The WPA & the Golden Age · See America / Cities & States
Cellar ceilings must be fire-retarded
Martin Weitzman · Works Progress Administration; issued under F.H. La Guardia, Mayor, and Langdon W. Post, Commissioner, 1936
What it is
Dated 1936, with an April 16, 1937 stamp on the verso, Martin Weitzman's silkscreen was issued in New York under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and Tenement House Commissioner Langdon W.
Why it matters
Post. The image is unusually brutal for a code-compliance notice: a couple trapped in a house already alight, the flames doing the persuading that a regulation number could not. It belongs to the WPA poster programme's civic-safety strand, where graphic design was pressed into the service of tenement reform.
What to notice
Martin Weitzman puts a couple inside a burning house and lets the building code do the rest.
Made by artists on the public payroll — art the country already owned.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Designer
- Martin Weitzman
- Format
- One-sheet
- Poster published
- Works Progress Administration; issued under F.H. La Guardia, Mayor, and Langdon W. Post, Commissioner, 1936
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN 98516765
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. government program work (WPA Federal Art Project), any year. Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 18x24" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
