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These special murals are in the front windows of two vacant buildings on North Chadbourne Street. The Household Furniture Company is listed as the business at 11 N. Chadbourne St. in 1925. This building was added to the National Historic Registry Listing on October 4, 1988. Two multi-pane murals were designed and painted to accurately illustrate the various selections of furniture and accessories sold in this building during the 1920s and 1930s. The adjacent building, 19 N. Chadbourne Street, continues the furniture store theme with two additional window murals. The purpose of the window murals is to present a more attractive street frontage view of unoccupied buildings and hopefully ignite the imagination and attract the attention of potential new business entrepreneurs to these and other buildings in downtown San Angelo.
The first four-pane mural, painted by Crystal Goodman in 2007, features a popular bedroom suite that includes the bed, dressing table, chest of drawers, nightstand, and even a matching rocking chair. Other dressing tables with mirrors, chests of drawers, lamps, and paintings align along the outside walls. There are also large wardrobes, rocking chairs, a blanket chest, and a velvet chaise lounge. A selection of bedsteads in the sleigh, veneer-overlay and iron styles are in a row along the left wall. The family shopping in this mural store also provides a small glimpse into the clothing fashions and styles of the time.
The murals in the five windows on either side of the 11 N. Chadbourne Street building entrance were painted by local artist Hugh Campbell. In addition to furniture, a Jewel wood-and-coal-burning stove is pictured, along with a large six-burner kitchen stove with cabinet. There are also several kitchen sinks, an electric refrigerator, and an oak icebox for those families still without electricity. Campbell dated the mural items with a 1926 Brown & Bigelow calendar, Royal Baker banner and Red Rock Cola advertisement. He also included an assortment of ironware pots and pans, dishes, and crock pots displayed on shelves and hanging on the walls. *Campbell also did the paintings in the first four window panes of the adjacent building, concentrating on desks and chairs, bookshelves, various tables, and other office furnishings.
Local artist Katherine Pittman painted the windows at the north front of the building to illustrate additional styles and selections of living room and dining room furniture. Copies of Life, Time, and National Geographic magazines are stacked in the rack beside the upholstered easy chair. China cabinets, hat stands, bookshelves, a drop-leaf table, ladies� writing desks, a tea trolley, and floor lamps are aligned along the walls and spaced around the store. There is also an overstuffed sofa and rolled carpets on the floor for sale. The roll-top desk and Arts & Crafts-style sofa were popular furnishings for homes and offices in the 1920s and 1930s-and are still sought after by individuals and antique collectors today.
Further along the street on the Master Cabinet Works building at 315 N. Chadbourne Street, Crystal Goodman painted a grocery store mural that includes a bakery, a butcher shop, and a selection of vegetables and household products. As of October 2016, this building is occupied by a new business, and three of the five mural panels have been removed to make way for current product displays. Although the full mural is pictured on this website, only the two panels showing the bakery and butcher shop are on display at the original location.
*not yet photographed for display on this webpage
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