Stevan Dohanos
(May 18, 1907 - July 4, 1994)
Stevan Dohanos was an American artist and illustrator of the social realism school best known for his Saturday Evening Post covers. Dohanos was born in Lorain, Ohio and attended the Cleveland School of Art. In the 1930s he briefly experimented with lithography and wood etching. He was a member of the National Society of Mural Painters and the Society of Illustrators. He was a founding faculty member of the Famous Artists School of Westport, Connecticut.
His first magazine illustration was for McCall's in 1938. In the early 1940s, he moved to Westport and in 1942 he sold his first cover painting to The Saturday Evening Post. Dohanos went on to paint over 125 Post covers during the 1940s and 1950s. He also illustrated for Esquire and other magazines. In the 1960s he became chairman of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee whih selected art to appear on United States postage stamps. He selected art for over 300 postage stamps during the administration of seven U.S. Presidents and nine Postmaster Generals. In 1984, the postal service's Hall of Stamps in Washington was dedicated in his honor.
Dohanos worked for the Section of Painting and Sculpture of the U.S. Treasury Department, painting several post office murals including those for West Palm Beach, Florida and Charlotte Amalie U.S. Virgin Islands.
Dohanos paid his own way to West Palm Beach in 1939 so he could soak up the local color and talk to residents who remembered when mail carriers walked and rowed the 68-mile long route between Palm Beach and Miami. These mail carriers were called the Barefoot Mailman. In 1984, he told a Palm Beach reporter he'd hoped his painting of the Barefoot Mailman walking on the beach would one day decorate the corners of envelopes. He stated "I always thought it would fit into the series on American myths, like Paul Bunyan."
Dohanos' mailman paintings have gone through a couple of changes of address. Initially designed for the old post office building on Olive Avenue in downtown West Palm Beach, they were moved to the former post office at 801 Clematis Street. In 1994, the six paintings were peeled off the wall, again and restored by a Sarasota art conservator. Once revived and framed, they were relocated to the Summit Boulevard facility when it opened in 1985. The murals depict the legend of James Edward Hamilton, Mail Carrier. Some of the studies of the murals are now in the Smithsonian's American Art Museum.
The Barefoot Mailman is an iconic Florida symbol. It refers to the carriers on the first U.S. Mail route (1885-1892) between Palm Beach and the settlements around Lake Worth on the north and Miami, Coconut Grove and Lemon City to the south. (Lemon City is known as Little Haiti. It received its original name from E.H. Harrington who named the area for the lemon trees growing on his property). The mailmen had to walk and travel by boat because there was no road connectings the 68-mile route from Palm Beach to Miami. Approximately 28 miles of the one-way trip was by rowing different boats and the rest by walking along the firmer sand along the beach. The route was a Star Route with the carriers contracting with the Post Office. The route was originally called the "barefoot route" and the carriers were called "beach walkers". It was not until around 1940 that the term "barefoot mailman" came into use.
The first barefoot mailman was Edwin Ruthven Bradley, a retired Chicago newsman and Lake Worth, Florida resident. He and his son, Louie, took turns carrying the mail once a week for about two years. The third and most famous of the barefoot mailmen was James E. "Ed" Hamilton who had come to Hypoluxo from Cadiz, Kentucky in 1885. Hamilton became the barefoot route contractor when E.R. Bradley quit in 1887. Today, there is an upscale bar and restaurant in West Palm Beach bearing the name, E.R. Bradley's Saloon at 104 S. Clematis Street. In the 1970s, it was located in Palm Beach.
Other men who have been reported as carriers on the barefoot route include George Charter, Bob Douthit, Dan Kelly, Dan McCarley, Frederick Matthaus, Otto Matthaus, Edward "Ned" Peat, George Sears and a man known only as Stafford. Henry John Burkhardt was the last barefoot mailman.
Sidenote: The welcome sign for the town of Hypoluxo, incorporated in 1955, reads "Welcome to Hypoluxo - home of the Barefoot Mailman"
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