John Joseph Earley

Category: Labor Art

Earley's work in concrete (note the colorful work over the doorways on the Walker Building here) shows up all over Washington. A stonecutter's son, his "genius enriched the city from the 1910s into the 1940s," according to Benjamin Forgey (WashPost 3/31/2001). Earley "ran a union shop organized along ancient apprenticeship lines; his workers were carefully trained in a system that placed a high value on near-perfect finishes."