La Follette Tennessee Post Office

ADDRESS: 1221 E Central Ave., La Follette, Tennessee, 37766
ARTIST: Dahlov Ipcar
TITLE: On the Shores of the Lake
MEDIUM: Oil on canvas (mural)
STATUS: The mural no longer reside in the original building. It was moved to the newer post office building on Central Ave (Shown here). The mural is on display in the lobby and is accessible to members of the public during business hours.
YEAR: 1939

Welcome to La Follette, Tennessee. I’m trying to remember if we visited this building first or the original building on Tennessee street. Either way when I stepped into the lobby of this newer building I wasn’t expecting to find the mural here. I’m really glad it has been preserved and moved. But it seems out-of-place. I’m trying to decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

When the murals were original installed, they were often times installed up hight above the postmasters office door. However, since this one was moved it was installed at a lower level, closer to the floor. The benefit of this, is the observer has a much closer and eye level view of the mural. Patrons are able to get an close look at all the detail. The drawback is that it looks awkward so close to the floor.

Additional notes, when I run into situations like this. Where the building is newer and it has artwork. It becomes difficult to categorize this article. Here is my dilemma. When I initially setup the categories, the “New Deal” category was meant to classify an older building with corner-stone and have been built during this time period. Since this is a newer building, I can’t classify it as “New Deal”. However, this location does have artwork from the this time period. Thus you can see my dilemma when classifying this type of building and article.

What do you think? Were you involve in moving this mural? What were some of the discussions involved in installations of this artwork? Please comment below.

Thanks,

David W. Gates Jr.