green marble base and veined white marble dado. The plaster walls are divided into four recessed bays flanked by marble pilasters, rising to a ceiling cornice with classical detailing. While the furniture in the lobbies is newer, most of the teller windows and the iron grillework above them, and some of the post office boxes, are original. At either end of the lobby is a mural by Waldo Peirce, both with regional themes. The eastern one depicts Rip Van Winkle and the west one is called Legends of the Hudson. Peirce did very few public commissions, and only two other U.S. post offices (in Westbrook, Maine and Peabody, Massachusetts) have murals by him. History Troy's first post office was established in 1796, within a decade of the city's founding, in a local law office on First Street. Over the next century it was housed in seven other downtown locations, the last two being for long periods, in the Atheneum Building on First Street (1846-1882) and the Masonic Temple on Third (1882-1894). When Congress authorized the construction of the city's first federal building in 1886, the post office was among the agencies slated for space in the new building. The land for the new federal building cost the government $99,982 and then an additional $323,000 in 2008 dollars to build starting in 1890. It was opened in 1894; the granite Romanesque Revival-style building's clock tower became one of the city's most enduring landmarks, dominating the downtown skyline. In 1931, as the Great Depression was beginning, an amendment to the Public Buildings Act of 1926 authorized 136 separate postal construction projects to relieve growing unemployment. Troy's was one, but the Treasury Department, under whose umbrella the Post Office came at the time, was unable to begin the project for a few years, and it had to be reauthorized in 1934. The plans called for the old building to be demolished; and once the newer design, by Treasury Department Supervising Architect Louis Simon, was made public there was outrage from some citizens that the popular older building was to be torn down only 40 years after it had been built. But it was insufficient to stop the project, and after $154,000 was spent to acquire the additional land the new building would need, the post office moved to the Hannibal Green Building across the street in 1934 for the two years it would