Start Year: 1939

This 5' x 10' oil-on-canvas mural entitled “How Happy Was the Occasion” was painted by Mary M. Purser in 1939. Her husband, Stuart Purser, painted murals for the Carrolton, AL; Leland, MS; Ferriday & Gretna, LA post offices. "Mary May Purser was commissioned for $470 to create a mural for Clarksville, Arkansas on the basis of competent designs submitted in the Vicksburg, Post Office Competition. Purser visited Clarksville in search of appropriate subject matter and spoke with the local postmaster. The main source of information for the mural came from Ella Molloy Langford's book, History of Johnson County, Arkansas: The first...

This Section-funded 4.5' x 12' oil on canvas mural entitled “Cotton Growing, Manufacture and Export” was painted for the Dardanelle post office by Ludwig Mactarian in 1939. “Ludwig Mactarian was commissioned for $660 to create a mural for Dardanelle, Arkansas on the basis of merit of the design in the San Antonio, Texas Competition. Mactarian was unable to visit Dardanelle due to financial restrictions. He thus relied on images he found in the New York Public Library and on correspondence with Dardanelle.s postmaster, Joe D. Gault. From these sources, Mactarian was able to compose a mural that portrayed the importance of...

The 0il-on-canvas mural "Kansas Stream" was painted by Birger Sandzen in 1939 with funding from the Treasury Section of Fine Arts.

This mural "The Harvest" was originally painted for what was then the Abbeville post office by Louis Raynaud in 1939. Presently, it hangs in the Abbeville Museum downtown. "The Harvest shows men and women harvesting cotton, sugarcane, and muskrat hides.  Men gather cotton and tend the cane.  A couple prepares hides for drying.  Two male children do what children have always done when they were not pressed into premature labor to support mill families or sit for younger siblings-they hang around.  A man prepares to cut a clump of cane, and one woman waits, holding a bucket of water for the...

The oil-on-canvas mural entitled “Cotton Pickers” was painted by Caroline Rohland in 1939. "The mural was removed to the Postmaster’s office when the lobby was renovated in the 1970′s. He is glad to show it off.”

This oil-on-canvas mural entitled "Taking Toll" (a.k.a. “Indians Demanding Wagon Toll”) was painted in 1939 by Leo J. Beaulaurier.  The work is installed above the Postmaster's door at the Langdon, North Dakota post office. According to a local newspaper story, this was the first Federal building artwork to be sponsored by the Treasury Department's Section of Fine Arts program in the state; the local Postmaster was quoted as saying that Langdon was the smallest city in the nation to be "granted a mural." (The source for this information is an un-cited article, dated Oct. 12, 1939, included in the National...

Jacob Getlar Smith painted three oil-on-canvas murals for the Main Street Maude R. Toulson Federal Building and Post Office in 1939:  "Salisbury," “Stage at Byrd’s Inn” and “Cotton Patch.” From an onsite plaque: “Jacob Getlar Smith was born February 3, 1898 in New York City, and died there in October 1958. He studied at the National Academy of Design in New York, as well as independently in Europe. He exhibited at institutions around the country, including the Carnegie Institute, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Virginia Museum of...

The oil-on-canvas mural "Stampeding Buffaloes Stopping the Train" was painted by Eldora Lorenzini in 1939. "Eldora Lorenzini studied at the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center. She matched the color of the buffalo hides to the wood framing the doorway to the postmaster's office, making the mural a part of the endwall of the lobby. She did other murals in Colorado and Washington, D.C. and worked as a decorator, printmaker, and illustrator. In Nebraska, a commission for painting a mural in a post office ranged from $570.00 to $1,300. Eldora received $670.00 for this mural. She lived at the YWCA until she...

This oil-on-canvas mural entitled "1848, Fort Kearny, Protectorate on the Overland Trail, 1871" was painted by William E.L. Bunn, 1939. "Minden has the distinction of having perhaps the most ambitious and thoroughly researched of all of the post office murals in Nebraska. The mural, entitled "1848, Fort Kearny, Protectorate on the Overland Trail, 1871", depicts the history of Fort Kearney and the many people who passed through it. When the mural was commissioned, historic Fort Kearny was no longer in existence. Therefore, Bunn recreated a scene of fort buildings and representations of the travelers who passed by the fort through historic photographs,...

This was and remains Smithfield's first permanent town hall building. It is one of the most prominent buildings in Georgiaville, the part of town the building is in. A local historical society report describes the structure: "Smithfield Town Hall 1939: A large, red brick, Colonial Revival GE structure with a 2-story, 5-bay, central pavilion containing a central pedimented entry and fronted by a 2-story pedimented portico. At the sides are 1-story, 2-bay ells, with hipped roofs, set back from the facade of the main block. Other noteworthy architectural details indude a cupola and 12-over-12-paned windows, those in the sides with round heads....