Thoughts on the New Deal and the ‘Atlanta Grade School’

“Dramatic changes rolled over Texas and the nation like a title wave in the early 1930s,” I wrote in 1986 for a special 1936 Texas Centennial commemorative issue of Texas Architect magazine, “brought on by a hurricane of economic disaster called the Great Depression.” The building industry suffered as much as any economic sector when funding for most public and almost all private construction evaporated. By 1933, overall national unemployment exceeded 30 per cent, and an estimated 85 per cent of professional architects and engineers had no commissions or paychecks. In response, a new U.S. President, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), took the oath of office in March 1933 (as I continued in 1986) …

… immediately prodding Congress into chartering numerous agencies committed to economic reform and the distribution of billions of dollars in relief programs. The new agencies did nothing less than alter the daily lives of American citizens …. The resulting federal sponsorship of architecture through public works projects literally changed the American landscape over the next decade.

During that decade, 1933 through 1943, FDR’s unemployment - relief and national - infrastructure programs made his “New Deal” a household name, framed in time and success by the equally familiar “alphabet” agencies of the CCC and the WPA. The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) kicked off the New Deal in spring 1933 by enrolling an initial 250,000 single young men and 25,000 destitute war veterans and assigning them to 200-man remote camps throughout the nation for outdoor work in forests, parks, and the Dust Bowl of the Great Plains. Quickly following the CCC, the PWA (Public Works Administration), FERA (Federal Emergency Relief Administration), then the CWA (Civil Works Administration) and NYA (National Youth Administration) provided short-term jobs for a full range of Americans, males and females, young and old, students and professionals, until the Great Depression ended with the onset of World War II. Established in 1935, the WPA (Works Progress Administration) hired heads-of households - men and women - to work near their homes on projects ranging from building construction to sewing centers, from installing water and wastewater systems to writing travel guides to all the states, territories, and most large cities. By the WPA’s conclusion in 1943, more than 8.5 million workers had been employed on $11 billion in projects, helping at the end to build Army posts and Navy bases for the war effort across the nation.

The Texas Centennial year of 1936 became a platform for New Deal public-works projects across the state, ranging from roadside parks by the NYA to the Dallas State Fairgrounds through the combined resources of the PWA, the WPA, and state relief funds. While the PWA awarded comprehensive contracts to construction companies who then employed skilled and unskilled workers, the WPA funded only the local labor for relatively small projects - most under $25,000 - on land and with building materials provided by the local public agency sponsor. In addition to the unusual Texas Centennial projects, these New Deal programs particularly focused on projects for government and education, constructing many courthouses in Texas from the Panhandle to the Rio Grande Valley, and a multitude of school buildings across the state from the Trans-Pecos to … Atlanta, Texas in 1936.

The “Atlanta Grade School,” later Miller Grade School and now the Atlanta-Miller Grade School, is a fine surviving example of the New Deal’s mission to update and improve the nation’s public facilities while employing workers who needed a bridge across the frustrating Great Depression. The one-story symmetrical building, facing south onto W. Miller Street with a central entrance flanked by tall windows and classroom bays, is in many ways a typical early 20th century American schoolhouse. This 1936 brick building, however, is uniquely embellished with a distinctive double-door entrance framed by Art Deco-style stone “columns” with “capitals” flanking the inscription “Atlanta Grade School, 1936.” A geometric sun symbol - probably intended to indicate the light of knowledge - hovers over the inscription within a stepped-parapet gable. The architect’s name has not emerged in recent research, but a 1930s contractor - Hardy Brothers of Texarkana - is associated with the building, implying that 1) a contractor prepared the foundation or other partial construction, or 2) the Hardy Brothers employed a draftsman who served as the architect, or 3) this is actually a PWA project built fully by the contractor rather than by WPA labor working under supervision of the school district. As preservation and adaptive-use efforts continue to bring the Atlanta-Miller Grade School into the 21st century for its second useful life, more research will uncover the names of Atlantans who built the building as a lasting gift to the community. Combined with the thousands of schoolchildren and teachers who walked its halls and sat in its classrooms, then the volunteers who have saved the building, those names will reflect the history of Atlanta itself, for most of the 20th century and now more than two decades into the following century.

About the Author

James Wright Steely is a 6th-generation Texan from Paris … about 98 miles west-northwest of Atlanta, Texas. He grew up working on his family’s Lamar County Echo newspaper, leading to a B.S. degree in photojournalism, along with a second-major in history, from East Texas State University. Completing an M.S. from the University of Texas at Austin led to several mentorships among esteemed Texas preservationists and a 20-year career at the Texas Historical Commission. Steely then became a corporate consultant for 15 years and since 2016 an independent consulting historian and architectural historian based in Denver. He is the author and co-author of books on Texas history and architecture and many reports on National Park Service history. Steely’s award-winning Parks for Texas: Enduring Landscapes of the New Deal is available from the University of Texas Press. His co-authored and award-winning 2-volume Buildings of Texas is available from the University of Virginia Press.