In September 2006, controversy erupted at Hamilton Avenue School, an elementary school in Greenwich, Connecticut, over Daugherty's depiction of Bunker Hill hero and Connecticut native Israel Putnam in a mural commissioned by Public Works of Art Project for the town hall, and installed in the school in 1935.
His carvings were spotted and he was set to do those instead, eventually as part of the Public Works of Art Project.
The monument is a large outdoor concrete sculpture on the front lawn that pays homage to six of the greatest astronomers of all time: Hipparchus (about 150 BC); Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543); Galileo Galilei (1564–1642); Johannes Kepler (1571–1630); Isaac Newton (1642–1727); and William Herschel (1738–1822).
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In 1938, James Michael Newell, working under the Public Works of Art Project and the Federal Art Project, painted eight murals titled The History of Western Civilization at the school.
French entered the Mural and Easel Painting Section of the Public Works of Art Project, initiated by the Department of the Treasury in 1933, after which he produced murals for the post office in Plymouth, Pennsylvania (1937), and for the Parcel Post Building in Richmond, Virginia (1939).