What I have learned since going to the Gannon Golf Course website is that the building was started much earlier than the W.P.A., in 1931-1932. What is interesting is that it appears the City of Lynn and the Massachusetts State Legislature had created their own W.P.A.
From the website:
. . . John Morrissey, saw the project as a blessing in disguise; a blessing that could prove critical to the survival of countless Lynn families. Morrissey, the superintendent of parks and playgrounds and one of the most popular members of the citizenry, had stirred up interest in a city-owned golf course with Albert Comstock, chairman of the Lynn park commission from 1918 to 1941. . . Joseph Cole and his supervisors in the Welfare Department had a solution for Comstock and Morrissey. Why not put hundreds of its men, suffering the indignity of placement on the welfare rolls, to work on the course and clubhouse construction? It was a brilliant idea that in the estimation of many ensured the expeditious completion of the project when it might otherwise have been delayed for years.
Thanks to a special act of the Massachusetts legislature, the men, 800 to start and another 700 by the time the construction was in high gear, were allowed the chance to work on the 100-acre project for their welfare checks. They were delighted. Their self-esteem was restored. Full-time Park Department employees also were involved on the course, which was designed by one of the game’s finest course architect’s of the time, Wayne Stiles.
Also from the website is an excerpt from an interview of Dick Walton in the Lynn Sunday Post on July 12, 1981. He was 81 at the time and had been the construction supervisor of the project.
“The front nine holes were the most difficult to build. We didn’t have enough heavy equipment. A lot of the work was manual. Laborers received $12 a week, masons $14, all in grocery orders. The tree stump and rock removal projects were massive. Every stone in the clubhouse came from the course clearing effort. Leftover rock completed the entire wall at Pine Grove Cemetery. John Morrissey, park superintendent at the time, cooked massive supplies of his grand beef stew for the laborers, as well as clam chowder on Fridays and baked beans on Saturdays."
The fact that they used leftover field stone for the Pine Grove Cemetery wall tells me that it is likely that the clubhouse was started as a city/state project and finished as a W.P.A. project. The Pine Grove Cemetery wall project was a project of the W.P.A. It could be that Massachusetts had created their own W.P.A. and was successful, and then Franklin D Roosevelt built on that success in 1935 when the WPA was created.
