‘Rediscovered’ Mural Grabs the Spotlight

When Dennis Hittle first poked his head through a false ceiling above the Fullerton Police Department’s Traffic Bureau, he was greeted by a most unexpected sight.

Hidden from the cluttered offices below was a high vaulted ceiling and on the walls was an extensive mural that, though marred by heating ducts and electrical conduits, still glowed in soft earth tones and pastels as if freshly painted.

Hittle, a senior maintenance worker with the city, returned later to take pictures, then visited the local history room at the public library and researched the mural. And he shared his discovery with Terry Galvin, the city’s redevelopment manager.

Hittle’s curiosity paid off for Fullerton. Restoration of the mural, which graced the walls of the former City Council chambers before the new City Hall was completed in 1963, became the city’s centennial project and is the subject of a $150,000 fund-raising campaign under way.

The old City Hall was dedicated in July, 1942, the result of a cooperative effort between the city and the federal Works Projects Administration.

“One of the most beautiful features of the building is the Council Chamber,” read the dedication program. “The soft, rich tones of the murals . . . bring to mind in graphic form the history of this state, from the landing of Cabrillo to the present day.”

The mural was painted as part of the WPA Federal Arts Project by Helen Lundeberg, who went on to become one of California’s most respected artists and, with her late husband, Lorser Feitelson, a fixture on the Los Angeles art scene for many years. Nevertheless, when the old City Hall was turned over to the police department in 1963, much of her mural was hidden above the false ceiling and the rest was painted over in white.

According to Galvin, the subject of restoring the murals had come up from time to time in recent years, but no serious efforts had begun, until now. “It’s not something that’s been forgotten. . . . A lot of people knew the murals were there,” Galvin said.

But, he added, “No one had seen them in 20 years.”

Hittle’s timing is what helped make restoration plans a reality. He showed his pictures to Galvin just as the city was trying to find a project for its centennial year (Fullerton was founded in 1887). “It seemed like a good idea to build a centennial project of some lasting value,” Galvin said, and restoration of the mural fit the bill.

Galvin contacted a firm that had painted the original murals in Fullerton’s Fox Theater, built in 1926, and asked them to inspect the Lundeberg mural. Their verdict was that the painted-over sections could not be restored, but could be repainted (for up to $20,000) with the help of vintage photographs of the complete mural.

A plan was devised: The traffic bureau would be moved to the police department’s training and briefing room, and the old City Council chamber would be restored as a community meeting room. Last December, Galvin proposed that city redevelopment funds and a federal block grant pay the $200,000 needed to plan and execute the project.

The City Council rejected the use of redevelopment funds, and Galvin later found that the project was ineligible for a block grant. Eventually, though, the city allocated $50,000 to draw up plans for the project.

The redevelopment agency, with the help of a citizens’ committee led by Councilwoman Molly McClanahan, is organizing a drive to raise the remaining $150,000 privately. Drawings and raffles have already been held; a reception is planned Sept. 20, when invitees can view a documentary on Lundeberg and climb a ladder to see her Fullerton mural in its current state.

Galvin said there is no definite timetable for raising the funds. The actual restoration is not likely to take place until early next year.

Lundeberg, 79, still lives in Los Angeles and remains active as an artist. She studied art at the Stickney Memorial School of Art in Pasadena, where she met Feitelson in 1930 (he died in 1978). Together, they helped to create a mode of painting in the middle ‘30s that came to be known as post-surrealism.

In 1936, she and other artists completed murals for the Los Angeles Hall of Records, which were dismantled when the building was demolished in 1972. In 1938-42, she executed several murals in Southern California as part of the WPA’s Federal Art Project.

The WPA commissioned more than a thousand murals throughout the country in those years, a project that kept many artists working during the Depression years.

Nearly all of the major U.S. artists who emerged in the 1950s and ‘60s had at least some involvement in the WPA projects. Though some of the murals have been destroyed over the years, many are still visible in libraries, post offices and other public buildings.

Lundeberg was unavailable for an interview for this story, because she is preparing to enter the hospital for eye surgery. But in an interview published in Eleanor Munro’s 1979 book “Originals--American Women Artists,” she said the WPA projects were “a great thing for many artists. And for me! My being an artist had been a worrisome thing for my family. But the project saved the day. It gave me enough to live on and also made just being an artist OK.”

In a letter to author Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, excerpted in her 1977 book “American Women Artists,” Lundeberg echoed those sentiments, but added, “It was a good experience, but I don’t think that what I did for the project had much, if any, influence on my later work.”

Her works immediately following the mural projects, she noted, were very small and personal, “a reaction to the impersonal and public aspects of mural painting.”

Later in her career, Lundeberg was at the forefront of a movement called hard-edge painting. A retrospective of her work will open at the Tobey Moss Gallery in Los Angeles in October.

Her WPA murals still visible include works at Los Angeles Patriotic Hall, Venice High School Library and Canoga Park High School. At 245 feet in length, an outdoor mosaic mural at Centinela Park in Inglewood is among the longest ever commissioned under the New Deal.

In Fullerton, they hope that the old City Hall mural will soon join the list. Hittle, the maintenance worker who “rediscovered” the work, takes a particular interest in its future: “I like this type of art. . . . It’s art that I can understand.

“If this project goes through, my children and grandchildren can look at this and know I had something to do with it. It’s so hard to get people motivated for anything civic anymore. This centennial has brought people together.”