US Post Office Suffern
The US Post Office in Suffern, New York is the post office responsible for Suffern, New York , which serves the ZIP code area 10901 with the Village Suffern. It is located on Chestnut Street between New York State Route 59 and US Highway 202 on the northern edge of the central business district. The structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 .
It was built during the New Deal era and reflects the architectural styles of that period, combining the Colonial Revival , favored by the United States Department of the Treasury for new post office buildings in the early 20th century, with the Streamline Modernism , the dominated in the late 1930s. Inside, a relief by Elliot Means , which was commissioned by the Works Progress Administration, is particularly striking .
building
The middle three fields of the front facade have symmetrically arranged limestone slabs with vertical marble moldings . Polished aluminum letters are placed above the main entrance, identifying the building as the local post office. After its completion, a few lamp columns made of the same material were added to the building.
The post office is a one-story steel frame building clad with yellow-brown bricks with five bays . It is square in shape and has a flat roof. Aluminum was also used for the doors and vestibule that lead to an L-shaped lobby that has been preserved almost unchanged. The flooring consists of ceramic tiles and a lambris up to the height of the counter. On the wall above the door to the postmaster's office is a relief by the sculptor Elliot Means ; It is titled Communication and shows a partially clothed woman, surrounded by the moon, clouds, stars, mountains and waves, shooting a burning arrow.
history
Suffern's first post office was opened in 1797 by the city's founder, John Suffern, but was abandoned a year later. The post office was officially established in 1858 and various rented rooms were used over the years. In 1931, when the Treasury Department, which was the postal authority at the time, got Congress to approve funding for the construction of stand-alone post office buildings in several New York state communities, Suffern was included.
The property was purchased for $ 20,000 in 1935 and the new building was built the following year at a cost of $ 90,000. The chief architect of the Treasury Department, Louis Simon, used a strict colonial revival design, which is clear from the building's window arrangement, the clinker cladding and the multiple-glazed pull-out windows. Variations of this basic design can be found at other post offices in New York, the construction of which Simon planned at this time.
In contrast to the other post offices that Simon was building elsewhere in the state at the time, he incorporated more contemporary elements of Art Deco and Streamline Modernism, such as the expansive facing tiles, the use of aluminum in the skylights , the limestone slabs, and the lack of it of ornaments on the outer facade or the other cornices. Only the post office in Waverly in Chemung County , which is almost an exact copy, also uses these architectural styles of modern architecture.
Means' relief was added in 1937, and other than the installation of fluorescent lights in the lobby in 1965, the building has remained without major changes since it opened.
source
- Larry Gobrecht: National Register of Historic Places nomination, US Post Office (Suffern, New York) . November 1986. Retrieved May 28, 2008.
Coordinates: 41 ° 6 ′ 59 " N , 74 ° 9 ′ 7" W.