Rediscovering the Peoples’ Art New Deal Murals in Pennsylvania’s Post Offices David Lembeck with photographs by Michael Mutmansky U.S. Post Office Building, Selins- grove: Adorned by George War- ren Rickey’s tempera on canvas, Susquehanna Trail, since 1937. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MUTMANSKY 28 PENNSYLVANIA HERITAGE Summer 2008 www.paheritage.org n a February morning in 1937, artist George tion discouraged by the Great Depression. In December 1933, Warren Rickey (1907–2002) and a group of four a pilot program, the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), O men met at the post office in Selinsgrove, Snyder was created as a New Deal initiative. Although lasting just County. Armed with cloth-covered rolling pins, the men six months, PWAP employed thousands of artists to produce attached Rickey’s mural entitled Susquehanna Trail to one of works for public buildings. On the basis of this early success, the lobby’s end walls. After six hours, they transformed the project administrators created a unit within the Treasury entire blank white wall, from marble wainscoting to ceiling, Department, the Section of Fine Art, known simply as “the into a glorious depiction of a spring day in a nearby valley. Section.” Beginning in 1934, the Section sponsored competi- Two farmers, one planting and one plowing, dominate the tions for commissions in large buildings open to all artists in foreground. Behind them are the farmer’s family, another the United States. Runners-up were awarded commissions for farmer on a discing machine, and several buildings, includ- smaller post offices. ing Shriner’s Church, a local landmark. Rickey’s colors are Section administrators enthusiastically supported Ameri- pure central Pennsylvania: verdant green and chocolate can artists and fostered unique American art. Tapped for the brown fields, rich red soil, and the majestic blue Susquehan- position of Section director, Edward Bruce (1879–1943), a na River in the distance. The mural is practically an illustra- successful businessman and lawyer, had become an accom- tion for “America the Beautiful,” with its spacious skies and plished landscape painter in mid-life. Publicist Forbes Watson purple mountains, and farmers preparing for future amber had been one of the most influential art critics in the coun- waves of grain. try. Assistant director Edward Rowan (1898–1946), a friend A mural in a post office was certainly an unusual oc- to Grant Wood (1891–1942), creator of the cultural icon currence—especially one featuring hardworking, ordinary American Gothic, greatly admired the work of the Midwestern citizens—but it was becoming more common during the Regionalist artists. As a local historian and amateur architect, Great Depression. Artworks celebrating local industry and President Roosevelt was concerned that the vernacular archi- history were suddenly appearing in post office lobbies tecture of New York’s Hudson River Valley was disappearing. throughout the country; between 1934 and 1943, more than He saw to it that the valley’s colorful heritage was preserved twelve hundred original works of art were installed in post in the post office at Hyde Park and five others, each based on offices nationwide. Pennsylvania received eighty-eight of a specific Dutch Colonial building chosen by him and built these, second in number only to New York. As part of the ef- with reclaimed fieldstone. Roosevelt also helped select the fort to stimulate the economy and provide work for millions artists and themes for the six Hudson River Valley murals. of unemployed Americans, the administration of President In many parts of the country, post office murals gave Franklin Delano Roosevelt embarked on massive public residents their first encounter with an original work of art. works programs during the Great Depression. Thousands Pennsylvanians, however, had enjoyed a rich history of art of projects—courthouses, customs houses, bridges, dams, some two hundred years before the Treasury Department’s and post offices—were constructed during Roosevelt’s New programs began. Some of the most enduring images of the Deal. When funds were available, the U.S. Department of the Commonwealth’s history—William Penn’s treaty with the Treasury, which was responsible for the design and construc- Indians, George Washington crossing the Delaware River, tion of government buildings, also commissioned appropri- and the delegates signing of the United States Constitution ate works of art with which to decorate their public spaces, in Philadelphia—were created by artists who had lived or usually lobbies. worked in Pennsylvania. Edward Redfield (1869–1965), Fern It was Philadelphia artist George Biddle (1885–1973) who Coppedge (1883–1951), and like-minded artists settled in suggested the idea of commissioning artists to decorate fed- the artist colony at New Hope and became known as the eral buildings. On May 9, 1933, Biddle wrote to FDR, friend Pennsylvania Impressionists. They captured the daily life and former Groton School classmate, who had been inaugu- and landscapes of surrounding Bucks County. A group of rated the nation’s thirty-second president on March 4. Pittsburgh landscape painters founded by George Hetzel There is a matter which I have long considered and which some (1826–1899), known as the Scalp Level School, worked in the day might interest your administration. The younger artists of mountains near Johnstown in the late nineteenth century. America are conscious as they have never been of the social revolu- Folk artists such as Edward Hicks (1780–1849) created charm- tion that our country and civilization are going through; and they ing farmstead portraits of barns, fields, and livestock of nine- would be eager to express these ideals in a permanent art form teenth-century Pennsylvania. Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), if they were given the government’s co-operation. They would be considered by many to be America’s greatest painter, was an contributing to and expressing in living monuments the social ide- instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in als that you are struggling to achieve. And I am convinced that our Philadelphia where he exhorted his students to “study their mural art with a little impetus can soon result, for the first time in own country and to portray its life and types.” At the turn of our history, in a vital national expression. the twentieth century, John Sloan (1871–1951), George Luks Mexican artists Diego Rivera (1886–1957), José Clemente (1867–1933), William Glackens (1870–1938), and Everett Orozco (1883–1949), and David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974) Shinn (1876–1953), who worked as illustrators for the Phila- fueled Biddle’s enthusiasm. Their bold, colorful murals, delphia Press, found fame for their stark scenes of urban life mixing images of indigenous cultures and the iconography known as the Ashcan School. In the 1920s and 1930s, artists of Marxism, transformed the walls of government buildings Charles Sheeler (1883–1965), Charles Demuth (1883–1935), into a celebration of the Mexican Revolution and its ideals. and Elsie Driggs (1898–1992) painted iconic subjects, among Roosevelt, however, had no use for Marxist propaganda. His them Bucks County barns, Lancaster’s commercial architec- New Deal agenda sought to reform capitalism, not dismantle ture, and Pittsburgh’s industrial buildings, in a hard-edged, it. Like Biddle, he understood that public art could be used to geometrical style known as Precisionism. These artists in- communicate civic values and uplift and ennoble a popula- spired those who later created the post office murals. www.phmc.state.pa.us PENNSYLVANIA HERITAGE Summer 2008 29 PHOTO BY MICHAEL MUTMANSKY Farm scenes were quite common in Pennsylvania art in the 1930s and 1940s. Farming was a family enterprise, and works U.S. Post Office Building, Muncy: John W. Beauchamp’sRachel of art of the period often show multi-generational families Silverthorne’s Ride (1938) depicts a local heroine warning of an imminent British-allied Indian attack in 1778. raising a variety of crops and livestock. A typical farm family could provide for nearly all of its food needs and these images of abundance were popular with non-farmers as well. Pennsylvanians commemorated on post office walls In addition to its rich, expansive farmland, the most include General “Mad Anthony” Wayne, military hero and important of Pennsylvania’s abundant resources were iron statesman; Albert Gallatin, diplomat and the longest-serv- ore and the anthracite and bituminous coal that fueled ing treasury secretary; and Joseph Priestley, scientist and the steel-making and railroad industries, providing artists colleague of Benjamin Franklin, whose American home at with a wealth of subject matter. Some commissions depict Northumberland, Northumberland County, is adminis- these workers as heroic figures, overcoming the hardships tered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Com- of working underground or handling molten metals. Others mission (PHMC) as a popular attraction on the Pennsylva- TM depict the massive structures which housed those industries, nia Trails of History . the monumental mills of the steel industry, and the coal Nearly all the personalities celebrated in these public breakers towering above the mine shafts. Other important artworks were Caucasian males. Women appear in the ma- activities celebrated in post office art include glassmaking in jority of murals, but rarely as heroic figures. An interesting western Pennsylvania, lumbering in the northern tier, and exception is the mural in the post office in Muncy, Lycom- the cement, textile, and transportation industries through- ing County. Rachel Silverthorne’s Ride by John W. Beau- out the Commonwealth. Most of these major industries champ (1906–1957) celebrates a local heroine who warned declined after World War II and have virtually disappeared settlers of an imminent attack of British-allied Native and, in several cases, post office art is the only vi- Americans in 1778. Unlike most of the works, which depict sual reminder of a vanished industrial heritage.