All this fine art and stamps, too.
Several of Central Texas’ New Deal Post Office murals mark their 70th anniversary this year, and the program that created them is 75 years old. Now, more than three generations later, the art still speaks to thousands and binds communities together with brush strokes.
Still, time and neglect have taken tolls on some works, and local postal patrons frequently take ho-hum attitudes. Gatesville insurance man Bill Herridge grew fond of his town’s New Deal art when he moved to there more than 30 years ago. However, he feels the artwork is often ignored and unappreciated by postal patrons.
“Most people around here don’t even know it’s here,” he lamented. He hopes that maybe this anniversary will help draw more appreciation to the varied works dotting Central Texas.
Not in Bell County
Art historian Philip Parisi, author of “The Texas Post Office Murals: Art for the People,” agreed. “I think people have taken them for granted,” he said. “I originally wrote the book with the prospect of preserving them because they were being destroyed at a rapid rate. I had discovered pictures of them for the first time in an archive and saw how wonderful they were. I wanted to share the excitement.”
Bell County was never graced with these murals because the two biggest cities at the time – Temple and Belton – already had substantial post offices. However, smaller town such as Gatesville, Mart, Lampasas and Rockdale each got new post offices in 1937-38 and new murals by 1939-40. Although murals have been traditionally considered art painted directly on walls (like the Hamilton Post Office fresco), murals are now broadly defined as any medium that dominates a wall or ceiling.
Mistaken for projects by Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, the post office murals were actually created by artists working for the Section of Fine Arts. Nicknamed “The Section,” the program was established in 1934 and managed by the Procurement Division of the Treasury Department.
Francis Biddle, art collector and friend to FDR, suggested the program as a way to include jobs for fine artists. “Hell, they’ve got to eat just like other people,” he told the president, insisting that commissioning public art would “express in living monuments the social ideals that you are struggling to achieve.”
Variety of media
The plan worked. Overall, the federal program created more than 5,000 jobs for artists and produced about 225,000 works of art for post offices and other federal buildings. Central Texas post offices have a variety of media – from the Hamilton fresco to the extra long Lampasas oil on canvas and Waco’s wood sculptures to Bryan’s semi-circular terrazzo relief.
As a result, “The Section” took outstanding art worthy of galleries and museums and install them into the everyday lives of ordinary citizens – from big cities and small towns. The only requirement was that the post office had to have been built during the New Deal’s building boom. The government allocated 1 percent of new construction costs to commissioning a wide array art – paintings, sculptures and bas-reliefs. Life magazine on Dec. 12, 1939, featured a pictorial spread of 48 mural proposals, calling the art “mural America for rural Americans.”
Painting subjects vary widely, too, especially in Central Texas. For the Rockdale Post Office, Maxwell Starr chose to glorify Milam County’s varied mining and agricultural economy with “Industry in Rockdale.”
“People are always coming in from out of town to visit and take pictures. They comment how stricking it is,” said Rockdale postmistress Betty Malish. “They love how it shows the different occupations back in those times.” However, most Milam County tend to move past it without stopping to appreciate the art, she admitted.
Real and unreal landscapes
“The Section” screened its artists of all media for quality and reputation. Knowledge of the area was not mandatory. For example, Joe DeYong of California, who painted “Off to Northern Markets” for the Gatesville Post Office, had never been further east than Arizona and seemed unsure where Coryell County was.
Other artists were more fanciful, if not downright wrong in their images. Teague’s 1939 “Cattle Roundup” by Thomas Stell Jr. features mesas, saguaro cactus, vultures and armadillos in a surreal landscape, more suggestive of Arizona than East Texas.
By contrast, New York artist Ethel Edwards was knowledgeable about the Texas Panhandle and transformed her images to suit Lampasas citizens. She got a hearty reception when she personally presented her pastoral “Afternoon on a Texas Ranch” in 1940. Hamilton residents likewise were enchanted with Ward Lockwood’s joyful fresco, “Texas Rangers in Camp.” The Hamilton Herald Record newspaper raved: “Every Hamiltonian and every Texans who’s ever read a book, seen a movie, or listened to the tales their grandfathers told can appreciate [it]. “
More than 100 in Texas
The exact numbers of post office murals are not available. Of the estimated 1,116 post office murals commissioned throughout the United States between 1934 and 1942, Texas received 106, according to Parisi, who now lives in Logan, Utah.
Over the years, at least eight Texas murals were lost or destroyed; a few were saved; many more are in peril. A bulldozer destroyed the College Station post office and fresco in 1962. Although restored in the early 1990s, the fragile Hamilton fresco is flaking from the plaster walls. In Mineola, just north of Tyler in east Texas, the town rallied in 2001 to save its mural after the painting was torn from the wall, rolled up and stored in a dingy basement for 30 years.
For the communities receiving the works, the mural became important cultural symbols and tourist attractions. “The historical murals of the ‘30s linked the common people’s experience of the Depression years with tiny local events the people chose to ponder. They liked the common idea of coping with and transcending a catastrophic rupture in the progressive course of history with indigenous heroes, artifacts and durable legend,” wrote art historian Karal Ann Marling in her book, “Wall to Wall America: Post Office Murals in the Great Depression.”
Bessie Stribling, retired Mart postmistress, is more succinct about the town’s 1939 mural, “McLennan Looking for a Home” by Jose Aceves. Mart citizens admire the painting because it represents their local history, she added. “People come from out of town just to see our mural. They always stop and take pictures. They’re real proud of it, even after all these years.”
Preservation concerns
For Stribling, protecting the painting posed concerns. “It has never been restored and never has been off the wall since it was installed in 1939, but it’s in great condition,” she said. During her years as postmistress, she had windows repaired to protect it from moisture and other harmful elements.
“Unfortunately, many of these murals do need preservation and that will be possible only at the local level and only if people are interested in saving them,” added art historian Parisi. “The Postal Service is a business, after all. Considering the times we are in, that will be difficult. There’s no grant money. It’s going to have to be through a local effort.”
“Our town would be devastated if something happened to that painting,” Stribling said. “Everybody in the community just loves it. It’s a real symbol of our community. It just goes to show you that sponsorship of art is not money wasted.”
pbenoit@temple-telegram.com
