History Happenings: ‘Communication by Mail’

During weekends spent in Linn County, your writers love to visit the numerous museums of our community.

Surprisingly, this past weekend marked our first visit to the Marion Heritage Center & Museum, at 590 10th St. Housed in what was originally a Methodist church for which construction began in 1850 and was completed in 1855, the Heritage Center features both a permanent collection and a rotating gallery on the upper level.

Right inside the door of this gem of the Marion community, you can find Dan Rhodes’ 1939 fresco, “Communication by Mail.”

‘The Section’ commissioned frescoes

The fresco was commissioned by “the Section,” formally known as the Section of Fine Arts, which was a part of the U.S. Department of Treasury. “The Section” was conceived as a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s plan to procure art for the federal buildings created by the New Deal. As Tom Fruehling reported for The Gazette in 1998, between 1934 and 1942 more than 50 murals were created in Iowa with support from federal grants.

Rhodes was paid $675 for his fresco, which would be roughly equivalent to $15,200 today. Notably, his fresco is one of only three that can be found anywhere in Iowa.

The art and its artist

“Communication by Mail” captures the heart and history of Marion. In its depictions of three men, the viewer can see two of them maneuvering large sacks of mail and the third, a self-portrait of Rhodes, placing a letter into a green mailbox. The men are pictured in front of a train — a nod to Marion’s history as a significant railroad town.

The size of the piece is attention-grabbing and the detail is moving. That said, it shouldn’t be surprising that Rhodes managed to pull off such a great homage. After all, he was a native Iowan, born in Fort Dodge, and began his career in 1932 as a student of famed Iowa artist Grant Wood.

Despite completing several other post office murals — both in and outside of Iowa — Rhodes isn’t actually best known for his painting. By 1940, Rhodes had turned from painting to pottery while studying at the Colorado Springs Art Center. Certainly, it is the sculpture he created during and after this period that secured his legacy.

His fresco, however — at least in the eyes of your writers — has managed to stand the test of time. Doing so has not come without its challenges.

Moving the fresco with help from the football team

In 1972, Marion’s original post office became City Hall. By 2006, however, the community decided to move City Hall to a new building. This decision prompted great debate about what to do with Rhodes’ work. The trouble was that the building had been bought by Farmers State Bank, and bank officials did not plan to provide public access to the mural. As Nicole Schuppert reported in 2004 for The Gazette, Tony Rajer, a conservator who at the time had restored and helped to move over 100 post office murals, estimated it would cost as much as $28,000 to relocate the mural.

With Rajer’s help, by 2009 an elaborate plan was made to move the mural to the Marion Heritage Center. To get the process started, former Marion Mayor Vic Klopfenstein, who serves as vice president of the Marion Historical Society, managed to raise $45,000 to complete the restoration and moving process.

As reported by George Ford for The Gazette, in order to get the mural to where it can be seen today, the section of the wall it was originally created on was removed and rolled out of the building. With the help of a forklift and the Marion High School varsity football team, it was moved onto its face so that a steel frame and concrete could be added to the back to create stability for the piece.

With the addition of the steel and concrete, the entire fresco now weighs about 4,000 pounds. Still, with the help of heavy-duty casters, and less than an inch of clearance in the doorway, the fresco was carefully moved into its permanent home at the Heritage Center.

We want to express our thanks to Robyn Ireland, executive director of the Heritage Center, for sharing her wealth of knowledge about “Communication by Mail” with us. Admission to the Heritage Center is free for all ages, so we hope you’ll take advantage and stop by. We know we will be back.

Jessica Cline is a Leadership & Character Scholar at Wake Forest University. Her dad, Rob Cline, is not a scholar of any kind. They write this monthly column for The History Center. Comments: HistoricalClines@gmail.com