VIERA — Barbara Churms knew that when she and her colleagues took on the job of restoring a painting from the 1920s it would be a huge undertaking. But she also knew it would be hugely significant: A 15-foot depiction of Central Brevard County, restored by a company in Titusville, to be permanently displayed in Viera.

At 4 p.m. Thursday in Building A of the Brevard County Government Center that significance will be fully appreciated at the unveiling of the “Panoramic View of Cocoa Beach and Central Brevard County.”

County Commissioners Mary Bolin and Chuck Nelson will join Brevard County Historical Commission chairman Ed Bradford and Lynne Brezina of Brevard Cultural Alliance’s Art in Public Places Advisory Committee to unveil the piece.

Music will be provided by the Greater Canaveral Chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society.

The landscape mural, which will remain on display at the Government Center, dates to an era when real estate developers typically had such art commissioned to represent what maps and renderings later did.

“They would get landscape murals, also known as “birds-eye views, so that they could show (potential investors) what the area looked like,” said Steve Benn, director of the Brevard County Historical Commission. “In this case, it is a 15½ -foot-wide oil painting of Cocoa Beach and Central Brevard County that was done by a local artist between 1922 and 1928.”

The “Cocoa Beach Mural,” which was done for Cocoa Beach developer and politician Gus Edwards and his then-partner, Lawrence Porcher Allen, hung in Edwards’ office before his death in 1986 and later was simply put away without any care for its historical significance.

The commission sought funding to restore the artifact about four years ago, but budget constraints would not permit it. Finally, Assistant County Manager Stockton Whitten was able to secure funding and bids were accepted for the restoration project last year.

Benn, who expressed delight that a Brevard County company should have come in with the winning bid, described the painting’s condition as, “torn and tattered; the canvas was rotting.”

“This was the largest thing we’ve ever taken on. The hardest part of the project was handling it . . . when we had to bond it to a new canvas,” said Churms, who restored the painting with colleague Joan Dresser. “It was very dry-rotted and we even found baby raccoon prints on the back of the canvas.”

But as it was cleaned, the painting also proved a revelation.

“We found two trains going along the railroad tracks west of the river,” Churms said. “We also found a signature that was readable, so we sent (carefully done copies) to the crime lab people from the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, and they found a signature too. It’s now being researched.”

Churms, whose company restores old photographs, documents and other memorabilia as part of an art framing business, says she got into the field while doing research for a never-completed novel about Brevard and Volusia County in the 19th century.

“You have to do these things for the love of history and we love history,” she said.