ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 17, 1996 TAG: 9609170085
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: KENNETH SINGLETARY STAFF WRITER
In 1938, Christiansburg, though a small county seat of fewer than 1,000 residents, was big enough to get a new post office.
That post office continues to operate at the corner of Main and Franklin streets even though Christiansburg, now with 16,000 people, is Virginia's fourth-largest town and the commercial center of the New River Valley. Next year the Postal Service will build a new central post office in the New River Valley Mall area. The cramped downtown facility will be closed.
And with it will move a 58-year-old canvas mural that depicts Christiansburg's 18th century history.
"It's quite unique that we have it in Christiansburg, because right now I couldn't name another place that has one," said Fran Carson, a volunteer at the Palette Art Gallery, which showcases local artists. "It just disturbed me when I learned they were going to sell this building. I wondered what would happen to" the mural.
The Postal Service intends to move the mural to the new post office, said Cheryl Alls, manager of post office operations in Roanoke. "We try to preserve, and we do preserve these murals, and we try to preserve other things as well," she said.
But potentially complicating the plan is the old post office's status as a Virginia Historic Landmark, achieved in 1989, and a National Historic Landmark, recognized in 1991. The mural and the building's architecture are the "areas of significance or defining elements," said Kathleen Kilpatrick, deputy director of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
"Any time you're dealing with the removal of a defining element, that is something to consider," she said.
Kilpatrick said the Postal Service will have to apply to move the mural. That will allow the state Department of Historic Resources to comment and make a judgment on the removal's effect on the building. If the state agency passes it on to the federal level, the national Advisory Council on Historic Preservation will have the final say in the matter, she said.
The mural, titled "Great Road," shows a stylized portrayal of the Wilderness Road, the main route for 18th century settlers from Virginia and elsewhere on the East Coast heading for Kentucky. Christiansburg, then called Hans Meadow, was an important stop on the route.
The work has been damaged, with stains, tears and bubbles across its surface.
The mural is oil on canvas, and should be relatively easy to move, at least much easier than if it were a fresco, which is a mural painted directly on a wall's plaster, said Dean Carter. He retired as head of Virginia Tech's art department in 1992 and has studied the murals in post offices in Southwest Virginia at the federal government's request.
The painting needs to be restored and its backing strengthened, a project that will be much more expensive than the original cost of $600, Carter said.
Moreover, "It's going to be difficult to use because of the way it's cut," Carter said, referring to the section of the painting cut to fit around the postmaster's door.
There are murals in other post offices in the state, and across the country there are about 1,200, said John Sorenson, with the Postal Service's preservation office.
Sorenson's files indicate that painting was commissioned in February 1938 and installed that July. The artist was John de Groot of Richmond, who most likely painted the work on canvas in his studio. Sorenson and Carter said de Groot would have had to propose the painting and it would have had to have been accepted in a competition in which he would have submitted a plan and sketch. But they know little else about him.
He was commissioned to do the work under the federal Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program begun by President Franklin Roosevelt. That program and others like it gave work to more than 8 million Americans in the depths of the Depression.
Other nearby communities that have murals in their post offices include Radford, Bluefield, Marion, Appalachia, Bassett, Tazewell, Rocky Mount, Martinsville and Stuart. Radford's mural, which dates from the 1940s and was done by an artist named Alexander Clayton, is a stylized portrayal of Mary Ingalls Draper's return to Radford after her captivity by Indians in Ohio.
ALAN KIM Staff Dean Carter and Fran Carson talk about the need to preserve and move the mural at the post office in downtown Christiansburg to the new post office, which will be built at the Market Place area.
ALAN KIM Staff The mural, including the section above, needs to be restored and its backing strengthened, a project that will be much more expensive than the original cost of $600.
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALan Kim. 1. Dean Carter and Fran Carson talk about theby CNBneed to preserve and move the mural at the post office in downtown
Christiansburg to the new post office, which will be built at the
Market Place area. 2. The mural, including the section above, needs
to be restored and its backing strengthened, a project that will be
much more expensive than the original cost of $600. color.