Difference between revisions of "Ramsey Co. Courthouse/St. Paul City Hall"
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Latest revision as of 11:24, 1 May 2010
15 Kellogg Boulevard West, St. Paul, MN
"The Steamboat Captain" Courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection. |
The City of St. Paul prepared for its current home shortly before the stock market crash of 1929. The Depression did not stop the project; instead, it altered the building’s design and construction—it became a site of employment for the Civil Works Administration (CWA) and later the Works Progress Administration (WPA). These federal agency employed the talents of architects, sculptors, painters, and other artists to produce patriotic visions of the future.
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"The Lumberjack" Courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection. |
"The surveyor" Courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection. |
In many cases, the artists deployed unique renditions of a style known today as American Social Realism. The style is a further development of the Art Deco period; it deploys sharp angles, streamlined aesthetics, and geometric shapes and depicts modes of transportation, personifications of the working class, and (racially insensitive) depictions of American history.
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"The Machinist" Courtesy of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection. |
(1)Johnston, Gerry. Interview with Jean-Nicklaus Tretter, Fall 1999. Mr. Johnston was Hauper’s estate dealer and personally knew him, and reported his sexual orientation to Tretter.
(2)Tretter, Jean-Nickolaus. “Homosocial Coding in WPA Art” Paper submitted to the University of Minnesota, 1999.
(3)Tretter, pages 14-15.
Part of Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: 100 Queer Places in Minnesota History, (1860-1969), (1969-2010)