Hidden in Plain Sight : A brief guide to Los Angeles’ forgotten public artworks

Several decades before SPARC began to decorate the public landscape, a legendary group of artists labored under several other sets of initials: WPA, FAP, PWA, PWAP and TRAP.

They were the New Deal artists, designers and artisans who were put to work on public art projects by the government during the Great Depression. Along the way, these programs not only provided a subsistence wage for the participants but also generated a massive body of work, some of which is now among the most highly regarded art of the period.

But there was a time when the works commissioned by New Deal programs--most famously the Works Progress (later Projects) Administration’s Federal Art Project (1935-43), but also the Public Works Administration, Public Works of Art Project, Treasury Relief Art Project and Section of Fine Arts--were sometimes considered of little worth or even dangerous. Most of the art work dealt with nonpolitical issues. But during the coldest of the Cold War years in the late 1940s and 1950s, some pieces were removed, covered up or destroyed because of their social-issues content. Murals by painter Leo Katz, which depicted scenes of war, were removed from the Frank Wiggins Trade School (now Los Angeles Trade Tech College) because they were considered depressing by school administrators.

Even the government lists of WPA/FAP art were destroyed, said Francis O’Connor, who has written several books and articles on New Deal art.

“They didn’t think anyone would want to look at all the ‘communist’ art,” O’Connor said, speaking from his home in New York. The only complete records that seemed to have survived were those kept by the Treasury Department on art commissioned for post offices.

There has long been talk of the government sponsoring a study to hunt down and re-catalogue the works, but so far, O’Connor said, San Francisco is the only major city to have compiled a list of all its public art from the New Deal period.

The following is a list of some of the New Deal projects that can still be viewed on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley:

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BEVERLY HILLS: Inside the sumptuous, Italian Renaissance-style Beverly Hills Post Office, 469 N. Crescent Dr., is a striking reminder of the hard days of the Depression. The six-panel “Construction-PWA” mural by Charles Kassler shows workers high atop a construction site and then standing in line to collect from the “PWA Paymaster.” The whole effect is optimistic, though, with workers in the last panel gathering at the street fruit market to spend their hard-won wages.

Two other Kassler panels depict mail delivery by Pony Express and airplane.

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BURBANK: From the days when government buildings were designed to have a lot of personality and even charm comes the Burbank Post Office downtown branch, 135 E. Olive Ave., which sports a two-panel mural saluting the city’s most famous industries--movie making and aeronautics. Entitled “People of Burbank,” the 1940 work by Barse Miller fits in nicely with the building’s tile and wrought-iron Spanish motif.

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CANOGA PARK: Helen Lundeberg, one of the best-known of local New Deal artists, designed the large murals that hang on the outside of the Canoga Park High School assembly hall at the corner of Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Vanowen Street. The mural traces the development of scientific discoveries from prehistoric through modern times. “We used a process called Petracrome,” said Lundeberg, speaking from her home in Los Angeles. “I did the color design and outlined the figures in the panels. Then we had a department that worked with cement and crushed stone and then poured that stuff in to make the murals.”

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CULVER CITY: George Samerjan’s eerie, somewhat surrealistic depiction of a movie studio back lot is one of the most unusual of the post office commissions, which tended to favor realistic renderings, said Marlene Park and Gerald Markowitz, authors of a book-length study of post office art, “Democratic Vistas.”

The signed 1941 work hangs above the stationmaster’s door in the Culver City Post Office gateway branch, 9942 Culver Blvd.

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HOLLYWOOD: One of the most famous of all New Deal artworks is the 1939 fountain, topped off by the “Muse of Music” sculpture, at the gateway to the Hollywood Bowl. Sculptor George Stanley’s monumental work, seen daily by thousands of people driving along Highland Boulevard near the ramp onto the Hollywood Freeway, was fashioned from 28 tons of Lucerne silver granite. In addition to the famed harp-playing, 14-feet high “Muse,” Stanley created more diminutive sculpted tributes to drama and dance for lower levels of the fountain.

At the entrance to the science building of Hollywood High School on Sunset Boulevard near Highland Avenue is an 11-foot cylindrical pylon bearing the message “The Honorable Achieve.” The cast stone work by sculptor Merrell Gage depicts students engaged in various school activities, including sports, science lab and flirting.

The Hollywood Post Office, 1615 Wilcox Ave., has a 1937 wood carving by Gordon Newell and Sherry Pericolas. A small work by post office art standards, it’s an affectionate, stylized portrait of a cowboy with two horses.

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SAN FERNANDO: The San Fernando Post Office at 308 S. Maclay Ave. has a much larger Newell-Pericolas work in wood. The upside-down, U-shaped carving includes seven panels dominated by the U.S. Postal Service’s eagle symbol. The other panels in the work, called “Transportation of the Mail,” appropriately depict a truck, ship, horse, airplane, train and stagecoach.

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SANTA MONICA: In the courtyard of the McKinley School at 1330 Chelsea Ave. is a sweet, realistic sculpture of a boy and girl reading a book together. Called “Story Book Land” by its creator, Stefan De Vriendt, the cast stone work on a green tile pylon was recently restored by the parents of one of the children attending the elementary school.

The gleaming Santa Monica City Hall, 1685 Main St., designed by David Parkinson and Joseph Estep, is recognized as one of the prime examples of the architectural style known, appropriately, as PWA Moderne. The Public Works Administration partially funded its construction, and PWA officials were on hand at the 1939 dedication ceremonies.

Famed Los Angeles artist Stanton Macdonald-Wright created the grand design for the asbestos fire curtain at the Santa Monica High School auditorium, 601 Pico Blvd. Entitled “Entrance of the Gods Into Valhalla,” the 25- by 40-foot work still hangs above the stage. The artist also is credited with creating the huge tile work in the auditorium lobby that depicts Native Americans greeting Norse sailors coming ashore.

On the exterior of the school auditorium is a cast stone relief, “Comedy, Tragedy, Music,” designed by Olinka Hrdy with the letters FAP and WPA incorporated into the design. In the principal’s office there is a small unsigned wood carving that is affixed with a metal “WPA” label.

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VENICE: The Helen Lundeberg mural in the library at Venice High School, 13000 Venice Blvd., is noted not only as an artistic but as a technical achievement. “The first murals put up by the art project in schools were on canvas,” Lundeberg said. “When they were put on the walls they spoiled the acoustic qualities of acoustic plaster. We worked and worked to come up with a paint mix that could be used to paint directly on the plaster. The Venice mural was the first of many done that way.”

The two-panel mural, which is out of the path of direct sunlight and is well-preserved, shows scenes from California history.

The Venice Post Office, 1601 Main St., sports one of O’Connor’s favorite New Deal works. “It’s one of the few examples of social realism in a post office mural,” he said. “The post office people tended to be rather conservative. They just wanted realism.”

Edward Biberman’s oil-on-canvas “The Story of Venice” is dominated by a portrait of Abbot Kinney, who dreamed of creating an exotic resort to resemble the Northern Italian city of canals and gondolas. Surrounding him are scenes of the amusement park and oil drilling that once dominated Venice.