Roxboro Sites

The historic post office building in Roxboro, North Carolina was constructed during the Great Depression with Treasury Department funds. The building, which opened in 1937, has since been re-purposed. A New Deal mural still hangs in the lobby of the building, which now houses the Piedmont Community College Educational Opportunity Center.

New York artist Allan Gould completed this oil on canvas mural, "Gathering Tobacco," measuring 5'8" by 13'7", in 1938, on a $650 contract from the Treasury Section of Fine Arts. From historian Anita Price Davis' 2008 book New Deal Art in North Carolina: The Murals, Sculptures, Reliefs, Paintings, Oils and Frescoes and Their Creators: "Artist Allan D. Gould drew on Roxboro's agricultural prowess for the mural he prepared for the Roxboro Post Office. His mural Gathering Tobacco shows workers stripping, tying, and grading tobacco outside a barn where tobacco is dried" (p. 146). The mural still hangs in the lobby...