Description

This is a one-story brick clad government building in the Federal Revival style. The main portion of the building has a hipped roof and is flanked by two smaller, flat roofed wings. Stone coping outline the tops of the walls. Canted comers distinguish and enhance the central portion of the building, while decorative brickwork in the form of a keyed, semi-elliptical arch marks the entrance. In the wall space below the windows on the facade there is additional decorative brickwork in a concentric diamond design.

Inside the post office on the south wall hangs Olga Mohr’s mural, Cherokee Indian Farming and Animal Husbandry, which she painted as a result of a Section commission. The mural is tom in the lower left comer, but otherwise appears to be in good condition. Together with the post office, it merits additional study.

Cherokee Indian Farming and Animal Husbandry

by Olga Mohr, 1942, oil on canvas.

Stilwell resides in the Cherokee Nation, and Mohr chose a genre scene of Cherokee agricultural and husbandry practices for her subject. Following the Cherokee’s move to Indian Territory in 1838-39, tribal members established profitable farms and ranches and often used techniques common among Euro-Americans. Mohr created a tableau of three activities and varying terrain to indicate the range of Cherokee agriculture and husbandry. At left, a woman sprinkles feed for roosters and hens in front of a shade tree and in the center a man attempts to quiet a rearing horse before a distant mountain. A man at right breaks the rocky soil, presumably to expand his field for planting, and behind him a crop of com ripens to maturity. Mohr depicts these activities with a simplified approach to form and an expressive coloration characteristic of other American Scene painters such as Ethel Magafan.

Sources

  1. Thematic Survey of New Deal Era Public Art in Oklahoma 2003-2004, Project Number: 03-401 (Department of Geography, Oklahoma State University)
  2. https://postalmuseum.si.edu/indiansatthepostoffice/mural40.html