Cool New Deal Artwork Tucked Away in Nevada Towns

WPA Mural in the Yerington Post Office

  In the mid-1930s and early 40s, Nevada was the beneficiary of several New Deal and WPA (Works Progress Administration, and later, Work Projects Administration) art-related projects. These efforts were part of federal government initiatives designed to put people to work in the aftermath of the Great Depression, which began in late 1929.

  Fortunately, a handful of these projects can still be found in the state, including in rural post offices, civic buildings and at Hoover Dam.

  Perhaps the most well-known pieces are the “Winged Figures of the Republic,” a pair of large, winged Art Deco-style bronze statues found at Hoover Dam. Measuring 30-feet tall, they are part of a black stone display (which also includes a flagpole) that commemorates the 96 men who died during construction of the dam.

  An adjacent plaque reads: “They died to make the desert bloom. The United States of America will continue to remember that many who toiled here found their final rest while engaged in the building of this dam. The United States of America will continue to remember the services of all who labored to clothe with substance the plans of those who first visioned the building of this dam.”

  The statues, created in 1934, were the work of artist Oskar J.W. Hansen, a Norwegian-born American artist who also created concrete base relief images on the Nevada and Arizona elevators at the top of the dam.

  In addition to Hansen’s work, Nevada is also home to three murals that were created by artists working for what was called the Section of Fine Arts, administered by the Procurement Division of the Treasury Department.

  In order of their completion, the first mural was one painted for the then-new Lovelock Post Office in 1940 by artist Ejnar Hansen, a Danish-born painter. Titled “The Uncovering of the Comstock Lode,” the work depicts a trio of prospectors inspecting gold from a wooden sluice.

  The oil-on-canvas painting, like many completed at that time for the program, was done in what is described as a “simplified realism” style, which was apparently favored by the department. The mural can still be seen on a wall in the Lovelock Post Office.

  The next mural created through the program was “Homestead on the Plain,” an oil-on-canvas painting executed by New York artist Adolph Gottlieb in 1941. The work shows Nevada desert framed by jagged mountains, with a small house, an old car and a rickety shack in the foreground.

  According to the website of the Adolph and Ester Gottlieb Foundation, the artist, who lived for time in Arizona, was his interpretation of a typical southwestern landscape that incorporated his Arizona house and Model T car. The work still hangs on the wall of the historic original Yerington Post Office (a new, main post office was built several miles away a few years ago).

  The final completed project was an oil-on-canvas mural created for the Winnemucca Post Office by artist Polly Duncan, of Denver, Colorado in 1942. Titled “Cattle Round-Up,” Duncan’s work imagined several cowboys guiding cattle into a shed while the bulk of the herd is being driven in from a broad expanse of the Nevada landscape.

  Like Hansen’s work, Duncan’s painting is done in the folk realist style and uses a Nevada-based theme that resonated with Winnemucca’s ranching culture.

  In 1991, the city of Winnemucca acquired the one-story brick post office and converted it into city hall. Despite the change in the building’s use, the mural can still be seen in the main lobby.

  For more information on Nevada’s New Deal artwork and surviving New Deal projects in Nevada, check out the website, Living New Deal, at https://livingnewdeal.org/us/nv/?post_type=projects.