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The familiar words of what is commonly believed to be the U.S. Post Office motto came to mind as we carefully made our way to Oberlin, Ohio. We were driving through a heavy snow squall on a narrow country road that cut through farm land 25 miles southwest of Cleveland, and the irony of those words was clear to both of us. We were on our way to McKay Lodge Fine Arts Conservation Laboratory where Robert G. Lodge, president of the firm, was going to show us the work his studio was doing to restore 35 murals painted by noted American artist and Titanic victim Francis Davis Millet. Entitled “Mail Delivery,” the murals had once decorated the Postmaster’s office when installed in the Old Cleveland Federal Building in 1911. We were excited about having this rare opportunity to see Millet’s murals close up, and to learn about their restoration. Like the motto’s couriers, we weren’t going to let a January snowstorm keep us from our Oberlin appointment.
Cleveland's Group Plan of 1903
At the end of the 19th Century, Cleveland was experiencing unprecedented growth and rapidly emerging as a major Midwestern center for commerce and industry. In just over 100 years, Cleveland had grown from a small pioneer settlement in the Western Reserve of Connecticut to become, by 1900, Ohio’s largest city and the seventh largest in the nation. The era’s new-found prosperity and civic pride brought a growing sense of civic responsibility. It was also a time when, upon visiting Europe, many of Cleveland’s prominent citizens were finding inspiration in the monumental architecture, wide avenues, and beautifully landscaped plazas of its great cities. A collective vision took hold among the city’s leaders to create a new “Civic Center” emulating the finer elements of those cities – a dream realized in the Cleveland Group Plan of 1903.
 The city’s leaders did not look entirely to Europe for their inspiration. They found much of it in the neoclassical architecture of Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Many of America’s most influential architects and artists had been brought together to create the magnificent structures that graced its Grand Court in Jackson Park. Daniel H. Burnham, a prominent Chicago architect instrumental in bringing the exposition to that city, worked tirelessly to oversee the design process, and his appointment of Francis Davis Millet in 1892 to serve as superintendent of decoration was critical to the exposition’s success. Millet’s career as a decorative artist had already spanned nearly two decades dating back to his work with John LaFarge at Boston’s Trinity Church, but his preeminence as both an administrator and muralist was clearly established at the 1893 exposition. He was, by then, widely recognized not only for his artistic talent, but for his organizational skills and attention to detail. In Chicago, Millet was responsible for the selection and coordination of color and decoration throughout the exposition, and he brought together a group of America’s most renowned artists, including Edwin Blashfield, George W. Maynard and Kenyon Cox, to create murals for many of the major buildings. Collectively, these talented artists and architects created along Chicago’s lakefront a magnificent “White City” of monumental architecture based on the principles of the esteemed Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Pauline King would describe the fruits of their efforts in her 1902 book, American Mural Painting:
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In addition to the Federal Building, Cleveland was preparing to build, but had not yet established sites for, a number of new municipal buildings. The Group Plan Commission was charged with creating a monumental “Civic Center,” incorporating each of these structures. In August, 1903, they submitted their design to the city, having arranged the buildings, in best Beaux Arts tradition, around a great plaza. The mall served as the centerpiece of the plan, and stretched from the bluff overlooking Lake Erie to Public Square at the city’s center. The Commission’s report strongly urged that granite be employed for all buildings, and stressed the importance of maintaining the cornice line of the principal buildings, as well as a general uniformity in design. As the location and general design of the Federal Building had already been determined, it would set the tone and scale for all buildings that followed and, together with the Public Library, would anchor the group’s inland terminus.