Uptown Post Office Murals
4850 N. Broadway, Chicago, IL 60640
The Uptown Post office was built by the Treasury Department in 1939 during the New Deal era.
As was common during the New Deal era, two murals were commissioned for the building by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts (“the Section”). Established artist Henry Varnum Poor (1897 - 1970) was selected for the commission. (Poor was the grandnephew of another Henry Varnum Poor, who founded the firm that eventually became Standard and Poor’s). Approximately 770 Illinois artists were put to work under the Section, and approximately 60 Illinois post offices have murals as a result.
Poor created multiple other New Deal-era murals, including at the Department of the Interior Building and 12 panels at the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, both in Washington, D.C., a ceramic tile mural at the Fresno, California, Post Office, and a series of frescoes at the Old Main Building at Pennsylvania State University. He was also a potter. Poor’s works are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum, among others.
New Deal-era art in public buildings often celebrated the history of the community or area in which a building stood. Poor chose to depict Chicago poet Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967) and Chicago architect Louis Sullivan (1856 - 1924). Sandburg had lived a mile west of the Post Office site, at 4646 N. Hermitage, from 1912-15 when he wrote his famous poem “Chicago” and the other poems that made up his collection Chicago Poems.
Both Sandburg and Sullivan created and popularized Modern styles in their respective disciplines and were associated with Chicago’s stunning civic growth and cultural bloom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The murals are painted on glazed ceramic tile. Poor’s depiction emphasizes the connection between Sandburg’s and Sullivan’s creative innovations and the Illinois and Chicago landscapes in which they worked and which inspired them.
Sandburg, who was born in Galesburg in western Illinois, is depicted standing under a bright sun, in a field of haystacks, alongside a farmer. By 1943, when the mural was painted, Sandburg had become known as a troubadour and collector of folk songs in addition to a poet, and he is depicted with a guitar. Across the top of the mural, Poor inscribed, “FROM THE SUN AND THE FRUITS OF THE BLACK SOIL, POETRY AND SONG SPRANG.”
Sandburg was still alive at the time, and he would live for another 24 years after being immortalized in mural form by Poor. He was Illinois Poet Laureate from 1962-1967.
Sullivan, who had died in poverty and alcoholism in 1924, is depicted here in a manner that memorializes the greatness and creativity of his architectural accomplishments in the late 19th century, especially as “the father of the skyscraper.” He is portrayed standing amid the walls and girders of an unfinished building, contemplating a model of his Schlesinger & Mayer Store (later the Carson, Pirie, Scott building) at 1 S. State Street (1899-1904) while workers around him erect I-beams and a steel mill in the distance produces them. Across the top of the mural, Poor inscribed, “OUT OF THE WEALTH AND THE NEEDS OF INDUSTRY CAME A NEW ARCHITECTURE.”
Taken together, the two murals – one celebrating agriculture and language, the other celebrating industry and engineering – form a complementary unit. They invite patrons waiting to mail a letter or ship a package to reflect on the midwestern landscape, on the origins of their city, and on the wonders of creativity.
