Editing Winfield Township, New Jersey (section)

===Construction===
The construction of Winfield Park began on June 23, 1941, and was contracted through the MacEvoy Company of [[Newark, New Jersey]], a company that built sections of the [[Newark Subway|Newark subway]], the [[Wanaque Reservoir]], and was then working on developing reinforced concrete oil tankers (a project that failed spectacularly, and remnants of which can be still be seen off the coastline of [[Cape May, New Jersey]]). The entire Winfield project—254 buildings on 110 acres—eventually required 7500 gallons of paint; 2500 rolls of wallpaper; {{convert|5500000|board feet|m3}} of lumber; and would employ 1,223 construction workers for five months.

From the start, work did not proceed well. Labor Union disputes stopped construction at least once. The construction work completed by the MacEvoy Company was exceptionally poor—so poor that it attracted the attention of the [[Truman Committee]] investigating abuses with the National Defense Program.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20101014141857/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,766701,00.html "Business: Two Scandals"], ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', November 30, 1942. Accessed September 30, 1942.</ref> The investigation would eventually uncover the facts that the Winfield Park project lacked complete [[Architectural plan|architectural]] or engineering plans and that financial records—at least the few that could be found—were criminally maintained. The project's construction was so badly botched that in many of the new buildings, residents discovered that nails had been hammered through water pipes, chimneys still contained the wooden forms used for their construction, roofs leaked, water pipes had never been soldered, floors were buckled, the paintwork was molding, sewer lines and pumps rarely worked, and many roads, sidewalks, and curbs had never been completed. On average, thirty-seven items needed to be repaired and/or replaced in each unit to make it habitable. To accomplish this repair work, the federal government spent an additional $100,000.00 and hired a new contractor, even after the project had officially been declared complete by Westbrook. The final cost for Winfield Park, including [[Federal Works Agency]] provided public works, came to $4,392,075.55 or $6,274.00/ unit; the Lanham Act specified a limit of $3,500.00. Continuing investigations uncovered that MacEvoy Company had manipulated bids and committed extensive fraud. MacEvoy rented and sold equipment and supplies to itself at an inflated cost, provided insurance to the government for its own work, employed the son-in-law of one of the government inspectors on the project, and generally milked the Winfield Park Project for everything that it could.<ref>Senate Hearings on Senate Resolution 71, pt.8, p. 6051-6120</ref> Much of this is outlined in a ''Life Magazine'' article from the November 30, 1942 issue.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RkEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA45|title=Truman Committee Exposes Housing Mess|date=November 30, 1942|publisher=Life Magazine|language=en}}</ref>