Between 1900 and 1945,  over three dozen murals were commissioned for and placed in public buildings throughout Pittsburgh.  From John White Alexander’s Crowning of Labor (1907-1912) at the Carnegie Institute and Boardman Robinson’s History of Trade at Kaufmann’s Department Store (1929) to Stuyvesant van Veen’s Pittsburgh Panorama (1939), which boldly depicts the city’s skyline in the form of a hammer and sickle,  and Maxo Vanka’s uncompromising murals in the Croatian Catholic Church of St. Nicholas,  Pittsburgh’s mural collection is unique among  American cities. Though related to national trends such as the City Beautiful and the New Deal, Pittsburgh’s early twentieth century murals are also highly self-referential and interconnected. It is precisely the interconnectedness of these murals and the public(s) that they addressed that I hope to map using digital technologies.

Maxo Vanka. Immigrant Mothers Lose Their Sons to Industry, 1937. St. Nicholas Church, Millvale.

Source: Working Walls: Labor And Public Murals in Pittsburgh, 1900-1945