Believe it or not but Washington’s finest collection of public murals can be found in historic post offices built in the 1930s by Depression-era federal relief agencies. On post office walls large and small around our state, professional artists created scenes reflecting the Northwest’s history and way of life. Many mistakenly assume that these murals were the product of the better known Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration when, in fact, they were funded by the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture (later renamed the Section of Fine Arts).

Between 1934 and 1943, the Section, as it was commonly called, commissioned the murals through public competitions to embellish new federal buildings, from agency headquarters in Washington DC to post offices across the country. With a mission to transform the federal post office into a democratic art gallery, the Section employed nearly 850 artists and commissioned 1371 murals, a majority of which were installed in post offices around the nation.

In Washington State, we have a rich trove of this fantastic public art waiting to be discovered. Most of the murals focused on the predominant early industries of logging, mining and agriculture, such as those found in Snohomish (Tour 1C), Sedro-Woolley (Tour 8B), Renton (Tour 1b) and Mount Vernon (Tour 8a). Appropriately, the Anacortes Post Office (Island Tour 3) at 519 Commercial Ave. features a mural titled Halibut Fishing that celebrates the area’s seagoing heritage (see detail above). Celebrated Northwest Artist Kenneth Callahan completed this oil on canvas in 1940, two years after painting Industries of Lewis County for Centralia’s post office (Tour 8d) in 1938. Callahan was later commissioned to paint the 1943 mural titled Rugby, the Geographical Center of North America for the post office in Rugby, ND.

Other murals depicted historic scenes such as the The Saga of Wenatchee found in the former Wenatchee Post Office and now included as part of the Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center (Tour 1a). Completed in 1940, this mural was the only one painted by a female artist, Peggy Strong, whose mural work can also be found at the University of Puget Sound. Take a gallery tour of some of Washington’s beautiful murals on this website or, better yet, go see the real thing in person!