Posted: 4/19/05
Post office mural was part of WPA project
By David Heiller
Argus News Editor
When you walk into the Caledonia Post Office, the first thing you are likely to see is that mural on the wall.
Itís hard to miss, both because of its 5x14-foot size, and because of its high quality of artistry.
It shows a farm scene, with three men in the back of a truck shoveling ear corn to pigs.
The mural was painted in the early 1940s by Edmund D. Lewandowski, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, artist, as part of a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project.
Depression-era artists like Lewandowski painted 1,200 murals and made about 400 sculptures for U.S. post offices, including at least 26 in Minnesota. Federal courthouses received murals too. The art was commissioned on a competitive basis from 1934-43 as part of a mandate to reserve one percent of federal construction funds for art.
The nearest other post office with a WPA mural is in Wabasha, Minnesota. It is a scene of some Indians on the Mississippi River.
Lewandowski was commissioned to paint the mural by the Section of Fine Arts of the United States Treasury Department, according to an undated Caledonia Argus article that local historian Angela Murphy thinks was written in 1942.
The Caledonia postmaster at the time, Charles Dorival, had suggested a farm scene as a theme for the painting the previous September. Dorival felt it ìdepicts the most general activity of farmers engaged in hog raising in this area,î the article states. ìColors dominant in the mural are of a green and yellow quality and were selected principally to portray the rich fertility of the land in the Caledonia region.î
Lewandowski had painted murals in post offices in Stoughton,Wisconsin, and Hamilton, Illinois. He was one of the best young artists in the Works Progress Administration government program, art critic Constance Rourke wrote in the New Republic.
Post office murals reflected the local way of life or history. For example, International Fallís post office has scenes of logging. St. Jamesí post office has Indians in two canoes, shooting at game and spearing fish. Chisholmís mural depicts the discovery of iron ore. Not all murals were popular. One in Washington DC depicted Indians scalping two naked women in an attack. One in Kellogg, Idaho that was never hung showed two miners carrying an injured miner on a stretcher.
There is no record of how much Lewandowski was paid. Margaret Martin, who painted the St. James mural, was paid $700, which is worth $9,535 today.
Lewandowski was born in 1914 in Milwaukee and died in 1998 in Rockhill, South Carolina. He had a long career, and is highly regarded by art critics. His early work stressed themes of heroic laborers like the men depicted in the Caledonia post office. That changed as he got older. His work evolved into what is called Precisionist, in which he painted flat, geometric and contrasting forms. He played a leading role in that movement. According to the West Bend (Wisconsin) Art Museum, ìHis crisp images of machine, harbors, industrial structures (grain elevators and bridges), rigid geometry and reverence for his subject are a lasting contribution in the field of Precisionism.î
Workers at the Caledonia Post Office said they sometimes get comments about the mural from non-local patrons. Clerk Laurie Berge recalled an English woman who liked it a lot.î She thought it was pretty cool.î
Local people tend to take it for granted, post office maintenance worker Gary Conway said. He added that the Caledonia Post Office is one of five WPA post offices that were built exactly the same, and all have murals. (Wabashaís is one of them.) Caledoniaís was built in 1939. The post office moved into it in 1941.
More on the WPA murals can be found at the website, wpamurals.com.
Editorís note: Thank you to Angela Murphy for finding background on Lewandowski and his mural.
Caledonia Argus
314 West Lincoln St.
P.O. Box 227
Caledonia, MN 55921-0227
507/724-3475
E-Mail: editor.argus@ecm-inc.com