United States Post Office-Manitou Springs Main

US Post Office-Manitou Springs Main or Manitou Springs Post Office is a historic building located on Canon Avenue in Manitou Springs, Colorado. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.[2]

US Post Office - Manitou Springs Main
Location307 Canon Avenue, Manitou Springs, Colorado
Coordinates38°51′35.67″N 104°55′4.44″W
ArchitectLouis A. Simon
Architectural styleColonial Revival
NRHP reference No.86000181
Added to NRHP1986[1]
Manitou Springs, Colorado

Overview

The United States post office is built upon the site of Jerome B. Wheeler's Windemere estate. The colonial style building is made of blocks of locally quarried reddish green sandstone. The post office opened in 1940[3][4] or 1941.[5] At the time it was the only United States post office to be made with locally quarried stone. The building is a one and a half storied, rectangular structure. Instead of a basement, storage is available in the half story that runs along the west side of the building. One of the town's springs is located just south of the post office.[3]

Mural

In 1942 a Works Progress Administration mural title "Hunters, Red and White" was created by Archie Musick.[4][5]

A plaque by the mural reads:

Depression-era public art programs coincided with the heyday of Colorado Springs' art school, the Broadmoor Art Academy: Its students and teachers painted murals in federal buildings nationwide. For Manitou’s post office mural competition, my father, Archie Musick, depicted the legend of Manitou’s springs: "the God Manitou in a fit of rage clubbing a quarrelsome chief." His frieze of Indian-trapper life across the bottom of the submitted sketch was so popular with "the brass in Washington…they told me to dump the main design and blow up the frieze to fill the entire space." Painted when many federal murals were nationalistic – just months after Pearl Harbor – this mural’s ambiguity and unusual dry-pigment / glaze technique are distinctive: "Hunters Red and White" embodies some historical suggestions from his friend, author Frank Waters – Manitou’s first cabin, explorers Pike and Fremont – but mostly Archie’s own inspiration from fantasy, pictographs, artist friends (including Japanese-American artists sheltering here), and the beloved local rocky landscape.[5]

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See also

References
  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. January 23, 2007.
  2. National Register of Historic Places in El Paso County, Colorado. American Dreams. Retrieved May 19, 2013.
  3. "Manitou Springs Post Office - National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form". National Register of Historic Places. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  4. Deborah Harrison; The Manitou Springs Heritage Center (October 29, 2012). Manitou Springs. Arcadia Publishing. p. 90. ISBN 978-0-7385-9596-2. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  5. "Post Office Mural - Manitou Springs". Living New Deal, Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
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