Although originally founded in 1914, the Mary S. Biesecker Public Library’s current location dates to 1943. The library at 230 South Rosina Avenue was constructed as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program created to provide jobs for the unemployed during the Great Depression, providing not only employment but a number of much-needed infrastructural projects across the United States. The WPA along with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) were heavily active in Somerset County during that period. The Library was designed in the Colonial Revival Style by Charles Morse Stotz, an architect and preservationist best-known for helping to reconstruct Ft. Ligonier and the Ft. Pitt Museum. Learn more about the WPA and search locations of WPA sites through the Living New Deal website (or check out our listing).
Soon after its creation in 1943, the library was gifted three murals by artists associated with the Somerset Summer Art School of 1939-1940. This was a popular artist’s colony in Laurel Hill State Park created by the three artists below, along with painter Samuel Rosenberg and Lila B. Hetzel, one of the library’s original patrons. This School employed artists well-known for their work in a variety of fields, each of whom sought to capture unique and important moments in Somerset County History.
Esther Topp Edmonds: Landscape Artist and Educator
Esther Topp Edmonds (1893-1954) was the daughter of a prominent architect, O.M. Topp, from Pittsburgh, PA and married well-known journalist James Edmonds. Educated at Cornell University and the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon), she traveled back and forth between the United States and Norway, painting primarily landscape portraits in watercolor, and also studied industrial art in Paris and New York. Topp spent most of her life in Pittsburgh, teaching art courses at Carnegie Tech, and her art was frequently exhibited at Pittsburgh museums and art galleries, and she also maintained a summer home in Somerset where she painted local landscapes. She described the purpose of art as “not to record what [an artist] sees in front of him, but to arouse a specific emotion in the person looking at the picture.” She died in Stockton, California in 1954. Learn more.
Esther’s Mural (completed in 1945):
Esther Topp’s mural for the Biesecker Library (on the far left wall), showing President James Buchanan and Secretary of State Jeremiah Black (a Somerset native) discussing the crisis at Fort Sumter just before the outbreak of the Civil War.
Kindred McLeary: Artist and Architect
Born in Weimar, Texas, artist Kindred McLeary (1901-1949) taught courses on art and architecture at Carnegie Technical Institute (now Carnegie Mellon) in Pittsburgh and maintained a private studio in Confluence, PA where he passed away in 1949. He is best-remembered for his depictions of New York City life and his murals commissioned by the WPA in the ’30s and ’40s, the most famous of which, “Defense of Human Freedoms,” hangs in the U.S. State Department headquarters in Washington. The New York Times summarized his work as symbolizing “what the United States stood for in a time of crisis when the free world was threatened.” Other art pieces are on display in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and other notable museums across the United States. Learn more.
Kindred’s mural (completed 1944):
Among his many works, Kindred McLeary contributed a mural to the Biesecker Library. Depicting Frederick C. Goeb printing the “first Bible West of the Alleghenies” in Somerset in 1813, his mural overlooks the circulation desk.
Alexander Jusserand Kostellow: Graphic Artist and Educator
Born in modern-day Iran, Alexander Jusserand Kostellow (1894-1954) studied art in Paris and Berlin before emigrating to the United States in 1916. A true Man for All Seasons, Kostellow was a prolific artist who also earned a reputation as “the father of industrial design education” by creating an extensive curriculum at Carnegie Tech in the 1930s, then teaching at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He viewed industrial design as important because “it enters every home in one form or another,” and sought to pair form and function in his work. Among his students was Bill Mitchell, the designer of classic GM cars from the Chevrolet Bel Air to the Corvette Stingray. Besides his mural at our library, Kostellow also oversaw painting of the murals in the Somerset Post office and took part in several local art exhibitions during his time at the Summer Art School. Learn more.
Alexander’s mural (completed 1945):
Alexander Kostellow painted the third mural in the Mary S. Biesecker Public Library (displayed on the far right wall), depicting the arrival of early pioneer Harmon Husband to the “New Jerusalem” in Western Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania Art Prints by Katherine Milhous
Our genealogy room displays original Federal Art Project prints from noted artist Katherine Milhous for display in our genealogy room. Milhous, a native of Philadelphia, was born to a Quaker family and grew up disappointed that there wasn’t more art celebrating her state’s native heritage. In the 1930s, she served as director of the Federal Art Project in Philadelphia, a sub-agency of the WPA, which created a series of vibrant and expressive graphic prints celebrating Pennsylvania, particularly its Amish and German-American heritage. Milhous’s work was widely acclaimed and displayed at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City. She later gained further renown as an author and illustrator children’s books; her most famous work, The Egg Tree, won the Caldecott Medal in 1951. Learn more about Katherine Milhous, and access the Library of Congress’s online catalog of her work.
We are proud to host these unique art works celebrating Somerset and Pennsylvania heritage. They demonstrate the Mary S. Biesecker Public Library’s long and proud history, along with placing us in the context of our state and country’s development. We hope that next time you visit the library, you’ll take a moment to enjoy these special works of art.