Completion Year: 1943

“Although the ROD Building was a municipal building, the District of Columbia's peculiar sovereignty status required that the federal government approve its construction, and that the Treasury Department Section of Fine Art play a major role in its art program… The Treasury Sections December 1, 1942 announcement of the ROD Building mural competition was a term paper-like, ten page document that required artists to submit their entries unsigned for anonymous judging… A press release announced that the winners wide geographic dispersion and almost equal female-male ratio, as well as the inclusion of accomplished African-American painter William Edouard Scott, proved the fairness of...

Between 1942 and 1943, Bartholomew de Mako created the mural "Justice" for Burbank City Hall under the auspices of the Works Projects Administration (WPA) Art Program. The mural is now displayed in the lobby of the City Attorney's Office. "Set against the background of the capitol in Washington D.C., we see justice holding the scales in her left hand and an American flag in the right. Beneath her are six figures representing the diverse group of citizens who benefit from our impartial system of jurisprudence. Recently restored, the brilliant pallette jumps off the canvas. Burbank officials are to be commended for...

Artist Hugo Ballin painted two murals for City Hall in Burbank, CA. Ballin likely received some funding from the Works Projects Administration (WPA) Art Project prior to its termination in 1943. Both murals were fully restored in 2001. "Burbank Industry" (8' x 24') is located in the City Hall rotunda. It is "a painting with multiple planes that marked the passage of time, each layer representing a phase in Burbank’s transformation from a small community of farmers to a center of film production to the capitol of the aviation industry. Although Burbank’s indigenous and Mexican past is notably absent from Ballin’s...

The Works Projects Administration (WPA) funded the construction of City Hall in Burbank, CA. Completed in 1943, the Moderne-style, reinforced concrete building was designed by architects William Allen and George Lutzi. "Outside, ornate sculpted panels depicting themes of peace, social order and technological progress soften the utilitarian concrete walls of two-story wings flanking a tower. Brass handrailings draw visitors up the steps and into an airy rotunda, brightly illuminated through a cast-concrete grill that forms a decorative facade for the tower. Inside, sound bounces readily across the marble floors and walls, but visitors talk and tread softly, as if in...