St. Louis Post-Dispatch Clippings

On April 6th, 1930, the St. Louis Dispatch announced Charles as the winner of an annual competition held by the local artists’ guild. He received a $250 cash prize and the lithograph he made depicting “dilapidated houses with Telephone Building in background” received pride of place in an exhibition at the Artists’ Guild Hall. The artwork was also featured in the newspaper on June 22nd of the same year. The print’s subject is the Bell Telephone building, a skyscraper completed in 1926 by the architecture firm Mauran, Russell & Crowell. Smaller buildings in the foreground, described as “dilapidated,” suggest the economic difficulties experienced during that time in the Midwest and across the United States. Charles visually describes a decline in quality of life during the first years of the Great Depression, made starker by the modern skyscraper rising in the background. The Bell Telephone Building was one of the last tall buildings to go up before the Depression began.