Trail Horses for Sale near Corning, IA

About Corning, IA

The Corning post office contains a mural, Band Concert, painted in 1941 by Marion Gilmore. Murals were produced from 1934 to 1943 in the United States through the Section of Painting and Sculpture, later called the Section of Fine Arts, of the Treasury Department. Gilmore's original entry won a federal-sponsored Forty-Eight States design competition in 1939 and depicted a Sunday band concert but a local jury of concerned citizens requested that Gilmore's image contain only actual architecture and landmarks in the downtown district and that she remove a cannon and an obelisk from the image. Gilmore made the changes to accommodate a WPA requirement stipulating that murals should "suit the taste of the local townspeople". In 1996, Main Street Corning won the Spirit of Main Street Award, and in 1998 received the Great American Main Street Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation's National Main Street Center.