By Christine Nelson Ruby

This article first appeared in the J/F 1982 issue of Michigan History.

For photos of these and more Michigan post office murals, visit www.wpamurals.com.

Federally sponsored art projects during the Depression were the most extraordinary effort ever conceived by the American government for artists.

From 1933 to 1943, the federal government employed artists, many of whom were destitute, under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). While many WPA workers built bridges and dug ditches, the artists employed by the government created murals, easel paintings, sculptures, relief carvings, weaving, prints, posters, photographs, furniture design, art education, baskets and an illustrated rendition of American folk art and design. These government-sponsored works provided employment for artists and spread art in public buildings and places throughout the country.

In Michigan, government-commissioned art projects ranged from intricate carvings and murals in Detroit’s Brodhead Armory to beautiful multi-colored tile stone fountains and wall decorations in a school in Ontonagon. Although many of the easel paintings and other works have been lost, most of Michigan’s murals remain, including works in Dearborn and Munising schools and the Water Conditioning Plant in Lansing.

Most conspicuous among the artworks in public buildings were the forty-eight works of art in Michigan’s post offices commissioned by the Section of Fine Arts of the U.S. Treasury Department. Forty-three still may be viewed. Artists submitted samples of their art and were chosen on the basis of the quality of their work. (This differs from most of the federal art projects where need rather than talent was the criterion.)

Depression art, particularly post office murals, often conjures up images of toiling muscular figures with grim “Depression” expressions. But murals were surprisingly varied with broad esthetic, ideological and political roots.

Esthetically, the artists’ portrayal of American landscapes and rural scenes characterized a type of art dominant in the 1930s called American Scene painting. Government officials insisted this was the most appropriate style for public art: most artists concurred. Since the late 1920s, American cultural thought had emphasized national influences. Artists looked down on European modernist movements as neither authentic nor American.

Ideologically, the murals reflected the idealism and nationalism dominating even the privation of the Depression. There were few gloomy themes dealing with soup lines of unemployed workers. Although the government did not wish to produce tax-supported critical or controversial public at, the era’s idealism transcended these constrictions. Farm scenes pictured bountiful harvest and contented families. In the Paw Paw Post Office’s Bounty (1940) by Carlos Lopez, huge, stylized fruits, vegetables and grain dominate, while on the right, music, dancing and revelry take place against a background bunting. No Michigan post office murals reflected the era’s economic catastrophe.

Local history themes were a part of the nationalism of thirties art, as artists and writers delved into American history in search of the stability and continuity of the past. The 1941 Frankfort Post Office mural shows a 1923 shipwreck that occurred a mere fifty feet from the location of the post office itself. In the Dearborn Post Office, Rainey Bennett avoided emphasizing the Ford plant as Dearborn’s raison d’etre by painting Conrad Ten Eyck’s Tavern on the Chicago Road (1938) in which he conveyed the hospitality of the town’s 1820 tavern by using high color and lush vegetation. Other pioneering themes were Early Settlers (1939) by Frank Cassara for the East Detroit Post Office, Laying the Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad (1939) by Jean Paul Slusser for Blissfield, and Birmingham’s The Pioneering Society’s Picnic (1942) by Carlos Lopez. Lopez’s The Plymouth Trail (1938) in the Plymouth Post Office shows a horse drawn passenger and mail delivery carriage plus buildings from early Plymouth. Vladimir Rousseff covered all four of the Iron Mountain Post Office walls with a complete historical scenario—Fight with Indians, Stage Coach, Ferry Boat Moving West, Washing & Carrying Gold and Watching an Early Train (1937). Michigan Indians are part of the Marquette Post Office’s Father Marquette Exploring the Shores of Lake Superior (1938) by Dewey Albinson and of Lumen Winter’s Pony Express (1938) in the Fremont Post Office. In a relief in the Munising Post Office, Harbor of Munising, Chippewa Legend (1939), Hugo Robus delightfully depicts the legend of the creation of the islands of Lake Superior. The Chippewa demi-god and his animal companions were exploring the shore for a place to make a home when a storm blew up. A beaver brought up lake mud, which the Indian scattered to become the harbor and islands into which they could all safely ride. The beaver lies on his side, paws in the air, exhausted after his efforts. For the East Lansing Post Office, Henry Bernstein painted America’s First Agricultural College (1938), relying on assistance from the college’s professors of agriculture to properly represent the Michigan produce in the center of the mural.

The political roots of Depression mural art went beyond the need to provide artists with an income. Government art officials and others believed that mural art communicated most effectively with the public. American artworks traditionally resided in private galleries or homes. Thus murals and sculpture placed in schools or post offices were often the first original works of art townspeople viewed. Proponents of federal art programs pointed to the socially conscious Mexican mural movement in persuading President Franklin D. Roosevelt that such a renaissance of public art could occur in the United States. Mexican muralist Diego Rivera’s 1932 Detroit Institute of Arts murals of River Rouge inspired Michigan muralists, as did the works of Thomas Hart Benton. Viewing the mural as an effective vehicle for an American art that should consist of representational American scenes, Benton advocated an art that could be understood and enjoyed by the general public. The post office mural typified this belief in visible, accessible art.

