The historic post office in Stuart, Virginia contains a 1942 Section of Fine Arts mural by John E. Costigan entitled “Receiving Mail on the Farm.” John E. Costigan’s “Receiving the Mail on the Farm” was installed in the Stuart, Virginia Post Office in 1942. This mural is the third of three very similar post office murals completed by Costigan and commissioned by the Section of Fine Arts of the U.S. Department of the Treasury as part of the New Deal public works. The other two were installed in Rensselaer, Indiana in 1939 (with the mural having the same title) and in Girard, Ohio in 1938 which has since been inadvertently destroyed in 1962 and was titled Workers of the Soil. All three post office murals depict a similar scene of a farming family pausing their work to read the mail they had received.
