Santa Monica City Hall

1685 Main St

Santa Monica, CA 90401

The Santa Monica City hall was built between 1938-1939 and designed in the Art-Deco-Moderne Style by Donald B. Parkinson and J.M. Estep. Donald B. Parkinson and his father, John Parkinson are known for designing some of Los Angeles’s most iconic building, City Hall, Union Station and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum along with several building at USC.

The murals were painted by Stanton MacDonald-Wright, the director of the Southern California Division of the Federal Works Progress Administration form 1935-1942. He created a new method of painting called “Petrachrome.” The paint is mixed with crushed tile, marble, and granite. Once it had dried it was then polished. This revolutionary technique was recognized as an important development in the evolution of mural painting.

As it turns out MacDonald-Wright taught at Otis Art School and one of his students was Henry Lion who sculpted the Cabrillo statue in San Pedro.

Beverley Hills Old Post Office

470 N Canon D
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

The Beverly Hills Old Post Office was built in the Italian Renaissance Revival style. Inside are eight frescos painted by Charles Kassler. The frescos depict the work the PWA, Public Works Administration. Each lunette, or half-moon shaped space, shows a different aspect of the PWA. In one lunette for example he shows artists working on this other mural “The Bison Hunt” that was painted on exterior of the Los Angeles Public Library but was painted over in 1963 due to water damage. There was some question about the content of the lunettes but Kassler said his frescos didn’t depict unemployment, but people going back to work, a recurring theme in many 1930s art.

This eagle relief was saved from the Olympic Blvd. Post Office in Beverley Hills in 1984 and is currently in the new Beverley Hills Post Office at 325 North Maple Dr. Beverley Hills, CA, 90210.

Hollywood Post Office

1615 Wilcox Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90028

The Hollywood Post Office was built in 1935 for the Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP). The architect was Claude Beelman who started as a self-taught draftsman. Beelman also built the Los Angles County Fair Gallery for the WPA in 1937. Other buildings he built are the Eastman Columbia Building downtown and the Elks Club across from MacArthur Park.

The post office building looks substantial but has simple lines in a classical style but with art deco references in the steel windows and minimal decoration. Greek key designs frame the interior ceiling.

The wood relief of “Horseman” located above the front door in the lobby was created by Gordon Newell and Sherry Peticolas. Both men also worked on the reliefs in the San Fernando Post Office.

Photograph of wood relief by Jordan McAlister

The Hollywood Bowl Sculpture "Muses of Music, Dance, Drama"

2301 N Highland Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90068

The Hollywood Bowl sculpture “Muses of Music, Dance and Drama” was built between 1938 and 1940. It was built by the PWAP, Public Works of Art Project, a subdivision of the WPA. This is one of the largest of the WPA sculptures in California. The project used two hundred and forty tons of local granite quarried at Victorville and eleven hundred and eighty-eight tones of concrete to complete. “Music” which is seated on the top of the sculpture is fifteen feet tall and the other two muses, “Dance” and ‘Drama” stand ten feet tall. In the end, the project cost one hundred thousand dollars, that is the equivalent of $1,528,384 today. George Stanley was the artist that designed and sculpted the figures. Stanley was also the designer of the Academy Award or “Oscar.”

Over the years the sculpture has changed very little. Lighting in the fountain was added along with tiles on the rims of the different tiers, the reason for adding them is unknown.

United States Navy and Marine Corps Reserve Center

1700 Stadium Way
Los Angeles, CA 90012

The Los Angeles Navy and Marine Corps Reserve Center was designed to be the largest enclosed structure without columns in the world at that time. The architectural firm for this building was Stiles Clements & Associates. They built many movie theaters and auditoriums in the first half of the 20^th century. Some of their projects, while not part of the New Deal included the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood, Chapman Market, the Mayan Theater and the indoor swimming pool at Beverley Hills High School along with many other buildings.

The Navy and Marine Corps Reserve Center was a WPA, Work Progress Administration project and was built between 1938 and 1941. It was designed with an Art Deco style that was very common in the 1930s and 1940s. The Art Deco style is characterized by vertical and horizontal geometric patterns and shapes, sunburst and chevron designs. This building was the largest Navy Reserve in the United States and the second oldest. Over 100,000 sailors were processed and trained there during WWII. Today the building is a training center for Los Angeles Fire Department.

Griffith Observatory Astronomers Monument

2800 East Observatory Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90027-1299

Built between 1933 and 1934 by the PWAP, the twenty-five foot Astronomers Monument depicts Hipparchus, Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, and William Herschel. Archibald Garner designed the monument but six different artists worked on it: Arnold Forester, Gordon Newell, who also worked on the San Fernando Post Office, Djey El Djey, who sculpted the Native American in “The Vanquished Race”, George Stanley, who designed the Oscar and Hollywood Bowl entrance, L. Archibald Garner, who sculpted “Law” in the L.A. Federal Court House, and Roger Noble Burnham. The project was competed six months before the observatory was finished.

Los Angeles Post Office Terminal Annex

900 N. Alameda St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

The Los Angeles Post Office Terminal Annex was built between 1939-40 to process all the incoming and outgoing mail in Los Angeles. It was designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood (for more information see L.A. Federal Courthouse), the same man who designed the Federal Courthouse. The style of the Post Office is more of a mission style with ornate towers, similar to those on building in Beverly Hills, as opposed to the more modern look of the Federal Building. An artist named Boris Deutsch was commissioned to paint the murals inside the Post Office.

Boris was born in Lithuanian in 1892 and was drawing by the age of five. He was mainly a self-taught artist, even though he did study at Bloom Academy of Art in Riga, Latvia and the Kunstgewerbe Schule in Berlin. In 1916 Boris immigrated to Seattle Washington and then to Los Angeles in 1919. Early in his career, he was a commercial artist and a set designer at Paramount Studios. Boris would work on and off, painting when he had money but working when he needed it. He used many different mediums in his art and as long as he was making art he was satisfied. During the depression he worked in the WPA painting murals all over California. He did a series of eleven murals in the Post Office Terminal Annex that was finished in 1944. Each frame represents the cultures of North, Central and South America. Boris worked on two other post offices, one in Reedley, California and another in Hot Springs, New Mexico.