Sorting the Mail

In the 1930s, New York City was booming. The previous decade witnessed the rise of skyscrapers (including the iconic Chrysler and Empire State buildings), massive construction projects, and the expansion of the subway system. Despite the economic hardships of the Great Depression, the city remained vibrant, welcoming an influx of refugees from Europe and electing the ambitious mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, who encouraged both urban development and ethnic diversity. New York showcased its strength and innovation by hosting the 1939 World's Fair. The city was also a major hub of national and international transportation, including mail delivery. Its shipping port was one of the busiest in the nation, as was its main post office. Reginald Marsh took this thriving postal center as the subject of his murals, his first project using the fresco technique.

Like Alfred D. Crimi, whose murals are located on the same floor of the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building, Marsh chose to depict the activities of the urban mailroom. Also like Crimi, Marsh made on-site preparatory sketches. He studied the railway mail service located under old Penn Station in New York, as well as the New York post office department building, observing the modern machinery, interviewing postal workers, and making sketches as they unloaded and transferred mail cargo. Marsh's depiction differs, though, from the easy interaction between men and machines portrayed in Crimi's mural, as well as the staid calm of the railway mailroom shown in a sketch for an unrealized mural by Regionalist artist Thomas Hart Benton. In contrast to these, Marsh's murals bring to life the frenzied energy of workers and their machines in what the New York Times called a "brilliant orchestration of labyrinthine structural rhythms."

In the mural's lower portion, muscular men lift and drag large bags of mail. Their varied skin tones and apparel indicate a diverse work force, and their physiques convey heroic strength and power. The upper portion of the fresco—rendered in shades of green, black, and white—showcases the machinery that moves the mail in all directions. Marsh's intricate composition and confident technique capture both the mechanization of systems and the importance of workers.