The Top 10 Beefcake Murals of U.S. Post Offices

The people who deliver your Netflix envelopes and Amazon boxes were once responsible for a lot more.  They brought paper copies of your bills, magazines, and even messages from friends.  If you wanted to send messages of your own, you had to go to a building called a "post office" and buy a "stamp."

There are still post offices around -- older people still use them.  And if you happen to drop into one, you might get a surprise: naked men!








During the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal put dozens of artists to work painting murals and friezes on the walls of thousands of post offices all over the U.S..  They were very serious, naturalistic works, showing extremely muscular pioneers taking their shirts off to "tame the wilderness" and go to work in in agriculture or industry.

As in 1. The muscleman felling the forest in  Kenova, West Virginia (top photo), or 2. The boatswain in Plymouth, Pennsylvania (left).







Or 3. This rugged farmer making hay in Hammond, Indiana.









4. There are naked men, too, mostly muscular Indians who are solemnly handing over their land to the white settlers.  This one in Des Plaines, Illinois depicts Spanish conquistadors impressing the natives with...um, I guess cloth.






5. Though sometimes the Indians are memorialized as violent savages: this fully-naked dude is trying to defend his land...um, I mean attack a wagon train in Melrose Park, Illinois.

More after the break














6. In Hopewell, Virginia, the European explorer clasps hands with the half-naked Indian across the Atlantic.






7. African-Americans don't get fair treatment, either.  They appear mostly as happy, contented slaves, like these two muscular guys carrying cotton for their overseer in Winder, Georgia.








8. You don't see a lot of frontal nudity, but this guy standing in a boat in Plymouth, Pennsylvania definitely has a penis.














9.  Most of the murals are naturalistic, but this one in Upper Grandville, New York is so stylized that it might take you a moment to figure out that it's two naked men.







 10. Four guys bonding in Plymouth, Pennsylvania.
11. I can't resist this beefy backside, displayed for no reason other than an appreciation for the male form, in Calumet, MI