Curious Iowa: What WPA projects can be seen in Linn County today?

The Works Progress Administration provided jobs to 8.5 million Americans between 1935 and 1943 during the Great Depression and the first years of World War II.

Jobs ranged from graveling city streets and building stone buildings in state parks to writing guide books for each state and creating art in federal buildings.

Jerry Reisinger of Buchanan County wondered what WPA projects are still around, so he wrote to Curious Iowa, a series from The Gazette that answers readers’ questions about our state, its people and the culture.

“I am curious about WPA projects because I feel that they were (are) all over the country, and it seems that few people know about the program and their local projects, even though they may have seen the projects, or still do see them frequently,” Reisinger wrote in an email to The Gazette. “The program was a great way to put citizens to work, provide needed structures and art in communities, and provide income to WPA workers and their families in the Great Depression.”

What did the WPA accomplish in Linn County?

At the program’s peak, Iowa had approximately 37,000 WPA workers. To be eligible for a WPA job, one had to be a U.S. citizen age 18 or older, able-bodied and unemployed.

Most of the WPA workers were “unskilled” men, but the program wasn’t limited by gender or race, according to Tara Templeman, curator of The History Center in Cedar Rapids.

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“Women were absolutely hired as part of the workforce as well,” she said. “And in Cedar Rapids, they did make up almost a quarter of the employees at times.”

WPA projects in Linn County ranged from employing teachers through the Emergency Education Program to creating farm-to-market roads, repairing city streets and sewing clothes for relief recipients.

WPA criticism

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Hiring 8 million Americans to work on projects across the country was not always a smooth process, Templeman said. While the projects were federally funded, state, regional and local offices were responsible for different parts of the process. Cities did not have jurisdiction over the projects or specifications.

“This meant that there was sometimes a communication breakdown about the specifics of what was needed for a project or what the local community wanted to prioritize,” Templeman said.

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There were also inefficiencies, like hiring too many workers for a single job. For example, the construction of a sanitary sewer in the Dairy Dale District, near St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church at 610 31st St. SE in Cedar Rapids, faced criticism early into the project.

Too many laborers had been hired and were standing around idle — and being paid — when bricks and sewer were slow to arrive.

The Sunday, Dec. 8, 1935, edition of The Gazette featured a scathing story about the project, describing the “general atmosphere of wasteful confusion that surrounds WPA operations, at least in this district.”

“Local businesses were sometimes upset over not having an opportunity to bid on the materials needed for the projects or having to bid on the projects exactly as they were specified, even if that was not how the work was typically done,” Templeman said.

For example, when brick for the Dairy Dale sewer project was ordered it was smaller and more expensive than what was typically used in manhole construction.

But the major criticism was about idle workers.

“It appears that WPA has been maintaining the ‘pride, courage, self-respect, ambition and energy’ of four or five dozen relief clients on one local project by paying them 40 cents an hour to wrestle, throw clods and try, by various other devices, to keep warm,” The Gazette reported. “They can’t work at the job to which they are assigned because, for one thing, there are more of them than can be used effectively and, for another, the materials haven’t shown up yet. But the wages go on.”

The project was completed early in June 1936.

“Sometimes WPA projects took two to four times as long to complete and cost more than they would if handled privately,” Templeman said. “However, the purpose was to put unemployed residents to work on infrastructure projects that would have a lasting positive impact on the quality of life of the whole community.”

What about those City Hall murals?

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The WPA also had programs that supported out-of-work artists and writers. When WPA Director and Iowan Harry Hopkins was questioned about federal support of artists, he said, “Hell, they’ve got to eat just like other people!”

The WPA established Federal Project Number One to support cultural and artistic efforts. This led to projects like the Federal Arts Project, Federal Theatre Project and Federal Writers’ Project.

The most controversial of the WPA projects in Cedar Rapids was the 5-foot, 6-inch tall, more than 200-foot-long “Law & Culture” mural that covered the four walls of a large courtroom in what was then the federal courthouse. It was commissioned in 1936 through the Treasury Relief Art Project, part of the WPA, which installed art in federal buildings.

The project was led by Francis Robert White, an Oskaloosa native and director of the Little Gallery in Cedar Rapids. Artists Don Glasell, Harry Donald Jones, Everett Jeffrey, Howard Johnson and Arnold Pyle — all contemporaries of famed Iowa artist Grant Wood — worked on the mural.

The mural depicts a variety of scenes, like firefighters and police officers carrying out their duties on the courtroom’s west wall and Mesoamerican culture and archaeological sites on the south wall.

Some people took issue with other images, like the detail that shows a hanging that appeared in the mural across from the jury box.

The mural on the north wall had images from the conquest of the West, including the suffering of Indigenous people and the struggles of slaves, immigrant workers and early settlers.

“They were controversial because they depict scenes that can be triggering for those navigating the justice system,” Templeman said.

In 1956, the murals were painted over, restored in 1961, painted over again later in the 1960s and then restored between 2011 and 2015 when the city assumed ownership of the building, 101 First St. SE.

Templeman said that art exists within context and when it’s displayed permanently, the context that was understood by the artist and community at the time of creation can be lost.

“The murals show scenes of law and order in this region over time. It is not so much that they were historically inaccurate as that they are showing images of practices and beliefs that are no longer held by those in power,” Templeman said. “The murals were supposed to remind people of the community heritage, but the controversy has come about which reminders are appropriate, given how the space was and is used today.”

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In 2011, the federal courthouse became Cedar Rapids City Hall, and the courtroom with the murals became the City Council Chambers. Restoration work began that year and, by 2015, all four murals had been restored.

In 2015, Sean Ulmer, executive director of the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, told The Gazette that the restoration is a valuable lesson about the importance of not destroying art “willy-nilly.” Tastes change, he said.

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