that once stood at this location? Was it sidewalks created for students to walk to the high school just feet from the church location? No historical record was easily found, but the imprint left by the workers from the 1930s is proof of the work.
History and location of most of the New Deal sites in Tennessee can be searched on the Living New Deal site here.
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