[2] Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA supplied paid jobs to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States, while building up the public infrastructure of the US, such as parks, schools, and roads.

Usually, the local sponsor provided land and often trucks and supplies, with the WPA responsible for wages (and for the salaries of supervisors, who were not on relief).

[9] The WPA was largely shaped by Harry Hopkins, supervisor of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and close adviser to Roosevelt.

Harry Hopkins testified to Congress in January 1935 why he set the number at 3.5 million, using Federal Emergency Relief Administration data.

[23] The consensus of experts is that: "In the distribution of WPA project jobs as opposed to those of a supervisory and administrative nature politics plays only a minor in comparatively insignificant role.

[25] The WPA built traditional infrastructure of the New Deal such as roads, bridges, schools, libraries, courthouses, hospitals, sidewalks, waterworks, and post-offices, but also constructed museums, swimming pools, parks, community centers, playgrounds, coliseums, markets, fairgrounds, tennis courts, zoos, botanical gardens, auditoriums, waterfronts, city halls, gyms, and university unions.

In addition, infrastructure projects included 2,302 stadiums, grandstands, and bleachers; 52 fairgrounds and rodeo grounds; 1,686 parks covering 75,152 acres; 3,185 playgrounds; 3,026 athletic fields; 805 swimming pools; 1,817 handball courts; 10,070 tennis courts; 2,261 horseshoe pits; 1,101 ice-skating areas; 138 outdoor theatres; 254 golf courses; and 65 ski jumps.

In 1935 priority projects were to improve infrastructure; roads, extension of electricity to rural areas, water conservation, sanitation and flood control.

[30] Cedric Larson stated that "The impact made by the five major cultural projects of the WPA upon the national consciousness is probably greater in total than anyone readily realizes.

As channels of communication between the administration and the country at large, both directly and indirectly, the importance of these projects cannot be overestimated, for they all carry a tremendous appeal to the eye, the ear, or the intellect—or all three.

[30] Directed by Nikolai Sokoloff, former principal conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, the Federal Music Project employed over 16,000 musicians at its peak.

[30] The FWP created the American Guide Series which, when completed, consisted of 378 books and pamphlets providing a thorough analysis of the history, social life and culture for every state, city and village in the United States including descriptions of towns, waterways, historic sites, oral histories, photographs, and artwork.

[31]: 494  Additionally, another important part of this project was to record oral histories to create archives such as the Slave Narratives and collections of folklore.

With the onset of the Depression local governments facing declining revenues were unable to maintain social services, including libraries.

[36] Federal money for these projects could only be spent on worker wages, therefore local municipalities would have to provide upkeep on properties and purchase equipment and materials.

[35] While it is difficult to quantify the success or failure of WPA Library Projects relative to other WPA programs, "what is incontestable is the fact that the library projects provided much-needed employment for mostly female workers, recruited many to librarianship in at least semiprofessional jobs, and retained librarians who may have left the profession for other work had employment not come through federal relief...the WPA subsidized several new ventures in readership services such as the widespread use of bookmobiles and supervised reading rooms – services that became permanent in post-depression and postwar American libraries.

Jason Scott Smith observes that "the eagerness of many WPA administrators to place their organization in the forefront of this wartime enterprise is striking."

Drawing on experiences derived from New Deal era road building, he supervised the installation of such features as guard towers and spotlights.

"[38] The share of Federal Emergency Relief Administration and WPA benefits for African Americans exceeded their proportion of the general population.

In the South, as might have been expected, this participation has been limited, and differential wages on the basis of race have been more or less effectively established; but in the northern communities, particularly in the urban centers, the Negro has been afforded his first real opportunity for employment in white-collar occupations.

Representative J. Parnell Thomas of the House Committee on Un-American Activities claimed in 1938 that divisions of the WPA were a "hotbed of Communists" and "one more link in the vast and unparalleled New Deal propaganda network.

The South, despite being the poorest region of the United States, received 75% less in federal relief and public works funds per capita than the West.

"[60] Many complaints were recorded from private industry at the time that the existence of WPA works programs made hiring new workers difficult.

[6]: 227  Having languished since the end of World War I, the American military services were depopulated and served by crumbling facilities; when Germany occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938, the U.S. Army numbered only 176,000 soldiers.

[19]: 494 On May 26, 1940, FDR delivered a fireside chat to the American people about "the approaching storm",[62] and on June 6 Harrington reprioritized WPA projects, anticipating a major expansion of the U.S. military.

He observed that the WPA had already made substantial contributions to national defense over its five years of existence, by building 85 percent of the new airports in the U.S. and making $420 million in improvements to military facilities.

[19]: 494 "Only the WPA, having employed millions of relief workers for more than five years, had a comprehensive awareness of the skills that would be available in a full-scale national emergency," wrote journalist Nick Taylor.

Notably apolitical—he boasted that he had never voted[63]—he had deflected Congressional criticism of the WPA by bringing attention to its building accomplishments and its role as an employer.

Experience had amply justified this policy," FDR wrote: By building airports, schools, highways, and parks; by making huge quantities of clothing for the unfortunate; by serving millions of lunches to school children; by almost immeasurable kinds and quantities of service the Work Projects Administration has reached a creative hand into every county in this Nation.

[64] "The agencies of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration had an enormous and largely unrecognized role in defining the public space we now use", wrote sociologist Robert D. Leighninger.