Townspeople had many reactions to the large works placed in their post offices. Most of the art was extremely well received in Michigan, partly because government officials carefully selected pleasing and noncontroversial designs. However, some murals created controversy. For example, the sculpture The Cherry Picker (1941) was removed from the Traverse City Post Office due to its crude portrayal of a Mexican cherry picker. (It is now in a private collection.) In Lincoln Park, Hauling in the Net (1940) by Zoltan Sepeshy was taken down because its fishing theme was considered inappropriate for the area’s setting. (The damaged mural is now on Beaver Island.) However, throughout the years very few works were painted over, and local historical societies and others saved many when post offices were torn down.

Artists wishing to participate in the post office program competed for the larger, better-paying commissions. Those not chosen but presenting work that was liked were offered jobs in smaller post offices. A certain percentage of the commissions went to artists who resided in the state in question or nearby states. Thus, although artists from all over the country did the post office artwork in Michigan, Midwestern artists executed many. Examples are Cattle Auction (1942) by Frank Cassara, of Detroit, in the Sandusky Post Office; Romance of Monroe (1938) by Ralph Hendricksen, then of Chicago; Ten Eyck’s Tavern on the Chicago Road by Rainey Bennett, of Chicago; and Midland’s Chemistry (1942) by Henry Bernstein, of Detroit.

Artists were encouraged to select subjects from local history, the postal service, or the local scene. Abstract art was discouraged. Government officials carefully monitored each artist’s work, offering criticism and suggestions each step of the way, and paying the artists only after each step from initial sketch to final installation received official approval. Boris Mestchersky, for example, was criticized for painting wheat that “under no stretch of the imagination” could grow “as high as you have indicated it,” for the Eaton Rapids Post Office. Robert Lepper was advised that it was not good design to have a moccasin appear to come out of the picture in his Grayling Post Office mural. In Plymouth, a painted version of an 1864 Detroit Free Press had to be eliminated since it violated a 1932 ruling stating that “advertisements, circulars, placards, etc., relating to any private business . . . shall not be placed upon the walls or elsewhere for public exhibition within post offices . . .”Elements of color and design were also carefully watched.

This process created much red tape for often destitute artists anxiously awaiting approval for payment. Carlos Lopez wrote politely asking if his payments had “been mailed and have gone astray,” and Lumen Winter (Fremont Post Office) wondered, “now that the painting has been installed, I believe the final payment is in order, is it not?” Average payment was $700. The money was set aside from the building costs of the post office. A larger commission, such as the North Western Branch in Detroit, could pay an artist $2,800 while a smaller one, such as Clare, paid $500.

Although officials in Washington encouraged artists to first visit the post office and talk with the postmaster and local people, some artists never set foot in Michigan or the town where the post office existed. Joe Lasker of New York City executed an authentic mining scene called Copper Mining in Calumet (1941) based strictly on the research on mining he did in New York libraries. William Gropper completed his mural Automobile Industry (1941) for the Detroit North Western Branch Post Office without ever seeing the Ford Motor assembly line where he was not allowed due to his leftist leanings. Such artists completed the murals in their studios on canvas; then workers glued the work to the post office wall, avoiding erecting a scaffold and disrupting post office traffic to paint directly on the wall.

Although there was little artistic license in regard to general style and subject, the murals and sculpture in Michigan’s post offices vary considerably in execution. No two farm scenes are alike. David Fredenthal combined themes of the farm and the postal service in Mail on the Farm (1941) for the Caro Post Office while James Calder in Waiting for the Mail (1940) in the Grand Ledge Post Office painted mail being delivered to a farm family via a Model A Ford. Howell’s Post Office displays yet another farm environment with barn, furrowed land, animals and a man plowing in the background and a group of figures receiving their mail and socializing in the foreground.

Local industries appear in such murals as Belding’s The Belding Brothers and Their Silk Industry (1943) by Marvin Beerbohm, Eaton Rapids’ Industry and Agriculture (1939) by Boris Mestchersky, and Fenton’s Change of Shift (1942) by Jerome Snyder (above May).

Lumbering themes in Clare, Grayling, Manistique and Lowell range from the carefully composed mural in Grayling by Robert Lepper, who at eighteen was proud to have outdone his teachers at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh by receiving a government art commission, to the expressive, wildly swinging axes of David Fredenthal’s loggers painting in 1941 for the Manistique Post Office. Allen Thomas’s striking Mail Arrives in Clare, 1871 (1937) shows logging and mail delivery in a composition with strongly delineated verticals and horizontals.

Not all of Michigan’s Depression murals are masterpieces, but many are of excellent quality and remain a symbol of both the community in which they reside and of the federal government’s concern for the cultural life of the nation during the Depression. In them, a truly democratic art was born, whereby artists and viewers alike did not have to live in or travel to artistic centers such as New York City or Europe to experience contemporary art on a daily basis.

Today, postmasters still receive comments about the artwork in their buildings, both of admiration and of criticism for such things as factory workers “bugging” eyes in the Fenton mural. For a comparatively small federal financial expenditure in the 1930s, a harvest of public art was reaped, the magnitude of which will probably never be repeated. Art for the people created during the Depression was truly that. It still belongs to us all.