Obscured Mural Will Become Art Again Through Restoration Project

FULLERTON —  What began 47 years ago as a make-work project for a starving artist will be returned to its original grandeur this year when a neglected mural, now hidden above the heads of Fullerton police officers, is restored.

On three walls inside the traffic bureau, hidden by a false ceiling and partly obscured by layers of white paint, lies the 47-year-old mural depicting the history of Southern California.

The mural was painted by respected Los Angeles artist Helen Lundeberg shortly after the United States entered World War II. Lundeberg, now 81, worked with the federal Works Projects Administration, a New Deal project that employed artists to decorate public buildings.

Lundeberg’s pastel and earth-tone mural decorated the high-ceilinged City Council chambers until 1963, when a new City Hall opened next door and the Police Department took over the old building on the northeast corner of Commonwealth and Highland avenues.

During a renovation at the police station, workers installed a lower ceiling, pneumatic delivery tubes, fluorescent lights and other equipment.

Below the new ceiling, two feet of the mural that remained visible were covered with white paint.

Above the ceiling, workers punched holes in the mural to attach wooden beams, electrical conduits, heating and air conditioning. Part of a horse in the mural was destroyed when workers punched a hole in the south wall to attach a junction box.

“That’s disgusting, what they did to put in that junction box,” said Terry Galvin, the city’s redevelopment director who is coordinating the Police Department’s renovation. “They just took a pick and chipped all around it with no concern for the mural.”

Longtime Fullerton resident Eva Slater, an artist and friend of Lundeberg, said the damage was done without the community being aware of it.

“It was just a decision by somebody who had the power to do it,” she said. “It was too late” to prevent it.

Proposals were made in the 1980s to restore the mural, but none went far. Finally, in 1986, city maintenance worker Dennis Hittle started showing photos of the mural around City Hall. His interest coincided with the city’s effort to find a community project to celebrate Fullerton’s 100th birthday in 1987, Galvin said.

Hittle photographed the mural after performing work in the crawl space above the ceiling.

City Councilwoman Molly McClanahan, Slater and several others formed Friends of the Helen Lundeberg Murals and raised money for the restoration. The money has long since been raised and set aside. The mural restoration awaits a much larger renovation planned for the police station, Galvin said.

The City Council will hear a request in February or March to seeks bids for the work, he said. The city has hired Los Angeles-based A.T. Heinsbergen & Co. to restore the mural.

Restoration will include removing the new ceiling and walls, removing the ducts and tubes that were added, and patching the walls in preparation for the mural work, Galvin said.

Restoring the mural with a team of three or four artists should take about three months after that, Heinsbergen President Anthony T. Heinsbergen said.

Besides the old Fullerton City Hall, Lundeberg’s projects include murals in the library at Venice High School, at Canoga Park High School, and a 245-foot outdoor mosaic along a wall at Centinela Park in Inglewood.

Lundeberg liked to paint in subdued colors--earth tones and soft pastels, said Tobey C. Moss, a friend of Lundeberg who runs an art gallery in Los Angeles.

Lundeberg’s work has been reprinted in several art books, and her paintings are displayed in several large museums, Moss said. Her most well-known painting, “Double Portrait of the Artist in Time,” hangs in the National Museum of American Art in Washington.