University at Albany (SUNY): Dewey Library Murals – Albany NY

Description

University at Albany, State University of New York’s Hawley Hall was opened in September 1909 as the Auditorium, one of three buildings (with the Science and Administration Buildings) on the original Western Avenue (Downtown) Campus. On December 12, 1927 the Auditorium was named Hawley Hall.

The building served as an auditorium and gymnasium until February 1933 when the first floor was opened as the College library. Since the Great Depression the Dewey Graduate Library, at the University at Albany Downtown Campus, features numerous murals designed by William Brantley Van Ingen (1858‐1955), “a student of John LaFarge and Louis Comfort Tiffany, as part of a grant provided by the WPA (Works Progress Administration), a New Deal agency, from 1937‐1938. Van Ingen previously created murals for the Panama Canal Administration Building, the United States Mint in Philadelphia, and the Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson building in Washington, D.C.”