Post Office Building

"Adolph A. Weinman (1870-1952) was a most favored artist among the designers of the Federal Triangle in the 1930's. Weinman's architectural sculpture covers many significant spaces on the Post Office Department's 1934 neo-classical headquarters. The figures in the two pediments of the pavilions represent the four continents and symbolize the transfer of human knowledge. The central motif in each case is a hemisphere. Artists and citizens today certainly squirm at some of Weinman's allegories, but these artworks are at the contradictory heart of the monumental Washington created in the Federal Triangle in the late 1920's and 1930's. Born in Karlsruhe in 1870, Adolph Weinman emigrated to the United States as a ten-year-old and attended public schools in New York."