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53 distinguished and very charming man, a well-known artist. We saw the newspaper story that PWA--Public Works of Art--was going to hire artists to decorate government buildings, such as post offices, court houses, and so forth. Bill thought that would be a wonderful way to get the reptile house decorated and the elephant house. The elephant house was just being built at that time. So he rushed to the phone, called up Ned, and said, "Be sure and send some of these artists to the zoo." His wife told us afterwards that Ned came almost with tears in his eyes because this was such a new thing, and he said, "Well, at least Bill Mann wants some of this work done." He was so pleased. We had several of them working in the reptile house. They did a lot of backgrounds there. It was still fairly new, although it was not a Public Works building. But they did some beautiful illustrations there. A number of men worked in there. Benson Moore could have been one of them, I don't know. I don't think he did. But Mortellito did, and Mortellito also worked in the elephant house. There were two big murals there, one in back of the hippo tank, showing an Egyptian scene with papyrus along the banks and all that. Then there was one in the background for the giraffe cage, which of course showed the accacia trees of Africa, you know, those flat-topped trees that the giraffes browse on. Those were big jobs. Of course, they didn't last forever. It was kind of sad when the paintings in the reptile house were painted over, and the backgrounds just made solid colors. HENSON: Yes, it can't last all that long. I guess then you just continued to know Haweis and Moore?
