Post office murals are visible and enduring symbols of New Deal ideology that provide lasting evidence of governmental art patronage during the Great Depression. Not just for picking up mail or sending packages, during the 1930s, post offices offered a place to meet neighbors and catch up on news. In Florida, 16 new post offices were built between 1937 and 1943, and each was decorated with murals or relief sculptures paid for by the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture. This presentation discusses the West Palm Beach post office’s exciting mural series featuring Florida’s “Barefoot Mail Carrier,” its subject, and how it fits into the Great Depression’s larger mural project.

Keri Watson is an associate professor of art history at the University of Central Florida and co-executive editor for Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art. She is the author of This is America: Re-Viewing the Art of the United States (2023) and editor of the Routledge Companion to Art and Disability (2022).

Funding for this Florida Talks program is provided in part by Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities and in partnership with the Lake Wales Library Association. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.