If walls could talk…

In August 2004, the walls of Hardy Memorial Tower did just that. During routine maintenance, workmen exposed remnants of two murals hidden behind ceiling tiles on the building’s bottom floor. Renovations performed in the late 1950s had damaged the murals: the lower portions were destroyed, and paint had been chipped away from other sections, revealing the underlying concrete walls.

The fragments that remained were striking; they featured large, colorful scenes of people working. In one, men were unloading boxes from a van. In the other, various stages of fish processing were underway. More mysterious than the lost pieces was the missing story behind the murals.

Seth Mallios, professor and chair of SDSU’s anthropology department, learned of the murals’ existence through a friend at SDSU’s Physical Plant. He researched the murals at the library’s Special Collections and University Archives and pieced together an account of Hardy Tower’s enigmatic artwork.

San Diego State College (now SDSU) had relocated to its new campus on Montezuma Mesa in the early 1930s. The college was rapidly expanding physically, as well as increasing the breadth of its curriculum. The school established an art department during this period and named noted modernist painter Everett Gee Jackson as its first chair. Art classes were taught in classrooms on the lower floors of the new library, which was adjacent to Hardy Tower.

During this period, Depression-era programs such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) were employing artists nationwide to create public art, which often took the form of large-scale murals such as those found in San Francisco’s Coit Tower and the Santa Monica Public Library. These artists often painted vivid scenes of the period’s economic hardships and working-class people performing their jobs. Jackson was undoubtedly influenced by the WPA artists’ social realism style and by the works of the Mexican muralists he studied before moving to San Diego, and he passed on his enthusiasm about this artwork to his students.

In 1934, the new library’s walls were bare and ripe for artwork. Under Jackson’s direction, three art students—Genevieve Burgeson Bredo, George Sorenson, and Ellamarie Packard Woolley—began ambitious works that offered a glimpse into local industries and reflected current events. Two years later, five colorful murals graced the bottom floor walls of the old library.

Bredo completed “NRA Packages” in 1936. The mural shows three men unloading NRA (National Recovery Act) crates from a truck in front of a store while a woman and child watch. The setting is believed to be in San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood. Restoration was completed in 2007, and the 9’x5’ mural is on permanent display in the Reference Services area on the first floor of the Library Addition.

“San Diego Industry” is Sorenson’s 25-foot mural that he finished in 1936. The mural illustrates, from left to right, the various phases of the tuna industry: a man fishing with a bamboo pole, a man weighing large fish on a scale, fish sliding down a chute toward a cleaning table, an assembly line of women processing the fish, cans of tuna on a conveyor belt, and men standing behind large bins of canned fish, perhaps readying them for market. Portions of this mural remain on the south wall of Hardy Tower’s bottom floor. Plans currently are underway to have this mural restored and moved to the Library Addition.

Three additional murals were completed in 1936, one by Bredo and two by Woolley. “Lumber Working,” by Bredo, shows men and machinery processing wood in a large factory. “Packing Oranges,” by Woolley, pictures three men unloading boxes of oranges from a truck. Her other mural, “Sailors Going to Hell,” features a long line of sailors boarding a battleship, cannons pointed at their heads, while their wives and sweethearts look on.
Efforts to locate these murals have so far been unsuccessful, and what is known of them comes from archival photographs taken by Howard Hess and George Samples in 1959, prior to remodeling.

The students who painted SDSU’s murals remained active in the arts following graduation. Bredo became an art instructor, and Woolley teamed with her husband, Jackson, and produced remarkable enameled wall panels and sculptures. Sorenson became a leader in San Diego’s art community and dean of SDSU’s Division of Fine Arts from 1946 to 1969.

In 2007, “NRA Packages” was removed from its original location in Hardy Tower by art conservationist Nathan Zakheim and restored at his Los Angeles-area studio. It was returned to the library in November 2007 and unveiled to the public in March 2008.