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Image courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.
Image courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.
Hyde Park Post Office Model
Image courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.
Image courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

Hyde Park Post Office Model

Artifact IDMO 1942.118.1
Object Type Model
Artist (American painter and printmaker, 1904-1981)
Maker (American product development company, founded 1922)
Date1940
Mediummodel: wood, metal, plastic, paint, paper, ink
base and bonnet: wood, metal plastic (acrylic)
Dimensionsoverall (model) H 10 7/8 in x W 41 3/4 in x D 17 5/8 in (27.6 cm x 106 cm x 44.8 cm )
 overall (base and bonnet) H 40 3/8 in x W 46 1/4 in x D 22 3/8 in (102.6 cm x 117.5 cm x 56.8 cm )
Physical DescriptionA 1" scale model of the Hyde Park, New York post office lobby with conceptual murals. The model consists of wood panels, with cutouts for the windows, assembled to form a room. The panels were made by Emil Tschudin & Sons of Poughkeepsie, New York.

The exterior walls of the model are unadorned wood, while the interior has been designed to show the walls and floors of the future Hyde Park Post Office lobby including flagstone floors, wainscoted walls, various postal windows, tables, announcement boards, etc. Running along the upper portion of the lobby walls are original scaled ink and paint mural drawings by Olin Dows that depict the history of Hyde Park.

The model sits on a non-original wood base with a protective acrylic bonnet.
Historical NoteOne of the important artistic initiatives of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal were the WPA and Treasury Department programs to create large murals in public buildings.

These initiatives led to the creation of thousands of murals by local artists that still grace courthouses, post offices, city halls, schools, and other public structures in towns and cities from Maine to California. Many of these murals celebrated the history, culture, and people of their communities.

FDR took a strong interest in the murals created for public buildings in his native Dutchess County— especially the Hyde Park Post Office which was built in 1941. He became deeply involved in the work of Olin Dows, the local artist who was commissioned to create those murals.

Dows had this scale model of the Post Office’s lobby created in 1940 so Roosevelt could see precisely how the murals would appear in the space. The artist became a friend of FDR’s and later gave the Roosevelt Library hundreds of sketches, drawings, and watercolor studies he produced - including this model - while creating the Hyde Park murals.

You can see Dows’s murals today if you visit the lobby of the Hyde Park Post Office. It is located on the Albany Post Road, two miles north of the Roosevelt Library.
Additional Details
Custodial History NoteDeposited at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum by Olin Dows in November 1941.
Credit LineGift of Olin Dows
National Archives Catalog CollectionFranklin D. Roosevelt Library Museum Collection (National Archives Identifier 735948)
National Archives Catalog SeriesHudson River Valley Materials (National Archives Identifier 778818)
Use Restriction StatusUnrestrictedCopyrightReproduction or other use of these holdings or images thereof is unrestricted.
In Collection(s)
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