Works Progress Administration Writers' Project Place Names Records

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was the largest and most diverse of all the New Deal projects. Created on May 6, 1935 by Executive Order No. 7034, the WPA was administered by Harry Hopkins from July 1935 to December 1938. Infrastructure and public works projects were the largest part of the WPA's output, but Federal Project Number Once program supported music, theater, dance and the arts; while other projects supported historic preservation, library development and social science research. Projects were locally initiated, before moving through state and national offices for approval; the locality had to proved 12 to 25 percent of the cost as seed funding. Over 8.5 million people found work through the WPA. After being rolled into the Federal Works Agency as the "Works Projects Administration" in 1939, the WPA would be closed down with the coming of war in 1941. Official termination of the WPA came on June 30, 1943.

The Federal Writers' Project came into being in July and August of 1935 as part of the WPA. Employing historians, teachers, writers, librarians and other white-collar workers, it was originally tasked with creating a series of guide books, the American Guide series, of which one was created for the Rochester-area. Later, additional projects were developed. Amongst them was the Place Names project, represented in its Rochester-area incarnation by these records. This project was part of the folklore-gathering work of the Federal Writers Project, and undertook to research and record the history and etymology of local place names around the country. In some places, this resulted in published gazzeteers, but New York State never completed its guide. Copies of the notes and the unfinished manuscript can be found in the New York State Archives in Albany.