The newly built San Francisco post office…
…still standing after the earthquake of 1906.
For a time, the city’s post office carried out its duties…
… in tents, such as this one in Golden Gate Park…
…and this one at the refugee camp in Hamilton Square.
The Bootle post office at the corner of Oriel and Balliol Roads, designed by architect William Thomas Oldrieve, built in 1905, the horse poop in the street probably fresh that day.
A wonderful old post office in Webster City, Iowa, which miraculously survives there as “the old post office,” although presently sporting a shiny aluminum front door that seems horribly out of place on this classic building.
A pleasant post office in Athol, Massachusetts, with lovely arched windows, light posts and roof details, which has been replaced today by a brick box.
The wonderfully shaped post office in Waterloo, Quebec, a town founded by an English Loyalist who moved to Canada shortly after the American Revolution.
Not a great view of the Thiensville, Wisconsin, post office, but the card does give you a wonderful sense of place and time.
Opened in 1879, the Starkville, Colorado, post office was burnt to the ground, along with a neighboring YMCA and a supply store, in 1927. The arsonists were said to be coal miners, members of the IWW, striking for better conditions. In 1910, the Starkville mine was the scene of a coal dust explosion that left 59 miners entombed more than a mile underground. In the 1920s, miners across Colorado sought to unionize; mine owners made every effort to sabotage the effort, and violent acts were committed on both sides of the conflict.
This one has special significance for me as it’s in the lyrics of the Little Feat song, “Willin'”:
“I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari,
Tehachapi to Tonopah,
Driven every kind of rig that’s ever been made,
Driven the back roads so I wouldn’t get weighed,
And if you give me weed, whites, and wine,
And you show me a sign,
I’ll be willin’, to be movin’.”
And while I’m at it, I might as well include the Tucson, Arizona, post office:
Post office for the Carson Indian Agency, three miles outside Carson City, Nevada, built by students from the Stewart Indian School, taught by Hopi stone masons.
Here’s a forlorn post office, West Toledo, Ohio, in 1914, but it’s trying, with a Greek Revival facade and its name in stone over the door.
Post Office Postcards 