The New Deal & Post Office Murals
Written by Michaela Rife, May 2023
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the United States in March 1933, he inherited a nation suffering through economic, environmental, and social disasters. Through the New Deal, Roosevelt’s government aimed to solve the many issues plaguing the country. In addition to targeted reforms of the banking industry, for example, the New Deal also put Americans to work through programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps and created social services like the Rural Electrification Administration, which funded several Michigan utility companies. One of the most exciting features of the New Deal was that culture was understood to be just as important as industry and infrastructure. As Harry Hopkins said of supporting artists through New Deal relief programs “Hell, they’ve got to eat just like other people.” Hopkins led multiple important New Deal programs, including the Works Progress Administration (1935-1938) popularly known as the WPA. In Ann Arbor, we are surrounded by the legacy of the WPA from the sheds at the Farmers Market to the remnants of a Paul Bunyan mural in the Dental School. (Some buildings on the U-M campus were also constructed with Public Works Administration funds.) The WPA supported the arts across the country, largely through “Federal Project Number One,” so it’s not a surprise that most people know the phrase “WPA art.” But, did you know that the more than one thousand New Deal murals in post offices across the United States were not funded by the WPA? These murals, many of which survive today, were products of programs housed under the Treasury Department!
Thanks to the celebrity of Mexican muralists Diego Rivera (see Michigan Mural History), José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siquieros, the medium was popular across North America in the 1930s. In May 1933, artist George Biddle (a childhood friend of Roosevelt’s) wrote to the president: “The Mexican artists have produced the greatest national school of mural painting since the Italian Renaissance. Diego Rivera tells me that it was only possible because Obregón allowed Mexican artists to work on plumbers’ wages…”1 Biddle continued his letter by enthusiastically arguing for artists’ potential to convey the spirit of the New Deal in public art if supported by the government. Roosevelt forwarded the letter to the Treasury Department, which oversaw the construction of federal buildings, and a new strand of public art programs was born. The project started with the short-lived (five months) Public Works of Art Project, which was the seed for larger programs including the non-Treasury Federal Project Number One and the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture. The latter was the first iteration of what would become the Treasury Section of Fine Arts and finally the Section of Fine Arts, all most simply called “the Section.” These programs ran from October 1934 to July 1943 largely under chief administrator Edward Bruce, an artist and Treasury Department lawyer. Over those nine years, the Section spent approximately $1.8 million on over one thousand murals and 268 sculptures.2 The state of Michigan received almost fifty of these artworks, from Chelsea to Calumet. (see Map)
Unlike artists working for the WPA, artists receiving Section mural commissions did not have to qualify for relief rolls, meaning anyone could submit to anonymous competitions. Typically, artists learned about large national and regional competitions through the Section’s bulletin, edited by art critic Forbes Watson. Smaller commissions were then awarded on the basis of the quality of designs submitted to these larger anonymous competitions. For example, artist Walter Vladimir Rousseff, a Bulgarian immigrant living in Chicago, won the commission for five murals in Iron Mountain, Michigan, from his submission to the Washington, D.C., Post Office Department building competition. In the September 1938 bulletin, the Section announced a competition for the East Detroit Post Office (now Eastpointe) open to artists “resident of, or attached to” Michigan and Indiana; based on this competition, qualifying artists could also be offered murals in Alma, Blissfield, Howell, and St. Clair. The East Detroit commission was awarded to Frank Cassara, who also worked for the Michigan WPA and later spent decades as an art professor at the University of Michigan. In addition to announcing competitions, the Section used the bulletins to communicate with their artists on everything from possible themes to the best recipe for the adhesive that attached completed canvases to post office walls. These bulletins can tell us a lot about the Section’s values. For example, though Mexican muralism was the most obvious inspiration for New Deal public art, Section administrators repeatedly referenced the Italian Renaissance as their primary inspiration. Similarly, Bulletins reveal the Section’s preferred themes, including the history of the post, local histories, and regional industries—all designed to reassure the country during a difficult time.
As with any work of public art, we must ask who exactly is reassured. Certainly, white Americans often found versions of their own stories like pioneers in covered wagons or quaint farming communities. For people of color, Section murals were less reassuring, often ignoring their stories or resorting to stereotypes. There are some exceptions, the Section funded murals by Native American artists in Oklahoma and Idaho, for example. Still, while New Deal scholars have argued that the anonymous competitions opened up commissions for women artists (150 of the 850 muralists were women), the same opportunities did not extend to racialized artists—only three Section artists were Black.3 In Michigan, Section post office murals largely focused on white characters, with the exception of Chippewa Legend, a relief in Munising, and Marquette’s mural that featured the town’s namesake in a canoe with two (stereotyped depictions of) Native figures.
We can learn about the histories of these murals from the extensive Section of Fine Arts files in the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. Researchers register at the facility to examine New Deal documents that range from official letters, newspaper clippings, and even canvas samples. Michigan’s Section history is spread across four boxes and divided into fifty-one manila folders. Most folders start the same, with official documents and memos concerning the construction of new post offices and the reservation of funds for a mural or sculpture. For many of Michigan’s murals, researchers will find letters from the Section’s Superintendent, Edward Rowan, inviting an artist to undertake a commission based on a well-regarded entry to one of the larger anonymous competitions. Some files are thin, with only a few official letters, the artist’s contract, and a newspaper clipping confirming a successful installation. Others are thick, sometimes from controversy if locals contested a muralist or from the Section’s critical feedback about a mural’s style and subject matter. After receiving a commission, artists were required to submit evidence of progress to the Section, like sketches and photographs of the cartoon, before they would receive installations of their payment. Projects were often delayed as artists worked to incorporate critical feedback from the Section. Some files contain letters from artists frustrated by slow payments even after they reached project milestones. Once the mural had been completed and installed, artists sent a final photograph to the Section and the local postmaster confirmed a successful installation, releasing their final payment. These photographs and the images of the sketches that artists submitted (held in a different area of the National Archives) help to tell the story of individual mural sites. But the story doesn’t end there. Today, many post office murals remain in their original location even if the building’s purpose has changed (see Plymouth), though some have moved to new locations (see Chelsea) or museums.
- Barbara Haskell, “América: Mexican Muralism and Art in the United States, 1925-1945,” Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945 (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 2020), 28. ↩
- “Treasury Section of Fine Arts (1934),” The Living New Deal, accessed May 8, 2023, https://livingnewdeal.org/glossary/section-fine-arts-1934-1943/. ↩
- Marlene Park and Gerland E. Markowitz, Democratic Vistas: Post Offices and Public Art in the New Deal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 8. ↩