Published: May 09, 2009 11:57 pm      

Harrisburg museum delivers collection of post office art

SOMERSET — Customers visiting a post office to purchase stamps or mail a package should take a look around. There may be more there than mail slots.

Three post offices in the region house top-notch artwork created during and after the Great Depression about 75 years ago.

The Johnstown, Somerset and Meyersdale post offices are three of 79 statewide and 1,350 across the nation where walls are adorned with artwork stemming from President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal plan to revitalize the U.S. economy.

Many pieces from Pennsylvania post offices are featured in a photo exhibit at The State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg titled “A Common Canvas: Pennsylvania’s New Deal Post Office Murals.”

“You can squeeze a lot of history out of them,” said Curt Miner, senior curator at the museum.

“There is a story behind every one.”

The exhibit is open to the public and runs through May 17.

Two of the largest pictures in the collection are murals of trains and other forms of transportation on display at the Altoona post office. Another piece, a plaster relief of the Constitutional Convention, is from the Everett post office.

Also part of the exhibit is a richly colored, almost three-dimensional mural of farm life that hangs inside the Somerset post office.

Painted in 1941 at a cost of $1,300, the oil and canvas mural was restored in 2005 at a cost of $5,200, said Dallen Wordekemper, federal preservation officer for the U.S. Postal Service.

Meyersdale has a plaster relief of five workers titled “Harvesters at Rest.” It was created in 1940 at a cost of $700.

The work in Johnstown is a black, polished granite relief featuring two eagles.

It was installed in 1937 and cost $450, Wordekemper said.

The works were commissioned only for post offices under construction or renovation. Artists were paid 1 percent of the total project cost.

Pennsylvania originally had 88 pieces; nine have been lost due to a variety of reasons, Miner said.

Nationwide there originally were 1,200 murals and 300 sculptures.

Each was designed with community input and close scrutiny from the U.S. Treasury Department.

“They tried to make it a program that was important to that community,” Wordekemper said.

The process and final product were considered a step above other Works Progress Administration-era art projects commissioned for public schools, hospitals and county courthouses, Miner said.

Two WPA murals titled “Justice” and “Knowledge” hang in the second floor of Cambria County’s courthouse.

Of all the murals painted for Pennsylvania post offices, the one in Somerset stands out, Miner said.

“Somerset is the most controversial mural in our collection,” he said.

Artists’ sketches of the late-summer harvest scene sparked anger among some Somerset County Republicans who claimed the man behind two plow horses was J. Buehl Snyder, a New Deal Roosevelt Democrat.

The controversy prompted the Treasury Department to issue a policy that no artist could use an image of a living person.

“But I’m convinced it was him,” Miner said.

While the murals and reliefs have hung in post offices for 75 years and often are overlooked by daily customers, they continue to be a point of interest for many.

“We get an enormous response from the public,” Wordekemper said.

The public and postal employees serve as his eyes and ears, sending him regular e-mails on the condition of the pieces.