In 1938, as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Ben Shahn and Bernarda Bryson began work on thirteen large murals for the lobby of the Bronx General Post Office (GPO). Collectively entitled “Resources of America,” the Shahn-Bryson murals were inspired by the Walt Whitman poem “I Hear America Singing.” A large, central panel depicts two columns of workers, backs turned to us as they read the following Whitman lines on a chalkboard:

For we support all,
After the rest is done and gone, we remain,
There is no final reliance but upon us,
Democracy rests finally upon us, (I, my brethren,
begin it,)
And our visions sweep through eternity.

The murals embody a spirit of public luxury that couldn’t be more alien to today’s political discourse. From 1933 to 1939, in the face of the Great Depression, federally funded public works projects created jobs, built infrastructure (including 1,100 post offices, the Bronx GPO among them), and produced one of the largest public art collections in the world. In what is nothing less than an enclosure of public property, this luxury is now being handed over to private interests.