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JB   That was a WPA project. Well now whether they've continued with that restoration I don't know. They planned on it. They diid samples. I have the man's name at home. He's with the Port Author Authority. I have to find his name for you. 

EV   Yes I would like to have something about that . Do you have photographs.

JB   Then before that I did a smaller mural 27 feet long for a library in Woodside, also in Long Island. I didn't know what had happened to it but when I was with Koots, James Koots told me a woman called there who was the wife of a wrecker and that her husband had taken down the Woodside library for the city and they had sections of the mural and would they be interested in buying them.

EV   Selling you back your own work.

JB   Yes how do you like that. I think just to tear things down like that or to paint out a big mural like this that you worked on for years is just terrible. 

EV   It is terrible. It's like loosing part of your life. Now this is in LaGuardia airport.

JB   LaGuardia Airport in the Marine Terminal.Building. A round building. It deteriorated rapidly after Pan American left it they had sea planes. Last time I was out there, it was quite a few years ago, it was used for charter flights back and forth to Puerto Rico. It was full of popcorn stands and all that junk. and then I never saw it after it was painted out.

EV   Now they're going to restore it.

JB   So they say. I haven't been out since because I don't want to keep in touch with it even I'm kind of disgusted with the whole thing.

EV   Well it must have hurt when they painted it out.

JB   Well it was a disappointment. I was through with that honestly I didn't care any more about it, or looking at the period of my work, but it was a thing I spent an awful lot of time on.

EV   Did you have several assistants?

JB   A good many yes. Assistants but I had none that could really do any of the painting for me. They were not highly develope d painters they were just working as assistants on the project. They could help mix paint and things like that, but I couldn't find any that could do any of the actual painting so I had to do all the painting. Quite an undertaking and so I spent those years .. so I would draw it and have models at night and weekends I would try to sketch a little and during the week I would work on the murals 

EV   Is the theme that of transportation? 

JB   It's on the idea of flight. First big panel is the flight before there was such a thing, the fact that it existed in people's mind [[strikethrough]] before there was such a thing the fact that [[/strikethrough]] in a very real way both in religion and in all kinds of ideals and Leonards was starting to bring it up into the real thing, toward the end of that panel. The next panel was the actual flights starting with the Wright Brothers. It was the idea that flight had always existed whether they could fly or not, but anyway I tried not to make it too literal but the second panel got a little too much so in parts. Actually it didn't interest me too much. I hadn't actually matured as a painter enough to stay interested in my work there. I kind of admired the fact that I could do it and I did and the designing of it was in some places kind of skilful  but it didn't have the kind of thing I am interested in now. That's the reason I didn't get excited about it [[strikethrough]] now [[/strikethrough]] later on.