WPA mural in the lobby of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building in Washington, D.C.
Editor's Note: Reprographics veteran Joel Salus sent us the following note that we felt was worth sharing.
I’m sure you are not aware of this, but I’m a history buff. And, I love art……many types of art, including murals that the Federal Government funded during President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration effort that helped pull our country of the Great Depression.
Yesterday, while exploring mural-art from the 1930’s, I came across an (awesomely beautiful) mural that, still today, adorns the lobby of the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building in Washington, D.C., one of the federal office buildings near the U.S. Capitol. The mural is called "The Wealth of the Nation" and it was painted by Seymour Fogel. The Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building was built in 1938-40 as the home of the Social Security Administration, one of the major new programs of the New Deal.
After I saw the mural, I reached out to John Scher Zeller, one of my ex-partners in Rowley-Scher Reprographics. (The company, “Rowley-Scher Reprographics” was formed by the merger of Rowley’s Blueprint Service and Max Scher Blueprints; Max Scher Blueprints was founded in 1922, in downtown Washington, D.C.) I said to John, “very possible that your grandfather’s company handled the blueprinting of the Cohen Federal Building.”
And, John’s reply: “Very possible. I know for a fact that he did a boatload of Federal Government work in the ‘30s and beyond. I know they did a lot of work for the new federal buildings that were built. Also I personally delivered to the 'temporary' building on Constitution Avenue, one of which was the CIA in the early ‘60s. When the Federal Government built the Pentagon the government had an onsite blueprint plant, but every night sent overflow work to three D.C. blueprint companies, one of which was Max Scher Blueprints. From the Pentagon's construction through the end of WWII, Max Scher Blueprints operated 24/7 and had an FBI agent on site to ensure all wasted prints were destroyed and nothing got into the 'wrong hands.' It was just a few months after WWII ended that my grandfather had his first major heart attack!! Probably from the stress for 5 years of non- stop work.”
The awesome mural in the Cohen Federal Building has a blueprint right smack dab in the middle.