US Post Office-Manitou Springs Main or Manitou Springs Post Office is a historic building located on Canon Avenue in

Manitou Springs, Colorado Manitou Springs is a home rule municipality located at the foot of Pikes Peak in western El Paso County, Colorado, United States. The town was founded for its natural mineral springs. The downtown area continues to be of interest to travelers, ...

. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.National Register of Historic Places in El Paso County, Colorado.
American Dreams. Retrieved May 19, 2013.

Overview

The United States post office is built upon the site of

Jerome B. Wheeler Jerome B. Wheeler was president and partner of R. H. Macy & Company in New York City and was an owner of mines, a hotel, and other businesses in Colorado. Early life Jerome Byron Wheeler was born September 3, 1841, in Troy, New York, to Daniel Ba ...

's Windemere estate. The colonial style building is made of blocks of locally quarried reddish green sandstone. The post office opened in 1940 or 1941. At the time it was the only United States post office to be made with locally quarried stone. The building is a one and a half storied, rectangular structure. Instead of a basement, storage is available in the half story that runs along the west side of the building. One of the town's springs is located just south of the post office.

Mural

In 1942 a Works Progress Administration mural title "Hunters, Red and White" was created by

Archie Musick Archie Leroy Musick (1902–1978) was an American painter. He studied under Thomas Hart Benton, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, and Boardman Robinson. Early life and family Archie Musick was born on January 19, 1902, in Kirksville, Missouri, to par ...

. A plaque by the mural reads:

Depression-era public art programs coincided with the heyday of Colorado Springs' art school, the Broadmoor Art Academy: Its students and teachers painted murals in federal buildings nationwide. For Manitou’s post office mural competition, my father, Archie Musick, depicted the legend of Manitou’s springs: "the God Manitou in a fit of rage clubbing a quarrelsome chief." His frieze of Indian-trapper life across the bottom of the submitted sketch was so popular with "the brass in Washington…they told me to dump the main design and blow up the frieze to fill the entire space." Painted when many federal murals were nationalistic – just months after Pearl Harbor – this mural’s ambiguity and unusual dry-pigment / glaze technique are distinctive: "Hunters Red and White" embodies some historical suggestions from his friend, author Frank Waters – Manitou’s first cabin, explorers
Pike Pike, Pikes or The Pike may refer to: Fish * Blue pike or blue walleye, an extinct color morph of the yellow walleye ''Sander vitreus'' * Ctenoluciidae, the "pike characins", some species of which are commonly known as pikes * ''Esox'', genus of ...
and Fremont – but mostly Archie’s own inspiration from fantasy, pictographs, artist friends (including Japanese-American artists sheltering here), and the beloved local rocky landscape.

References

External links

Manitou Springs Post Office
services
Manitou Springs Post Office
map {{National Register of Historic Places Post office buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Colorado Colorado State Register of Historic Properties Manitou Springs, Colorado National Register of Historic Places in El Paso County, Colorado

Overview

Mural

See also

References

External links