A Useful History in Paint: New Deal Murals for Washington’s Procurement Building

Abstract

A Useful History in Paint: New Deal Murals for Washington's Procurement Building SARA A. BUTLER The architectural section ofHarold Weston's 19361938 murals for the lobby of the former Procurement Building in Washington, D.C., honored not only the Office of the Supervising Architect but also the agency's embattled head, Louis Simon (figs. 1 and 2) .1 Formed in the mid-nineteenth century as the architectural arm of the Treasury Department, the Office was at the onset of the Depression still charged with the design of many types of federal buildings, including post offices, customhouses , and courthouses. The Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture, a wholly new administrative unit created during the New Deal, was placed within Simon's agency.2 The Section, as it came to be known, produced murals and sculpture for the buildings designed by the Office. Collaboration of the entrenched and conservative bureaucratic architects with the activist fine arts administrators created a partnership that was potentially both volatile and productive. Despite the friction, Supervising Architect Simon, under fire from out-of-work private architects seeking commissions from the federal government in the 1930s, turned to his co-workers, the employees of the Treasury art program, to promote his architectural institution. Weston's Procurement Building murals were only one of the thousands of art projects commissioned by the government during the 1930s and 1940s, but no other New Deal project carried a message so professionally momentous or vitally urgent to the agency that sponsored and housed it. The structures depicted in Weston's paintings offered a carefully composed history of government architecture that was more than simply an outpouring of institutional pride. The murals presented a forceful case that Simon's tenure as Supervising Architect had produced buildings that were the rightful heirs to a grand tradition and, more importantly, that his imperiled Office should survive. Fig. 1. Harold Weston, Architecture Under the Government, Old and New, South Wall, Seventh Street Lobb)', Procttrement Building, Washington, D. C., 1936-1938. "Photos, Works," Box 5 of 7, Photographs, Papers ofHamld Weston, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. SARA BUTLER 35 Fig. 2. Diagram of the architectural panels ofthe Weston murals Projects included in "ATchitecture Under the Government, New" 1. Courthouse, New York, NY 2. Post Office, Courthouse and Customhouse, Albany, NY 3. Roseland Substation Post Office, Chicago, IL 4. Mint, San Francisco, CA 5. Post Office, Dover, NJ 6. National Archives, Washington, D. C. 7. Federal Trade Commission Building, Washington, D.C. 8. Post Office and Courthouse, Knoxville, TN 9. Post Office, Chicago, IL 10. Central Heating Plant, Washington, D. C. 11. Post Office and Courthouse, Chattanooga, TN 12. Courthouse, Boston, MA Sketch by author Weston's twenty-two-panel set of murals announced the creation of a new government agency, the Procurement Division. Organized in three sections, the images diagrammed with apparently dispassionate detachment the internal organization of the new administrative unit. Six panels over the elevators opposite the entrance, titled Modern Construction, outlined the phases behind the production of federal architecture (fig. 3). The two groupings on the side walls of the lobby, Architecture Under the Government, Old and New and Supply Branch ofProcurement, identified the two components of the Procurement Division and explained the vast array of tasks coordinated under its umbrella (figs. 1 and 4) .3 The paintings depicting the activities of the Office of 36 ARrus Projects included in "Architecture Under the Government, Old" 1. Post Office and Courthouse, Williamsport, PA 2. Post Office, Portland, ME 3. Post Office, Patterson, NJ 4. First Post Office, New York, NY 5. Washington Monument, Washington, D. C. 6. Treasury Building Washington, D.C. 7. Executive Office Building (Old State, War and Navy Building), Washington, D. C. 8. Post Office, Marietta, OH 9. Old Post Office and CouTthouse, Chicago, IL the Supervising Architect on the south wall balanced and, therefore, were equated with those devoted to the work of the Supply Branch on the north wall. In the architectural grouping, two large panels surmounting seven small predellas illustrated both the process and product of creating federal architecture in the 1930s. While the predellas detailed the daily workings of the Office, the upper images exhibited the output...