The WPA & the Golden Age · Reading & the Stage
Young and old visit the library on the parkway
Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, 1936
What it is
A 1936 colour lithograph poster from the Work Projects Administration, showing a family walking to the library on the parkway. The designer is unrecorded; it survives in the Library of Congress.
Why it matters
The WPA's Federal Art Project put unemployed artists to work making posters that sold public services back to the public - here, the library as a place for young and old alike. It belongs to Depression-era America, when a walk to the reading room was pitched as a civic habit worth advertising. That it was printed as a colour lithograph, not the silkscreen used for most later WPA sheets, marks it early in the program's run.
What to notice
Look at the range in the group: the poster pairs young and old in a single walking family, making the age span its whole argument.
The library, sold as somewhere everyone was already going.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- Exhibition poster
- Poster published
- Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, 1936
- Source
- United States Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · 98518436
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
