ORANGE — At the Post Office, three bas-reliefs, a type of sculpture placed on a flat background to create a three-dimensional effect, will soon be featured as part of a brochure for a self-guided history walking tour of Orange.
The bas-reliefs at the Post Office, which were created in 1939, depict a woman with a spinning wheel and a cat at her feet, a man with a sickle in hand in front of a cornstalk, and an eagle with its wings spread, according to Janice Lanou, of the Orange Walking Tour Brochure Committee.
“The man and the woman are said to depict industry, household arts, the ability to wrest a living from the soil.” The eagle, she continued, symbolizes the U.S. Post Office.
The reliefs, according to Lanou, were created by Oronzio Maldarelli, who was born in Italy on Sept. 9, 1892 and immigrated with his family from Naples to the United States in 1902. Maldarelli, Lanou said, appears to have spent most of his life in New York City attending The Cooper Union, National Academy of Design and Beaux Arts Institute of Design, there.
Maldarelli created his works using terra cotta, plaster, limestone, wood and marble and was best known for sculptures of female forms, Lanou said. Along with the relief in Orange, Maldarelli sculpted two statues for the New York World’s Fair, adding that the statue of the woman in the Orange bas-reliefs is similar to the statue of a woman at the fair. Maldarelli also created a statue of “Air Mail Carrier,” installed in a corridor at the U.S. Post Office Building, Washington D.C. Other creations by Maldarelli include garden decorations and architectural sculptures. He had many commissions in the 1940s and 1950s, Lanou continued.
The Orange Post Office bas-reliefs, according to the March 23, 1939 Enterprise and Journal is entitled Workers of Orange, and was commissioned by the Section of Fine Arts of the U.S. Treasury Department.
The article also recorded local reactions to the bas-reliefs. The paper of that date, according to Lanou, stated of the bas-reliefs, “some like it, others do not and some there are who just can’t be bothered with giving it a thought. Such unthinking persons generally reply with “Well, it may be good or it may be bad but I think the money could have been spent to better advantage on coping or other beautifying so the building wouldn’t look so much like the Monitor — or was it the Merrimack?” It continued, “People who noticed the cornstalk behind the man suggested that the art work should be called Jack and the Beanstalk.”
The self-guided history walking tour brochure is a collaboration between the Orange Revitalization Project (ORP) and the Orange Historical Society (OHS). “The need for a brochure had been tossed around for a few years informally. I believe it came up at an ORP meeting, whose members also include members of the OHS and the decision was made to create a committee,” Lanou said.
Approximately 30 sites will be included in the brochure, all clustered around the center of Orange and located on both the north and south sides of the Millers River. Among the sites in the brochure will be the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union Fountain, the Putnam Opera House, Town Hall, Memorial Park and Peace Statue, New Home Sewing Machine buildings, the Wheeler Mansion, The Dr. Mahar House and several residences on South Main Street including one which was moved to Orange from North Dana when the Quabbin Reservoir was built, Lanou said.