History

The Tennessee Valley Authority was established in May 1933 as one of the most ambitious New Deal programs ever enacted — a federal agency with the mandate to plan and develop an entire river system, including its tributaries, for the benefit of a multi-state region that had been largely bypassed by twentieth-century industrialization. The Clinch River site in Anderson County, Tennessee, was selected as the location for the first dam because of its engineering characteristics and because the valley to be flooded was less densely settled than alternative sites.

Construction on Norris Dam began in October 1933 and was completed in March 1936. The project employed thousands of workers at the height of the Depression and created Norris, Tennessee — a planned model town built by the TVA to house workers and their families — as the first entirely planned federal community in the United States. Roland Wank, a Hungarian-born architect who had emigrated to the United States, was responsible for the architectural character of the dam and its associated structures. Wank’s decision to treat the dam as an exercise in civic Art Deco — clean concrete surfaces, geometric ornament at the control house and powerhouse, streamlined profiles — was a deliberate statement about the modernity of public works.

Norris Reservoir, created by the dam, became one of the first large recreation lakes in the Tennessee Valley, and Norris Dam State Park was established to provide public access to the shoreline. The dam’s designation as a National Historic Landmark recognizes both its engineering significance as the first TVA project and its architectural contribution as the primary example of New Deal public works aesthetics in American hydraulic infrastructure.