Burlington Post Office

Burlington Post Office

Located at 107 South Fourth Street, was placed on the National Historical Register on October 17, 1989 for its association with the Treasury Department’s Section Program and for the artistic significance of the sculpture it contains. The sculpture "Boy and Colt" was carved by Arizona artist Robert Kittredge in 1942.

Sculpture

"Boy and Colt"

1942

Artist

Robert Kittredge

1910-2003

Robert Yates Kittredge, 93, a pioneer resident of Oak Creek Canyon for 74 years, died Sept. 28.

Born in Cairo, Egypt, Mr. Kittredge was the son of a playwright and a newspaper foreign correspondent and spent most of his childhood in New York City. His artistic career began at age 14 as a sculptor's apprentice, and he went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany.

In 1930, Mr. Kittredge, at age 19, along with his brother, Dan, settled in Oak Creek Canyon and built the "log house" at Forest Houses Resort, their "citadel in the woods." Mr. Kittredge met and, in 1938, married Mary Byrd of Upper Brandon, Va. He won a number of sculpting commissions through the U.S. Government's "1% for Arts" program, and in 1939, he returned to the East to work first for Pratt and Whitney and then Sikorsky Helicopter Corporation during World War II.

After the war, Mr. Kittredge returned to Oak Creek Canyon and, in 1946, built the "rock house," the first of 16 hand-hewn houses that would become Forest Houses Resort.

His first manuscript was published in 1958, and in 1961, he took a break from writing and building, bought a 38-foot sailboat and, for the next six years, along with Mary, sailed around the world. His 1970 treatise, "Self-Taught Navigation", is still in print.

During the late 1960s, he operated his School of Celestial Navigation in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., but the lure of the West brought him back to Oak Creek Canyon and to more building.

In 1980, he was the recipient of the first Joseph Wood Krutch Award from The Nature Conservancy for his donation of the Hartwell Canyon Preserve located near Loy Butte, west of Sedona.

Mr. Kittredge was, in every way, a self-made man, acquiring the knowledge and skills as he needed them. Once he had decided on a course of action, little blocked his path. At times, hard and demanding, at others, understanding and insightful, he was always powerful, never passive. He seized his opportunities and made the most of them.