Thanks to John Kelly of The Washington Post for an excellent article on my book.

Clever John asked me what I would ask Bessemer given that chance.

It’s a question that puzzled me during my research, so now I know the answer.

Auriel, you hated modern art and your own work, while stylized, is pretty conventional. Other artists, even some of your friends who shared your spiritual interests, opted for abstraction. Tell me why that never appealed to you?

Maybe I’ll get the answer someday.

So now you’re inspired to see other post office murals!

Let’s start with Virginia.

How about a nice farm scene in Luray? Or the animal-filled mural in Berryville? See John Smith trade with Indians in the Smithfield post office.

A wonderful website called The Living New Deal has created a map and lists of New Deal sites around the country. For a list of post office murals, and photos of many of them, visit wpamurals.com.

The Virginia list in Living New Deal has 138 entries about WPA projects, including schools, stadiums, a wind tunnel,  and even the Falls Church trunk sewer line (maybe not a place to visit).

Many WPA projects were done in Washington, D.C., so there are 313 entries. Unfortunately some of the most important murals are located in buildings no longer regularly accessible to the public, such as the Justice Department headquarters.

There are 159 projects identified in Maryland, including some nice murals. Locally, the large mural in from the Silver Spring post office now hangs in the public library. The Rockville post office mural shows Sugarloaf Mountain. The subject of the Bethesda post office mural is the “Montgomery County Farm Women’s Market.”

A fun site about post office murals is maintained by Post Office freak, a guy named David Gates, who documents things – most recently the wood carvings in the Paulding, Ohio, post office.

For a general list of materials about the WPA and Virginia, there’s good resource page the Library of Virginia. The library has a web page that allows searches of the WPA Virginia Historical Inventory, a collection of photographs, maps, and detailed reports documenting the architectural, cultural, and family histories of thousands of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings in communities across the commonwealth.