Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

In 1911, Burchfield graduated from Salem High School as class valedictorian. The school’s bell tower can be seen in the far-right distance, beyond the brick factory buildings he witnessed while walking to a metal fabricating plant, the W. H. Mullins Company, where he worked for many years during his youth. First, he filed automobile parts until he contracted typhoid fever. After recuperating, he returned to the Mullins Company to work as a clerk in the cost department.

In Volume V of his Painting Index, Burchfield wrote that Red Buildings depicts an “alley near Lundy Street looking toward Main” Street in Salem.