Benefits of Social Security

This bas relief carving is one of a pair, the first of which stands above the building’s Independence Avenue entrance and features a recently planted sapling. Here, the same tree has matured and its fruit feeds the man and woman below. The two granite panels present a similar subject and composition, which focus the viewer’s attention on the tree and central metaphor of the artwork. The cooperative labor and long-term plan seen in the first panel has paid off in the second, and the man who first planted the tree is now able to share its bounty with others, including a woman who collects the plucked fruit in a basket. Their metaphorical narrative is a fulfillment of the goals of Social Security as laid out by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his June 8, 1934 speech, which argued for “some safeguard against misfortunes which cannot be wholly eliminated from this man-made world of ours.”

Artist Henry Kreis was born in Essen, Germany, and studied at the State School of Applied Arts in Munich before emigrating to the United States in 1922. Kreis apprenticed with noted sculptor Paul Manship and is best known for his numerous public war memorials and commemorative coin designs. Kreis was a fellow of the National Sculpture Society and his work can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.