Gutenberg Mural, New York Public Library, New York City - Philatelic Photographs on Waymarking.com

There are several opportunities for philatelic photographs in and around the main branch of the New York Public Library on 5th Ave. in New York City. These include the building itself as well as the lion statues guarding the main entrance. But if you visit, don’t miss this one which is tucked away on the third floor in an area known as the McGraw Rotunda.

Here, four large murals adorn the walls depicting various stages in the development of the recorded word. In chronological order, the first shows Moses with the law carved on stone tablets. The second shows a medieval scribe copying a manuscript. The third, the one shown on the stamp, depicts Johann Gutenberg showing a proof of his printed Bible to Adolph of Nassau, Elector of Mainz.

The last one (featuring two of the great names in the history of printing) shows Ottmar Mergenthaler, inventor of the Linotype machine and Whitelaw Reid, editor of the New York Tribune where the machine was first used in 1886. When these murals were painted, this represented the state of the printing art and although Mergenthaler correctly speculated that a time might come when printing could be accomplished without setting type, that did not occur until the dawn of the computer age. Today, few people know what a Linotype machine is.

These murals were the product of the Works Progress Administration or WPA, one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “alphabet soup” New Deal programs. Begun in 1935 as a means of providing jobs for unemployed workers during the Great Depression, it reached its peak in 1938 when about three million Americans were on its payroll. Though hiring mostly unskilled labor for public works projects such as roads, parks and public buildings, the WPA occasionally hired painters, writers and musicians for large art and literature projects. Muralists were hired to decorate the lobbies of post offices and other public spaces. The murals here in the McGraw Rotunda of the New York Public Library were painted by Edward Laning and were completed in 1942.

The stamp commemorates the 500th anniversary of the printing of the first book by the use of moveable type: the Gutenberg Bible. The stamp does a thorough job of explaining what it commemorates but you need a magnifying glass to read it. It also depicts the entirety of this rather large mural in a very small space also requiring a magnifying glass to see.

48 Gutenberg Bibles are known to exist. One of these is owned by…you guessed it: the New York Public Library.

Stamp Issuing Country: United States Date of Issue: Sept. 30, 1952 Denomination: 3 cents Color: violet Stamp Type: Single Stamp Relevant Web Site: [Web Link]

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