Express Mail Carrier

Heinz Warneke’s Express Mail Carrier is the contemporary counterpart to Concetta Scarvaglione’s Railway Mail Carrier (1862), and it documents the continued importance of railway mail service in the early twentieth century. To prepare for the sculpture, Warneke spent hours directly observing expressmen handling mail inside railway cars. The result of his research is a simply modeled figure clad in rough hewn overalls with a pistol at his waist. The Mail Carrier is powerfully built and appears to have little difficulty holding a large mail bag—no doubt owing to his many hours spent loading and unloading heavy parcels from the train. Located in the north anteroom of the U.S. Post Master’s suite, Warneke’s figure is surrounded by five additional figures, which portray a different type of contemporary 1930s mail carrier. The south anteroom of the suite also features six aluminum figures, each representing a different period or development in U.S. postal history.

Heinz Warneke was born in 1895 in Germany, and immigrated to America in 1923. He began his study of art at the Kunstschule in Bremen, Germany, and received his master’s degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin. In addition to his work for the U.S. Post Office Department, Warneke completed commissions for the U.S. Department of the Interior, the National Zoo, and the National Cathedral, among others. He led the Sculpture Department at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., from 1943 to 1968.