Robot on Wheels

WPA Guide to New York City

complete
Completed October 2023

This site makes the 1938 WPA Guide to New York City interactive and accessible on a mobile device, creating a historical "lens" on New York City as users walk around the city.

Updated August 8, 2025

August 8, 2025

After making a few minor but necessary technical updates, I also made some improvements to the visual design and layout of the site today. I'm considering two additional updates soon – improving the way the site is implemented so it caches the articles and relies less on the database, and importing the Arizona guide (the next step toward covering all the guides, and a logical one since I now live in Tucson).

October 1, 2023

WPAGuide.com lets you travel back in time and explore New York City as it stood nearly a century ago.

The project was adapted from the New York City Guide, a detailed portrait of the city published in 1939 by the Federal Writers’ Project. On the website, you can read the guide’s depiction of landmarks, neighborhoods, and other destinations around your current location. Some have changed little since 1939, others are long forgotten.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was established in 1935 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, aiming to create jobs for Americans struggling under the Great Depression. Within the WPA, the Federal Writers’ Project employed over 6,500 people across the country. Among other projects, it created the American Guide Series, which ultimately produced dozens of books and pamphlets exploring nearly the entire country. The New York City Guide, published in 1939, totaled over 700 pages. A digitized version of the book can be viewed online thanks to the Prelinger Library.

I originally conceived of this project around 2010, as a (very) amateur history buff with a new iPhone living in New York City. I had infinite patience to copy all the article text into a geocoded database, but my web development skills were pretty weak. I tried hacking together a Wordpress site that ultimately collapsed under the weight of the plugins. I set the project aside, occasionally mentioning it to people, one of whom promised me that "one day you'll find a way to get it done."

That day came in October 2023, when I tried using ChatGPT to get some advice about building the app. Within a week I had the version complete that you visit at wpaguide.com, and I was hooked on the ability of the newest wave of AI powered software development tools to turn an idea into reality.

The Federal Writers' Project published over 100 guides to various places in the United States, and I'd like to extend this project to cover the remaining guides.