Clarence J. Parman, a local architect, drew up plans in 1937 for the present site of what will become the Lily Lawrence Bow Library. The project was approved a year later by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was federal program instituted by Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the New Deal during the Great Depression. The WPA was to have a major impact on libraries and a Florida Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) report from March 1935 showed that thirty-one library/museum projects had been approved in 1934. In March 1941 392 people, mostly women, were employed in WPA library projects. The new building was made out of native oolitic rock and hand-hewn Dade County pine timbers. Construction was completed in 1939.