Civil Defense Fallout Shelter @ the Riverton Post Office - Riverton, NJ
N 40° 00.554 W 075° 00.625
18T E 499110 N 4428782
The old fallout sign is located on the outside of this old brick building to the left of the main entrance signifying this was once a certified fallout shelter for the Cod War.
Waymark Code: WMDWEA
Location: New Jersey, United States
Date Posted: 03/01/2012
Views: 6
The marker is in excellent condition but the occupancy number is long vanished. I could not get inside as the building was closed but walking around it I could estimate this building could easily hold fifty people in its subterranean area.
From my original waymark about this building:
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.