By HW staff

It was 1936, amid the Great Depression, and a federal public works program had just commissioned a handful of murals to be painted in the halls of Harlem Hospital by renowned social realist masters Charles Alston, Georgette Seabrooke, Vertis Hayes, Sara Murrell and Alfred Crimi.

Because of the desperate economic and social conditions of the 1930s, artists developed a renewed interest in displaying the plight of the disenfranchised. Social realism aimed at social change, and the mural seemed uniquely able to argue for this as a very public art form. Although social realism is defined primarily by its message and political leanings rather than its style, it is often associated with the hard-edged muscular forms popularized by Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco.

When the work was first presented, local sponsors at the hospital objected to the fact that there was "too much Negro subject matter," "Negroes in the community might object to the Negro subject matter in the murals," and "the hospital is not a Negro hospital, therefore why should it be singled out for treatment with Negro subject matter?" stated hospital superintendent, Lawrence T. Dermody.

It is now nearly 70 years hence, and five murals, can still be viewed at the hospital - at least for now.

As part of a renovation, the hospital is planning to demolish the buildings that house the murals, commissioned by the Works Progress Administration

(WPA) created by then president Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Over the last few weeks, hospital officials announced a $2 million plan to remove the murals and return them once the renovations are complete.

Kim Lovejoy, an art conservator with EverGreene Painting Studios, and F. Eric Goshow, an architect who will supervise the work and a team of conservationists will undertake the grueling job of removing the murals from the hospital's women's pavilion and its nurses'

residence. Those on canvas will be physically - and carefully - stripped from the walls; those on plaster will be taken out with whole sections of the wall itself.

The grandest mural is the eight-paneled masterpiece "Pursuit of Happiness," which now is in the corridor between the old and new nurses' residences. It was painted by Vertis Hayes, who had worked as a mule driver, a doorman, a furnace tender and a newspaper draftsman before he became an artist. "Pursuit of Happiness" depicts the history of Americans of African descent, first in Africa, then in America.

Successive panels move from tribal scenes, in which musicians play their instruments and dance, through plantation and factory life, to the big city where women in white study nursing and - in an echo of Harlem today - stylish men in suits have their shoes shined.

Columbia University graduate and chair of the Harlem Arts Guild, Charles H. Alston painted two of the murals - the matching pair "Magic and Medicine" and "Modern Medicine." The former is a sepia-toned surreal vision of the roots of tribal medicine; the latter a collage of modern medical techniques.

One of the murals to be preserved was painted by one time City College professor Alfred Crimi, whose work, now in an office stacked with bathroom supplies, is called "Modern Surgery and Anesthesia." In it, a team of surgeons perform an operation on an unseen patient, their hands covered in jet-black gloves.

The fifth mural, "Recreation in Harlem," is covered entirely by Sheetrock. Its creator, Georgette Seabrook, was a teenager when she undertook the job.

It will be a laborious task to restore the work, Ms.

Lovejoy said, but apparently Ms. Seabrook, who is now 89, has volunteered to return to Harlem to assist in the preservation.

The renovations at Harlem Hospital Center, will begin this Fall, said Dr. John T. Herbert, its director of anesthesiology. The murals will be re-installed around the end of construction, which is expected to be finished in 2009, Dr. Herbert said.