The Metzenbaum Courthouse’s most complex fine art project is a sequence of 35 paintings on 23 separate canvases that depicts mail distribution throughout numerous times and places in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The series,
titled The Collection and Delivery of the Mails, was painted by Francis D. Millet (1846–1912), a journalist-turned-artist admired for the painstaking research he undertook to enhance the veracity of the subject matter, scenery, and costumes in his images. According to one critic who reviewed the mural cycle shortly after its debut, Millet
was to be commended for creating “a series of strictly accurate historic documents rather than a collection of vague symbols.” This same critic assessed Millet’s panel Railway Collection as “not merely the picture of a train—it is a picture, one might almost say a portrait, of the famous ‘Twentieth Century Limited.’” Some of Millet’s subjects, including the Pony Express, are drawn from United States history. Others are contemporary, as in the composition entitled Aeroplanes that Millet painted the very year that the Post Office Department launched experimental airmail flights.
Challenges posed by weather and geography across the globe are addressed in panels such as Reindeer Post and Camel Post, which depict mail delivery in Siberia and Arabia respectively. In every instance, the artist’s compositions are framed with decorative borders portraying intricately interlaced grapevines or morning glories. Tragically, this was Millet’s last completed mural project: just a little more than a year after completing it, he perished in the sinking of the Titanic.
