WPA Sewing Rooms 1933-43
I just recently learned that we have a Works Progress Administration (WPA) building down the street a block or two from my house that included a women’s sewing room. It’s our Municipal Swimming Pool building, and was built by the WPA in 1935. A small second level over the main building housed the sewing room, that included treadle machines and cutting tables. The building is still in use, although not for sewing.
Sewing rooms were part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” to put unemployed people back to work following the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression. While the men were put to work building roads, bridges, and a host of municipal building projects, sewing rooms, libraries, and gardening & canning facilities were also built by the WPA to provide jobs for women nation-wide. Clothing, household goods (including quilts), and mattresses were among the items made in the sewing rooms, and some rooms included mending and clothing repair. Wages were very low, but it was a wage. From what I have learned, by 1936 there were about a half million women working these WPA jobs, which also included school lunch programs and housekeeping duties to assist relief families suffering from illness. By 1943, most of these work projects were discontinued as the nation went to war.
The vast history of sewing in my little community is interesting to me, and I’ve only begun to learn about it. I have found a couple of threads here at QB that gives mention to WPA Sewing Rooms or machines, and wondered who else could comment on this sewing history.
CD in Oklahoma