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OGDEN — It’s hard not to notice the giant, beautiful murals depicting work of the railroads done in Utah inside Ogden’s Union Station.
The artwork was completed by Edward Laning many years after he was once commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to paint the “Wedding of the Rails” at Promontory for the U.S. Immigration Building on Ellis Island, New York.
“He was hired to do these murals on the theme of ‘Progress of America’ and, of course, the progress of America involved the railroads,” said Charles Trentelman, a volunteer archivist at Union Station and secretary for the Union Station Foundation.
The presidential call for the artwork began in 1933 during the Great Depression. Eventually, in 1935, as a part of the Federal Art Project (a division of the Works Progress), Laning was commissioned to paint the famous moment in Utah history, according to Union Station business manager Tracy Ehrig.
Laning went on to even create posters during the U.S.'s World War II efforts.
Though the Immigration Building closed in 1953, the mural remained on Ellis Island until 1974, when a restoration of the paintings eventually moved some of them to the U.S. Courthouse in New York.
About the same time the original work was transferred to the courthouse in New York, Laning was given a $100,000 commission to paint a new series similar to the painting for Union Station in Ogden, Ehrig said. Laning completed the paintings in his New York studio and came to Ogden in 1980 as they were put in place in Union Station.
Laning died the following year at the age of 75.
“This was about the last thing he ever did,” Trentelman said. “It’s interesting the first thing and the last thing he did are very similar to each other.”
It is somewhat fitting that Laning’s murals of the merging of the railroads have two locations in New York and Ogden.
Trentelman said he visited Ellis Island last year with his wife, getting a chance to see where the original painting once hung on the dining hall walls. Replicas of that painting — and the other murals — are now there.
“I’m looking around at the walls like, ‘Wow, these paintings look familiar’ because the murals that (Laning) did there are actually the same style as the ones he did in Ogden’s Union Station,” Trentelman said.
It was an example of a moment of Utah history making a major impact in American history. It was, in Trentelman’s eyes, also a moment connecting the immigration of America and its impact in Ogden.
The painting that remains in Ogden’s Union Station depicts the immigration of America as much as it shows one of the crowning achievements in Utah history.
On the north wall, the painting depicts the Irish immigrants who came to America and helped build the Union Pacific rails westward. The south wall murals depict the Chinese immigrants who helped build the Southern Pacific railroad from California and Nevada eastward.
In all, it became a fitting end that similar paintings were placed in New York and Utah.
“It was very interesting to find that connection between Ogden and New York City,” Trentelman said, noting that many immigrating to America came through Ellis Island and many of those migrating west came through Ogden.
“It was an interesting bookend on the whole immigration growth of America experience and it shows that immigrants built this country.”
