COUDERSPORT – Coudersport Postmaster Steve Sevinsky and
long-time employee Leonard Snyder were surveying the post office
lobby with an eye toward making improvements recently when one of
their regular patrons interrupted with a suggestion.

“You could start by dusting that off,” he said, pointing to the
large plaster mural mounted prominently on the lobby’s southern
wall.

“Sorry, but we can’t,” Snyder replied. “Federal
regulations.”

He wasn’t kidding. The mural is a protected landmark.

The irony is that the dust lends a special quality to that rare
and valuable artwork that has occupied the better part of the wall
for more than 60 years. It depicts three hardy woodsmen who have
looked down over tens of thousands of customers since the work
debuted in 1939.

First-class stamps cost three cents at the time. World War II
was about to erupt. More than 17 percent of Americans were looking
for work. “Gone With the Wind” was the talk of Hollywood and Albert
Einstein had written to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to suggest
using uranium to trigger a nuclear chain reaction – leading to the
first atomic bomb.

On Saturday afternoon, Feb. 16, 1939, the three woodsmen took
their place as a tribute to Potter County’s lumbering heritage. It
was part of a U.S. Treasury Department plan to decorate select
federal buildings across the country with murals and
sculptures.

Ernest Lohrman was commissioned to create the Coudersport piece,
depicting woodsmen who attacked the virgin timber as passenger
pigeons, plentiful in the late 1800s but now extinct, flitted in
the nearby woods. The artwork was produced with a plaster cast.
Lohrman was paid ,780 for his work.

Lohrman, who was a professor of art and history at Meriden
College in Connecticut, took great pride in his work. He researched
the lumber era to properly depict the equipment and attire of the
woodsmen. He also visited the Museum of Natural History in New York
City to view a taxidermist’s rendition of the passenger pigeon.

Lohrman made the trip to Coudersport to personally supervise the
installation of his work, which has remained on the wall,
untouched, ever since.

“It kind of funny,” Snyder said. “People who live here and use
the post office frequently hardly ever say anything about, but
visitors in town often ask me about it.”