Key to Gloucester City Hall’s City Council in Session 1937 New Deal mural by Charles Allan Winter

Catherine Ryan submits-

The Committee for the Arts is excited to share new “in situ” photographs of Gloucester ’s City Hall murals by noted architectural photographer, Chuck Choi.

Here is Chuck Choi photographing and Mayor Carolyn Kirk eyeing his composition

Here’s one featuring Charles Allan Winter’s City Council in Session in the lobby of City Hall (don’t miss our killer ship chandeliers!);

followed by a photo zoomed in to show all 34 figures

followed by a photo of the framed “key” that his installed below the mural, just above the collectors’ windows—more to follow on the key!

There was media coverage in the 1930s for the murals as they were completed, and many times since then. Here’s a fun one: In 1972 Senator William L. Saltonstall (Manchester resident and member of the Massachusetts Senate from 1967-1979) enlisted the help of media to announce a contest to help identify the portraits in some of Charles Allan Winter’s New Deal murals within Gloucester ’s City Hall. The Cape Ann VF insert published a photograph of the Winter mural in Kyrouz Auditorium, The Founding of Gloucester, with the caption: “Senator Saltonstall is offering dinner for two at a Gloucester restaurant to the first person to identify the most real people in the mural painting above.”