• Cedar Avenue Complex - Lancaster CA
    The Cedar Avenue Complex was constructed in 1938 with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA). It began life as a county civic center in Lancaster CA, forty years before that city was incorporated (1977).   It included a library, memorial hall, courthouse and sheriff's office, as well as an older jail from the 1920s.  The simple Art Moderne (Art Deco) design was by Los Angeles County architect Edward C. M. Brett.   The Cedar Avenue Complex was successfully nominated for listing on the National Register of Historic Places in the 1990s. The entire complex was renovated by the city in 2014 and...
  • Post Office - Lancaster CA
    The Lancaster post office was built in 1941 by the US Treasury Department, as indicated on the cornerstone.   It is a trim, one-story Art Moderne building of a familiar type of the post offices of the New Deal era – but with a distinctive tower at the NE corner.   The interior is virtually unchanged over time and includes a striking mural on the west wall by Jose Moya del Piño.
  • Post Office Mural - Lancaster CA
    The Lancaster CA post office contains a striking oil-on-canvas mural by Spanish-born painter Jose Moya del Pino, who moved to San Francisco in the 1930s and worked on the famous Coit Tower murals. It would have been commissioned, like all post office murals, by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts, and was installed when the post office was completed in 1941.  The mural is called "Hauling Water Pipe through Antelope Valley" and depicts a long mule-team hauling carts full of pipes through the Mojave Desert. This theme is quite distinctive compared to most historical murals showing scenes full of local notables...