Monday, January 23, 2017

1938 photo: Literal government pit in Great Lakes, Illinois


Here's an old photo, measuring seven inches across, that I found in the York New Salem store a while back. The caption in the lower-right corner states:

NAVAL TRAINING STATION, GREAT LAKES, Ill.
RELIEF WORK, COMBINED, P.W.A.—W.P.A.
IMPROVEMENTS TO POWERHOUSE, BLDG. 11
FEDERAL PROJECT P.W.A. OP.752.09.69
FEDERAL AGENCY W.P.A. OP.709.02.18
STATUS OF WORK AS OF NOV. 1, 1938


Naval Station Great Lakes still exists. It has been in continuous use since 1911 and is the home of the U.S. Navy's only boot camp. Its nicknames include "The Quarterdeck of the Navy." (As an interesting aside, the Great Lakes boot camp had its own intercollegiate football team, the Bluejackets, during the first half of the 20th century and even won the 1919 Rose Bowl, 17-0, over the Mare Island Marines, with the game being played just weeks after World War I had ended.)

Regarding those photo captions, the P.W.A. was the Public Works Administration and the W.P.A. was the Works Progress Administration, both being parts of the New Deal. It's complicated, but, in a nutshell, the PWA came first and exhausted all of its budget by 1934, even though its projects took many years beyond that to complete. The WPA was the followup program to the PWA and was tasked with additional infrastructure and arts initiatives. It's not surprising that a long-term project such as improving a powerhouse might have used both PWA and WPA funds.

Here's a closer look at some of the actual men who did the dirty and surely back-breaking work at Great Lakes.

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