- City:
- New Orleans, LA
- Site Type:
- Art Works, Murals
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Started:
- 1941
- Artist:
- Edward Schoenberger
- Quality of Information:
- Good
- Marked:
- No
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
An exceptional mural, “History of Printing,” was painted by Edward Schoenberger for the Canal Street Branch Library in New Orleans. The library building was a pre-existing structure from the early 1900s, in a quirky Caribbean style of uncertain origins. The mural occupies the entire back wall of the main room on the second floor and is approximately 30 feet long by 10 feet high.
The branch library has been closed, probably after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the building sold to private owners. The mural was covered and damaged after the building was repurposed, but has been restored to its full glory (by whom is not clear). The building is currently (2018) functioning as a yoga studio, so it is not a public space. Nevertheless, the person in charge the day we visited was very welcoming and clearly proud of the mural.
The mural is shown in four photographs, along with one full view from across the large room in which it hangs.
Source notes
Carolyn Kolb, "The Feds' Brush with Art," New Orleans Magazine, October 2009
Doug MacCash, "Mural uncovered in former beauty school," New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 4, 2009
Site originally submitted by Adrian Seward on September 13, 2016.
Additional contributions by Richard A Walker.
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S Paterson
That building was a Carnegie Library built in 1911. By the late 1950s, it was operating as a secretarial school, so it closed as a library about 50 years before Katrina.