Sheboygan History: WPA projects leave lasting legacy
America’s slide into recession in the summer of 1929 turned into a free fall on Black Tuesday, Oct. 24 when the over-speculated stock market crashed losing more than 25 percent of its value. Frightened investors liquidated a record 29 million shares of stock over the next four days triggering the Great Depression.
By 1933, when America’s financial situation reached rock bottom, nearly 25 percent of all Americans were unemployed. Half of the country’s banks failed, taking life savings and hope with them. The country was ready for a positive change.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office in March of 1933, job creation and finding new sources of tax revenue were primary objectives of his recovery plan. In his inaugural address he declared, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and promised to try everything to wage war against depression.
So, between 1933 and 1939, dozens of federal programs, often referred to as the “Alphabet Agencies,” were created as part of his New Deal.
The biggest of these programs began on May 6, 1933, when Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA). It put unemployed Americans to work on public works projects in return for temporary financial assistance. WPA would spend more than $10 billion in federal funds from 1935 through the early 1940s, employing millions of people in hundreds of thousands of jobs. Almost every community in the country had a park, bridge or school constructed by the agency.
For an average salary of $41.57 a month, WPA employees built things like the Hoover Dam, Camp David, Dealey Plaza in Dallas, LaGuardia Airport in New York, the Milwaukee Public Library and Peninsula State Park in Door County.
In October 1933, the first federal funds arrived in Sheboygan. Highway 141 was relocated, South 14th Street was widened and the Broadway viaduct was built. A total of 113 men were hired. By December of 1933 another 500 men were working.
The cornerstone was laid for a new Sheboygan County Courthouse in 1933, but the project was denied federal funds because construction had already started.
In 1935, Northside Junior High School was started and a new sewage disposal plant was built in Sheboygan. Lakeshore Drive, later Broughton Drive, put 100 men to work. Street car tracks were removed from downtown Sheboygan.
Work began on a new dam at the outlet of the Sheboygan Marsh in October of 1937. The dam called for a concrete and reinforced steel dam 70-feet wide with a walk way across the top. This dam raised the water level in the newly created lake to an elevation of 116 feet, just four feet below the level of Elkhart Lake.
Sheboygan Falls received funds in 1937 to construct a sewage treatment facility.
Humorously, in 1938 several hundred tons of Lannon Stone intended for building a stone fence around Roosevelt Park in Sheboygan disappeared. The stone was a great temptation for citizens, and a number of attractive foundations and chimneys appeared in the neighborhood at the same time the pile shrunk. The pilfering ended when a truck carrying stone disguised under burlap bags was stopped on a run to Black River. The stone eventually found its way to projects at Kiwanis and Evergreen Parks.
More than 375,000 pine trees were planted on hundreds of acres in the Northern Kettle Moraine during the summer of 1939. About 80 men worked to plant the hogback hills and kettle holes. They also worked on timber stand improvement, fencing, razing undesirable structures and changing a dwelling into a WPA shelter house.
Plymouth’s Utility Park was created and a great deal of beautification work was done along the Mullet River. Plymouth and Sheboygan each got new post offices.
The new Sheboygan County Hospital for the Aged and Disabled was completed in 1942 at Five Corners. Built on more than 350 acres, it provided a beautiful pastoral setting for its residents.
Construction of the Sheboygan Armory and Municipal Auditorium began in 1941, likely the last WPA project authorized in the area.
The Federal Art component of the WPA hired hundreds of artists who created more than 100,000 paintings and murals. The Plymouth Post Office has a tempera mural titled “Making Cheese” painted by Charles W. Thwaites in 1942. The Sheboygan Post Office has a five-panel mural done in 1939 by Schomer Lichtner.
The attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 changed everything almost overnight. War-time production ramped up immediately. The draft removed millions of young men from the available workforce. Women jumped in and took up the slack. The unemployment rate dropped to zero.
The crowning feature of the WPA program was its provision of a living wage for millions of families, but its lasting legacy is its schools, hospitals and playgrounds that people still use today. Its art and architecture remain all around us decades after America got back to work and conquered fear itself.
Beth Dippel is executive director of the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center, 518 Water St., Sheboygan Falls; 920-467-4667; schrc.org.