WPA Rustic architecture

«This little noticed movement in American architecture was a natural outgrowth of a new romanticism about nature, about our country’s western frontiers...The conservation ethic slowly took hold in this atmosphere of romanticism. Part of this ethic fostered the development of a unique architectural style. Perhaps for the first time in the history of American architecture, a building became an accessory to nature...

Early pioneer and regional building techniques were revived because it was thought that a structure employing native materials blended best with the environment...

«Merrill Ann Wilson, «Rustic Architecture: The National Park Style,» Trends, (July August September, 1976), 4-5.

WPA Rustic architecture or Rustic is an architectural style from the time of the WPA administration. This style is often associated with the rustic architecture implemented by the National Park Service.

The principles of Rustic architecture were based on the use of local materials, forms, and construction methods inspired by Native American or «frontier» pioneer architecture. This design philosophy coincidentally fit with the goals of the WPA program. The term was used by the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places program to describe many of the buildings and structures built by the WPA in the 1930s. The WPA’s architecture approximated the rustic architecture implemented by the National Park Service at that time because : it responded to both a simple and concrete need it used local materials not by choice but by necessity, reflecting the natural environment and the context of the buildings it favored the adoption of artisanal and local construction methods in order to use as much unskilled labor as possible (the use of hand tools or manual labor rather than power tools or equipment)

The projects are thus united by principles, not architectural prototypes.