Murals enhance our town

Webb City, Missouri… the name brings a smile to my face. I love this wonderful town. I love the history, the people, the volunteers, the hometown feeling… I could go on and on! What a great place to grow up.

Have you noticed the mural on the north side of the Middlewest Building at 1 S. Main St.? It represents our Webb City Farmers Market, which is known for bringing in visitors from all over the area.

Speaking of Webb City murals, we have a few others worth mentioning. Jack Dawson did a wonderful mural of the history of Webb City that is on display in the lobby of the bank building at 100 N. Main St. The mural shows a grandfather pointing out to his grandchildren the many historical events that helped shape our fair city.

A lady named Betty Gwynn Medsger, from the Class of ’41 recalled that when she was a youth, her father painted a mural on the north wall inside of a grocery store on Main Street. She said that she and her siblings took all their friends inside that grocery store to show off their father’s talent. Later, the grocery store was replaced with a bar. Well, the kids continued to take their friends inside to show off the mural. Her father talked with the owner of the bar and offered to repaint the place for free so his kids and their friends would not go into the bar anymore. Wish we had a picture of that mural.

Betty said her father also chiseled the name Hatten Park at the entrance to the park as part of the Works Progress Administration project that included construction of the rock wall around the park. That was about 1933 or 1934.

Mayor John Biggs painted the 15 x 32 foot mural on the east side of Bruner’s Pharmacy. It shows the beautiful home of E.T. Webb and the St. Louis Arch as it salutes Route 66 from Chicago to Webb City.

More recently, Biggs painted a mural that can be seen inside the Route 66 Tourist Information Center at Broadway and Webb Street. The mural represents the old bridge on Route 66 in the Lakeside area being crossed by an old vehicle and motorcycle. In the car are Joe DiMagio and Marilyn Monroe.

Another mural in Webb City is by retired art teacher John Fitzgibbon. It represents the Webb City R-7 School District and is on display in the lobby of the Ron R. Barton Performing Arts Center. Fitzgibbon painted 14 former and current district schools and the district’s nine school superintendents, up to that time. They were: R.S. Nichols, C.W. Oldham, C.A. Green, M.J. Hale, George E. Masters, D.R. McDonald, Robert H. Clark, Lawrence “Buck” Miner and Ron Barton.

Central School, Webb City’s first school, is in the mural twice – when it was a wooden frame building in 1877 and when it became a beautiful brick building in 1894. The 1912 red brick high school on Broadway, between Washington and Jefferson Streets, and the current high school, on Madison Street, which opened in 1972, are also in the mural. The pillars from the old high school stand guard over the new high school.

The former Webster School (1890), former Franklin School (1900) and former Eugene Field School (1904) have all been replaced with newer schools through the years. Other schools in the mural are the old West Side School, Purcell School, Prosperity School, Carterville High School, Underwood and Oronogo schools.

The challenge is to find the 13 cardinals that Fitzgibbon has hidden in the mural.

Webb City has been blessed with talented artists who have been willing to share their painting skills and add to the treasured assets of our home town.