Monroe High Educational Campus Library Mural – Bronx NY

Description

A 2004 New York Times article by Seth Kugel describes a “…metallic-looking mural of four chiseled men working on an oil rig… affixed to the back wall of a dank, cluttered storage room under a school library in Soundview, the Bronx.” Domenico Mortellito completed the mural in 1934 with funding from the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Domenico Mortellito’s daughter, Adria Mortellito Peterson, told the New York Times that the mural depicts “…the whole machine age, coming out of the Depression.” Tom Porton, a teacher and coordinator of student activities on the campus where the mural is located, suspects that mural’s industrial look and subject matter was due to the fact that the library where the mural was located, had once been a shop for industrial arts classes. As of 2004, the Public Art for Public Schools program planned to restore the mural. Once restored the the school intended to move the mural to the main entrance of the campus (The New York Times). The Living New Deal does not know if this move occurred.