page_title: Harry Sternberg
section_title: New Deal
hierarchical_section_title: Harry Sternberg / Biography / New Deal
caption_attribution_description: English: Muralist, Harry Sternberg, has used his image to depict a scientist in his mural "Chicago:Epoch of a Great City"
context_page_description: Harry Sternberg was an American painter, printmaker and educator. He was born in New York City on July 19, 1904 and died in Escondido, California on November 27, 2001.
context_section_description: In 1937 Sternberg painted his first post office mural, Carrying the Mail in Sellersville, Pennsylvania. The mural was commissioned by the former United States Department of the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture, later known as the Section of Fine Arts. Sternberg traveled to Chicago where he studied the city's history, architecture, industry, and workers which resulted in his mural Chicago: Epoch of a Great City, for the Lakeview post office in Chicago. It depicts the history of the city from its first settlement of Fort Dearborn to the Great Fire to the life in the stock yards and the steel mills. In 1906 Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle, had graphically described life for workers in Chicago's stockyards and steel mills and Sternberg strived to captured their struggle. In June 2001 a non-profit community organization, Friends of the Lakeview Post Office, was founded to facilitate a restoration of the mural. Parma Conservation of Chicago completed the work in 2003.
  In participating in the WPA, I felt that I was part of one of the most vital and important cultural movements in America
  He married Mary Gosney in 1939 and their family, including their baby daughter, are depicted in the Ambler, Pennsylvania post office mural, The Family, Industry and Agriculture. He was fond of self-portraits and painted his likeness into the scientist figure in his mural for the Lakeview post office.
caption: Muralist, Harry Sternberg, depicting a scientist in his mural "Chicago:Epoch of a Great City"
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