The Rincon Annex Post Office on Mission Street was completed in 1940. It was designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood. In 1941, the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture held a competition to decorate its lobby. Anton Refregier, a Russian immigrant artist, won the $26,000 commission over 81 other entrants. The jury split three to one, with Philip Guston voting against him.
27 panels, 92 changes
World War II stopped the work. Refregier began painting in 1946 and finished in fall 1948. The 27 tempera-on-gesso panels show California history, from the missions and the Gold Rush to the 1934 waterfront strike and the United Nations conference in San Francisco. Wikipedia says the sponsors asked for 92 changes along the way. Those included slimming a Spanish priest, raising picket signs so their union slogans could not be read and removing a portrait of Franklin Roosevelt from the final panel.
Put on trial
Veterans and the Native Sons of the Golden West protested the murals even before they were finished. On May 1, 1953, a House Public Works subcommittee held a hearing on a resolution by Rep. Hubert Scudder of Sebastopol to remove them. In an essay on FoundSF, historian Gray Brechin writes that Scudder accused Refregier of propaganda that slandered the state’s pioneers. San Francisco Congressmen John F. Shelley and William S. Mailliard defended the work, and the murals were kept.
Seeing them today
The post office left in 1979, the same year the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. It was later remodeled into Rincon Center. Wikipedia says the historic lobby is open to the public. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, San Francisco City Guides led walking tours of the murals.
For another set of New Deal-era murals, see our Coit Tower guide.