Our Current Exhibit

 

WPA:

Works Progress Administration

in Washington

 

June 6 to August 30, 2009

The Edmonds Museum will open a new exhibit June 6 entitled “”WPA: Works Progress Administration in Washington”, a traveling exhibit from the Washington State History Museum.


For those who don’t know, during the United State’s great economic depression in the 1930s, the government created an organization called the Works Progress Administration. The WPA created jobs for millions of out-of-work Americans and helped the city of Edmonds as workers graded and paved streets, installed water and sewer lines, and improved the City Park. The WPA also created a new athletic field in Edmonds and the federal government constructed the art-deco auditorium (now the Edmonds Center for the Arts) and other structures at the high school. The Edmonds Boys and Girls Club’s building was a WPA project as well.


The exhibit contains thirty photographic panels illustrating the WPA in Washington with text written by Historian Carlos Schwantes.

The Museum is located at 118 5th Ave. N. in downtown Edmonds. It is open Wednesdays through Sundays from 1pm to 4pm. FREE admission. For information, call 425-774-0900.

Long-Term Exhibit: The Changing Face of Edmonds

 

Photo of tools used by shingle loggers.The museum building has two floors. The upper floor features an exhibit gallery which offers temporary rotating displays, a diorama depicting the 1910 Edmonds townsite and waterfront, and the Cook Victorian Parlor. The upper level also houses the administrative office, work rooms, a local history library and an extensive photography archive. The public is encouraged to use the research library, with an advance appointment.

The ground floor consists of the long-term exhibit conceived to commemorate the centennial of the incorporation of the City of Edmonds 1890/1990. "The Changing Face of Edmonds" is an encapsulated, thematic, and chronological history exhibit, interpreting the many changes that have taken place, from the age of exploration and discovery, through the founding and growth of the city, and up to the 1950s when the last mill closed. Highlights of the exhibit include a reconstruction of a room from the 1894 Stevens Hotel, and a working model of a shingle mill, representative of the mills that filled the Edmonds waterfront at the turn of the century.