To lift the United States out of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt put Americans to work building roads and bridges, conserving forests and rivers, laying sewer pipes, and constructing schools, parks and airports. But the U.S. needed something more, Roosevelt thought. It needed art. So his White House built a national gallery and museum, then scattered the works around the country, placing dazzling murals and sculptures in hundreds of post offices. The works brought visibility — and crucial paychecks — to the artists, and lifted morale during the depths of the Depression and the Second World War.