Riverton Post Office - Riverton, NJ - WPA Projects on Waymarking.com

Beautiful, old picturesque post office, made of brick, still wearing the old fallout shelter side doubles as a contributing structure to the historic district. There is a cornerstone at the bottom right of the building bearing the construction date of 1939. The usual governmental names are incised on the huge building date stone. The supervising architect was Louis SImon. Most of Simon's buildings, notably these post office buildings, were designed in the Colonial Revival style. The cornerstone reads:

James A Farley
Postmaster General

John M Carmody
Federal Works Administrator

W Englebert Reynolds
Commissioner of Public Buildings

Louis A, Simon
Supervising Architect

Neal A Melick
Supervising Engineer

1939

I was curious about the Federal Works Administrator title under Reynolds' name and learned this building is a byproduct of the The Federal Works Agency (FWA) , an independent agency of the Federal government of the United States which administered a number of public construction, building maintenance, and public works relief functions and laws from 1939 to 1949. This post office must have been one of the early endeavors of the Federal Works Agency.

I was having trouble reconciling two agencies with similar names, namely the original Works Project Administration and the later Federal Works Agency, Reorganization Plan 1 created the Federal Works Agency, bringing together the Bureau of Public Roads, Public Buildings Branch of the Procurement Division, Branch of Buildings Management of the National Park Service, United States Housing Authority, Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, and Works Progress Administration. So, this means any project completed under the Federal Works Agency is essentially, still a Works Progress Administration function as well.