1937 - George Melville Smith completes “There Was Vision” mural at Elmhurst Post Office

Painter George Melville Smith (1879-1979) was born in Chicago and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago at the age of seventeen. In the 1920s, he studied in Paris and then proceeded to work as a painter in France, Spain, England and Italy. He displayed his work at the Art Institute of Chicago four times during the 1930s. In 1936, Smith became the supervisor for the applied arts project for the Works Progress Administration, which was a federal program during the Great Depression that aimed to make art accessible to everyone and provide work for unemployed artists. The same year, he was commissioned to paint a mural in the lobby of the one-year-old Elmhurst Post Office. The mural, titled “There was Vision,” was completed in 1937 and Smith was paid $630 for his work. The mural is still in the Elmhurst Post Office today on the east wall of the lobby.