Post Office Murals - 8 (Kilgore, Texas)

A few months ago I drove over to Kilgore (about 60 miles northwest of me) to photograph the Post Office murals.  I had the address of the Post Office from the book I had been studying and as I drove up to it, I knew something was wrong.  It was vacant, appeared to be abandoned.  On that day it actually had a chain link fence around it and tall grass.  Weeks later I discovered that the murals were now located in the East Texas Oil Museum and I was able to eventually return.  When the old Post Office was closed the General Services Administration, now responsible for these murals painted throughout the country in the 1930s and '40s, decided to put them in storage in Baltimore.  The citizens of Kilgore were outraged and began a campaign to keep them in their community and after much negotiation the oil museum agreed to take the pantings and care for them in a way that the GSA demanded (humidity-controlled environment, 24-hour security, availability to the public).

There are four separate murals displayed near the ceiling on three walls of a tiny gift shop.  They are difficult to see, much more difficult to photograph, but at least they remain.

This first is called Pioneer Saga and depicts a group of travel-weary settlers stopping by a stream.

Drilling for Oil is extremely large and long.  The lighting was not conducive to a good photo and you can see the details.  Kilgore was the center of the Texas oil boom when oil was discovered in the area in 1930.  I remember even early in the 1950s when the entire town of Kilgore was in a shadow from all the oil derricks and almost every house had lawns decorated with drilling pumpjacks.

 "Music of the Plains" is an irregularly shaped mural illustrating a singer and her accompanist, perhaps representing the development of Texas folk music whose grass roots went on to heavily influence today's country/western music.

The last and my favorite is called Contemporary Youth, romantically portraying a young couple dancing and in the background a boy playing with a model airplane.  The four murals taken together show the transition in the lives of Americans in just a 100-year period.

This group of Post Office murals was painted by Xavier Gonzales (1898-1993) a Spanish-born artist who came to the United States in 1928.  He was paid $2,600 for the four panels, one of the highest prices paid to any of the artists who were commissioned to do Post Office murals.  Another of his murals was painted for the Mission, Texas, Post Office.  His wife, Ethel Edwards, painted a mural for the Lampasas, Texas, Post Office which I hope to see when I travel to that area next week.