Hyde Park Post Office Mural Panel 7. From "Murals in the Hyde Park Post Office": "The Bard Hosack Farm with the Red House (built 1764 by Dr. John Bard, located north of St. James Church, model for the present Post Office). Merino sheep imported to improve local breeds by the Bards graze in the foreground." The "Red House" served as the model for the present-day Hyde Park Post Office, a Dutch Colonial Revival structure whose cornerstone was laid in 1940 by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Unlike the wood-frame Red House, however, the Hyde Park Post Office is built of fieldstone found on Bard family lands. In a manuscript for a pamphlet on the Hyde Park Mural, Helen Myers notes that Dr. Samuel Bard shared an interest in sheep husbandry with Chancellor Robert Livingston, who first imported "fluffy" Merino sheep from France and Spain to interbreed with domestic varieties and in this way improve local wool production. Bard published his findings in an 1811 text called "A Guide for Young Shepherds; or Facts and Observations on the Character and Value of Merino Sheep: With Rules and Precepts for their Management, and the Treatment of their Diseases, as well as of Sheep in General." (Container 6, folder 6 in Olin Dows papers in FDR Library). Mural commissioned for Rhinebeck, NY post office by WPA Section of Fine Arts Art in Public Buildings Program, photographed by C.B. Ross and Edward Campeau.