Post Office murals still grab attention

By Bob Cudmore 

Two murals at the Amsterdam Post Office painted in 1939 continue to generate interest, not only from postal customers but also from people who collect stamps.

The September/October issue of “Stamp Insider” magazine has a view of the murals taken in 1947 for a “National Geographic” story.  The picture shows young women buying stamps from postal clerks whose windows are below the mural depicting Colonial settler Sir William Johnson holding an outdoor meeting with Mohawk Indian chiefs. 

Focus on History contributor Emil Suda spotted the recent magazine picture contributed by Ronald K. Ratchford, historian of the Schenectady Stamp Club.

H.E. Schnakenberg painted the Amsterdam murals in 1939 as part of a federal government effort called the Treasury Department Art Projects.

Hugh Donlon, in his “Annals of a Mill Town,” said that colonist Johnson is depicted with a sword cane, one of the heirlooms still remaining at Johnson Hall in Johnstown.  Donlon said Schnakenberg used exhibits in Albany and Washington to come up with his ideas on Indian dress.

Schnakenberg’s second mural depicts life on the Erie Canal in the 1840s when the community called Port Jackson was a canal stop.  Port Jackson became the South Side of Amsterdam.  Donlon said Schnakenberg took details for the canal mural from stills from the 1935 movie “The Farmer Takes a Wife,” starring Henry Fonda and Janet Gaynor.

Schnakenberg was born in 1892 in Brighton, New York according to the Web site AskArt.  He was following in his father’s footsteps in the insurance business when he went to an art show and was convinced to follow a career in art.  He died in 1970 in Newtown, Connecticut and is remembered for his landscapes.

His Amsterdam murals were restored by artist Luci Suhr in 1974. 

The murals were painted three years after the post office was built south of the library on Church Street.  The post office was a Depression-era public works project, designed by U.S. Treasury architect Louis Simony in the Colonial revival style.

The 1936 post office replaced a post office and federal building that had been constructed at Division and Wall Streets.

Historian Donlon said there was a quarter-century worth of complaints that the Division and Wall location was too far from the downtown business district.  Earlier, the post office in Amsterdam had occupied buildings on East Main and Market Streets.  The first Amsterdam post office opened in December 1803 at 20 Main Street.  The postmaster was James Downs.

GREEN HILL CEMETERY

The Green Hill Cemetery Association in Amsterdam had 50 people on a recent guided walking tour of the National Historic Landmark, located off Church Street in Amsterdam. 

According to tour organizer Alessa Wylie, a trustee of the cemetery, Green Hill is part of what’s called the rural cemetery movement, even though it is located in the middle of a city.

Fourteen acres of land was purchased for Green Hill Cemetery in 1857 and landscape designer-engineer Burton A. Thomas was hired to lay out the grounds. 

Thomas also designed Vale Cemetery in Schenectady and Albany Rural Cemetery.

The rural cemetery movement involved preserving tall shade trees, adding roads and footpaths and trimming vegetation to create vistas overlooking the city and Mohawk Valley. 

Green Hill was dedicated on September 1,1858 and at the end of the Civil War in 1865, an additional 36 acres of land was purchased.

Wylie said interments ranged from mill workers and domestic servants to the city’s most prominent industrial leaders, such as the mausoleum of the Sanford family, founders of one of the city’s major carpet mills.  Plots also were allocated to civic and veterans’ organizations and the poor.

Saturday, September 23, 2023-From the archives- May 12, 2023-Episode 474-New York City correspondent Jim Kaplan reports on how Harlem was economically developed in the early 1900s.  Jewish financiers joined with Black realtor Phillip Payton to improve race relations in New York City.

Amsterdam Carpet Mill Tales

In The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder this weekend and on The Historians this Sunday

September 24, 2023-Focus on History

It was a rough Atlantic crossing for James Kindon, an English weaver who sailed for America in the 1890s.

   "On Sunday, we encountered a very heavy gale of wind and rain,” Kindon wrote in his journal. 

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, September 21, 2023

48 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 5:14AM 

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