US Post Office Poughkeepsie

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View of the Post Office from the south (2007).

The central US Post Office in Poughkeepsie is at the intersection of Market Street (the westbound route on US Highway 44 ) and Mills Street ( New York State Route 55 ) in the center of the City of Poughkeepsie , New York , in fact, is the address however 55 Mansion Street. The post office is responsible for ZIP code 12601, which covers the City of Poughkeepsie and the parts of the Town of Poughkeepsie that are adjacent to the City. Around one hundred people are employed here and around 300,000 pieces of mail are processed every day. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 .

history

The building was the second of five post offices in New York's Dutchess County to be constructed by the Works Progress Administration during the New Deal . It was the first of these that US President Franklin D. Roosevelt took a personal interest in the design. Roosevelt was from nearby New York . He had first written in 1928 of his wish to preserve the stone buildings in the Hudson River valley as part of monument preservation , which were built by the early Dutch settlers in the region, including his ancestors. Roosevelt feared that the simple and humble style of these fieldstone houses would disappear. For him, this architectural style was desirable and a role model for everyone.

In the 1930s, the nearby town of Beacon had already received a new post office , which was planned by Gilbert Stanley Underwood using the locally occurring field stones. When the planning of the new building for Poughkeepsie began, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau , who was then responsible for the US Postal Service , requested that the fieldstone structure be designed in the Dutch style based on the courthouse of the county, which was built in 1809 and has since been demolished. The architect of the post office, Eric Kebbon, met these requirements, but planned to use granite . Roosevelt finally instructed him personally to modify the plans according to his wishes and stopped the construction until then.

Roosevelt laying the foundation stone.

Roosevelt laid the foundation stone himself on the occasion of celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the settlement on October 13, 1937 . A total of 500 workers were involved in the construction of the 5670 m² building over the next two years.

The building has a lobby with murals depicting six scenes from local and state history, including New York State's ratification of the United States Constitution . The success of the design prompted Roosevelt to campaign for a similar construction at other post offices to be built in cities in Dutchess County, such as in Ellenville , Hyde Park , Rhinebeck and Wappingers Falls . The new office building for the Poughkeepsie Journal newspaper was also affected.

The Smithsonian Institution selected the Poughkeepsie Post Office as one of ten New York state post offices for its listing of the 500 most beautiful post office buildings in the United States.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Desai, Jay: "The Deal That Keeps On Giving: Hudson Valley New Deal Projects Still on the Job" ( English ) In: Building America: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal . Marist College , The 1996 Summer Scholars. 1996. Archived from the original on October 20, 2006. Retrieved March 5, 2011.
  2. ↑ "FDR and Dutchess County Stone Buildings" ( English ) S. 3. Retrieved on June 10 of 2008.
  3. ^ "FDR and Dutchess County Stone Buildings" ( English ) p. 6. Accessed June 10, 2008.
  4. ↑ Dutchess County Tourism - Historic Sites and Museums ( English ) Retrieved on June 10 of 2008.

Coordinates: 41 ° 42 ′ 21 ″  N , 73 ° 55 ′ 40 ″  W.