Who Remebers Their Post Office As A Child?

Today Post Offices look more like a fast food drive thru. Our office I remember had the architecture of a small Fort Knox. It had gleaming marble floors and counters, now replaced by formica counters and linoleum floors. The PO boxes were gold colored with heavy scroll work with etched gold glass windows to see if there was mail. Now replaced by ugly flat aluminium flat key doors. The old ones had a small scrolled knob with a combo to unlock. As a boy the first time I thought I was at the bank as they had a huge walk in vault. Now replaced by a locked door in the back. The front was marble block and limestone and even had carved stone figures. Today it is stucco and metal fronts. Days gone by.

There still are classic post offices of old around. In fact I have been a few post offices built during FDR's reign that are still in operation that have marble countertop, hard wood floors, glass & bars at the clerk windows, and murals on the walls. I've also seen some very small post offices that still use the glass window,gold door, with knob combo's for their boxes. Most of these are in the small town communities along route 66 in Illinois that I've visited within the last year to obtain a circular date postmark on my map project. So far I have over 30 postmarks out of about 66 all on the same map.

Getting back to the original question. Yes I do remember my home town post office, of course it wasn't that long ago. However, the building is no longer a post office and is currently vacant. A new post office was built a few years ago across the square from the original. I also remember my postmaster, Byron Crawley, he was very helpfull to me as a young stamp collector. He would always let ne know when new issues arrived.

Hmmm this is a tough one...when I lived on Long Island until age 10 I do not remember visiting a post office even though I collected stamps..when my folks moved my butt upstate 8 miles from anywhere..dont miss the school bus!! We had RFD delivery..but the Elizaville post office about 5 miles away was housed in a general store..they had a bar type counter and the little locked boxes on the wall..i was not a U.S. collector so I didnt make my purchases at the post office...

I recall, as a five-year-old, living in Richmond, Ontario. This is a little town outside of Ottawa. I remember walking up the street to the post office. This would be around 1970. It was a small post office. Richmond had General Delivery, so you had to go to the post office to pick-up your mail.

It had a big Maple Leaf flag flying out front on a flag pole. Inside the lobby, was a series of lockboxes, and there was a big picture of The Queen, high-up on the wall, above the lock boxes. Inside the post office there was a counter where the postal clerks served customers.

I don't remember much else.

David

The "original" Post Office still stands in my home town.



It still looks pretty much as it did in 1925, when it was built, as far as the exterior is concerned, but the inside has been renovated numerous times. There was also an addition added onto the back (towards the right of the picture) back in the 50s, and there is now a wheelchair ramp up that side of the building as well.


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How do I describe our post office, it has been the post office for as long as any one can remember. It is located in a cinder block building and other than the flag you would probably miss it. The first room which is not large only about 17 x 5 is where the PO boxes are located.

They must be over 100 years old all engraved bronzed with numbers on them. I'm not sure how many there are maybe 50. The next room is the counter the smallest room and other the the computer used for the check out it is probably the same as it was 100 years ago.

The sheet stamps are kept in the same out wooden drawers without dividers. The counter top is the same wooden top that it has always been.

except for the new tile floor added this year nothing has changed for the 25 years that I have lived here. It even has the same post master.

I can remember last year when the second post office in our township changed postmasters. Again this building has been the post office for 100 years and it hasn't changed one bit. However when the new postmaster came to town the important things changed.

People still used there street address instead of their PO Box Numbers. Mail was still delivered to everyone's PO box's. Well the new postmaster not knowing the people or being able to match their street address with the PO box simple started returning all the mail undeliverable.

She said NO PO BOX Number then NO MAIL. She simply wasn't going to go through the books to match them up.

Her tenure at the post office was short lived.
So no stories of fancy post offices because we never had them just simple buildings with old floors and doors.

The Post Office in my home town is still the same except for the stone lions on the front steps have disappeared. And we also had a mural of the Adirondacks with lakes and Revolutionary war forts. The mural was on the entire wall about 15 feet high and wrapped around the complete lobby. I wonder if it ever was painted over?

Mkfarm same postmaster for 20 years..thats darn good..isnt it a political appointment by the party thats in power at the time ??

I don't know? But Nancy has been the postmaster since 1988. The only other person that works there is a part time employee that fills in on her days off. Now we have four post offices in our very small township.

My local village is a farm community while the three others are all coal patches. I remember when I first moved here I was amazed they didn't offer home delivery so you had to use a PO Box. Well they still don't deliver in town but since I'm on the farm now we have rural delivery.

I will have to take some photos of our Post Offices.

I got my Dad into the hobby a few years ago. He's 67. He is originally from Montréal, PQ. He collects postcards of Montréal. His favourite on is a post card from the 1960's, showing the big post office building. he likes to point out the window where his office was, when he started with the post office.

Good news, I'll have my scanner operational in another week... then stand-by, folks, for the scans.

David