11 Great Zoo Posters Created for the WPA

By Jill Harness

During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration was established to help put Americans back to work. While every state used the WPA differently, Illinois and Pennsylvania employed the artists on staff to promote their local zoos. Many of the resulting posters lived on far beyond the WPA itself. Here are a few notable examples organized by artist.
Carken
Frank W. Long
Mildred Waltrip
Arlington Gregg
Hugh Stevenson
Louise Welsh
Unknown Artists
Sidney Jacobson
To be fair, this one isn’t a poster, but the cover for a natural history book created for the NYC WPA.
Who wants to go to the zoo?
[All images courtesy of The Library of Congress.]