• Post Office (former) - Des Plaines IL
    What is now the "... Journal & Topics building served as Des Plaines’ main post office from 1941 to 1974. Even though the Des Plaines Post Office’s building had only been built in 1930, by 1938 the volume of mail handled by had increased enough to warrant a new, larger facility. Scouting the city for the ideal location, the Federal Works Agency of the Public Buildings Administration found it directly next door, at the corner of Graceland and Webford. The contract to build the $135,000 building was let on March 1, 1940 with a target opening date of January 1, 1941. In...
  • Post Office (former) Murals - Des Plaines IL
    The former Des Plaines post office and many other post offices, after having been commissioned by the WPA to create jobs, also lent their walls to the artists of the FAP, which commissioned around 1,200 murals and 300 sculptures for the public buildings. The citizens of Des Plaines and their post office got the work of James Michael Newell, born as James Erbin Newell in 1900 Carnegie, Pennsylvania2. Before his work in the FAP, Newell was a marine fighting in WW1 at the age of eighteen5. Afterwards, his colonel recommended him for a scholarship to study abroad in Paris, where he...