Art: Ellis Island’s Railroad

It was a great relief to PWA, to the College Art Association, to Architects Harvey Wiley Corbett and Chester Holmes Aldrich and to Edward Laning last week to learn that Commissioner of Immigration & Naturalization Rudolph Reimer at Ellis Island had finally approved Artist Laning’s designs for murals for the dining hall at New York’s immigrant station. Cheered, Muralist Laning and his two assistants, James Rutledge and Albert Soroka, hustled to get his cartoons on tempera and gesso panels as soon as possible.

Two years ago when the Government decided to subsidize painting, particularly murals, it was obvious that Ellis Island was an ideal place for a project. The aliens’ dining hall was a room 98 ft. by 68 ft., with bare walls crying for decoration. First shot at this ambitious scheme was given to a Japanese artist named Hideo Noda. Before final execution his designs had to be approved by the local Immigration Commissioner.

Between 1931 and 1934 New York’s Commissioner of Immigration had been Edward Corsi, a distinguished member of Manhattan’s Italian colony. In February 1934, Commissioner Corsi resigned to take over the even more difficult task of administering New York City’s poor relief. Appointed as his successor was white-haired, bushy-browed Rudolph Reimer, a serious hard-working Democrat who had retired from the coal business.

No sooner was Muralist Hideo Noda’s cartoon submitted to him than Commissioner Reimer blossomed out as a stickler for artistic detail. The Noda mural was promptly rejected because Negro cotton pickers were shown wearing turtlenecked sweaters and creased trousers, because the creature pulling a poor blackamoor’s farm cart seemed to be a full-blooded Percheron stallion. Artist Noda threw up his hands and his job, went back to California.

The Laning mural, showing the building of the Pacific Railroad with Irish and Chinese labor (see cut), got by Commissioner Reimer last week only after the artist had made many a change of detail to bring the whole into accord with that official’s idea of U. S. history. Pointing to the drawing, Commissioner Reimer said:

“You see that man, he should be wearing high boots. These are Federal Army uniforms. There were Civil War soldiers working on that railroad and every now & then even a Confederate uniform would turn up. . . . The engineering details at first were even worse. Laning had square-cut ties under the tracks which were never used until 25 or 30 years ago. The rail which the coolies were handling was at least an 80 or 90-lb. rail. I made him reduce the size of the rail. Rolling mills in those days couldn’t produce anywhere near that size of rail. . . .

“You know coolie labor was imported to work on that railroad and they were almost the first Chinamen that came to America. Having invited them Congress passed a law granting them limited citizenship. . . .”

Before his contact with Commissioner Reimer, Edward Laning, 29, knew little of railroad history, a lot about the theory and practice of mural painting. Leaving Amherst because the sound of John Coolidge’s saxophone was more than he could stand, he went to Manhattan, entered the Art Students’ League. There he became an ardent pupil and disciple of Kenneth Hayes Miller, and a faithful follower of the painter who inspired Instructor Miller, Peter Paul Rubens. In Europe Laning had made a Rubens tour through Paris, Holland, Belgium, Spain, the result of which is obvious in all his work. Critics consider him one of the more promising of young muralists, hope he will acquire a little of Rubens’ gusto for humanity as well as his sense of form and color.