English: Mural "Country Post," by Doris Lee at the Ariel Rios Federal Building, Washington, D.C.

• Date: 1938; dimensions: 6' x 13' 6".
• Photographed as part of an assignment for the General Services Administration.
• Title, date and keywords from information provided by the photographer.
• Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
• Gift; Carol M. Highsmith; 2009; (DLC/PP-2009:083).
• Forms part of: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.

Mural information from the General Services Administration:

During the New Deal era, rural life was often idealized in art and the popular imagination, while in reality farmers struggled with chronically low crop prices, severe draught, and dust storms. Paintings like Grant Wood's American Gothic (1930) enshrined the farmer as a symbol of traditional American life, strong and enduring even in the face of adversities. Similarly, Lee's Country Post presents an idealized view of farm life, with a cheerful group of rural Americans enjoying the convenience of mail delivery. A farmer and his son (perhaps the same young man who reads the newspaper in General Store and Post Office) receive a shipment of tools. Behind them, the mail carrier drives an automobile. Rural mail carriers at this time supplied their own transportation, which, until around 1929, was most likely a horse and wagon. The carrier's automobile, along with the train racing toward the right edge of the painting, signify modernity, speed, and technological advancement, in contrast to the church steeple on the left, which symbolizes the endurance of faith and tradition. In the right foreground, a boy riding a horse still hitched for plowing rushes to post a letter, while a woman opens and reads hers, and even the dog and chicken appear interested in the latest news.