California's Living New Deal project

Women at work making clothes for local families on a WPA sewing project in Santa Rosa in 1937. Photograph: National Archives Photograph: guardian.co.uk Children wait eagerly at a Toy Loan Project in Oakland. The WPA employed men to recondition toys, and maintained toy lending libraries for poor children. Photograph: National Archives Photograph: guardian.co.uk Sarah Elmasion, who was 80 when she learned to read and write through a Works Progress Administration programme, proudly demonstrates her new skills on the blackboard. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were lifted from illiteracy by free WPA classes. Photograph: National Archives Photograph: guardian.co.uk A young man working on the construction of a bridge at Staatsburg. Photograph: National Archives Photograph: guardian.co.uk The dedicatory mural near the entrance to the Coit Tower in San Francisco. The frescoes in the tower, which cover 3,691 sq feet, were done by local artists and were the first large, federally-sponsored art project of the New Deal. Photograph: Gray Brechin Photograph: guardian.co.uk Many of the Coit Tower murals depict people at work, and emphasise the dignity of work. This one shows a family mining for gold, while a wealthy family looks on from their picnic. Photograph: Gray Brechin Photograph: guardian.co.uk One of the Coit Tower murals depicts miners demonstrating on May Day. Photograph: Gray Brechin Photograph: guardian.co.uk The PWA built "orthopaedic schools" throughout the US for children paralysed by polio. At San Francisco's Sunshine School, the Moorish-style building featured ramps, elevators and hydrotherapy. Photograph: Gray Brechin Photograph: guardian.co.uk Mosaics at the Sunshine School for disabled children, where special attention was given to aesthetics "to take the children's minds off their misfortunes". Photograph: Gray Brechin Photograph: guardian.co.uk Anaheim High School Auditorium was one of thousands of modern school buildings constructed by the PWA and WPA throughout the US within five years of the Great Depression. In California, schools were built to the latest seismic standards after a disastrous earthquake on 10 March, 1933, in Long Beach. Photograph: National Archives Photograph: guardian.co.uk