The 1936 post office in downtown Plant City, Florida, has been closed due to deteriorating conditions in the basement, discovered in a routine inspection. Postal spokeswoman Enola C. Rice said the building is expected to reopen but she didn't know when. In the meantime, all postal services, including post offices boxes, have been moved to the Plant City Walden Woods Post … Read More
Binding the nation together: Berkeley and the Bronx join forces to save the post office
For our Founding Fathers, post offices and post roads played an essential role in “binding our nation together.” Congress reaffirmed that vision when it passed the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970: “The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together.” The leaders of the Postal Service appear to have … Read More
Historic La Jolla Post Office headed for closure & sale
Despite a very well organized resistance effort that's been going on for over a year, the Postal Service has decided to go ahead with the sale of the historic post office on 1140 Wall Street in La Jolla, California. The final decision to relocate retail services was posted today on the wall of the La Jolla post office. … Read More
Postal Service looks to close five large New York City Post Offices
Five large post offices in New York may be closed over the coming months. Most likely, retail services will be relocated to smaller spaces in the neighborhood, and several hundred letter carriers who work out of the back of the buildings will be transferred to other postal facilities. The closures would have a dramatic impact on their communities, and the … Read More
What are the USPS and CBRE up to? The case of the historic structure report on the Berkeley Post Office
The fire sale of the country’s post offices seems to be picking up speed. Yesterday the Postal Service confirmed that it was in contract with a buyer for the 1858 post office in Georgetown, a historic neighborhood in Washington, DC. The sale of the New Deal post office in the Bronx, New York, also appears to be moving forward with … Read More
Legacy for Sale: Historic Post Offices on the Market
The New York Times has an excellent front-page article by Robin Pogrebin about the Postal Service’s push to sell off its historic post office buildings. It includes a great photo scroll, and it’s getting lots of very lively comments. As the Times explains, the Postal Service owns nearly a quarter of its 31,000 post offices (it leases space for the rest), and … Read More
A done deal in Derby: The Postal Service decides first, consults later, ignores the law
On Monday, the Postal Service announced that “it is considering plans” to sell the historic post office in Derby, Connecticut. Such a sale requires a formal review process, and the Postal Service has taken the first steps in that process by informing city officials and the public of its plans. The process involves a fairly complicated legal procedure, and it … Read More
A Bronx Cheer for the Postal Service: The Fire Sale of Historic Post Offices Continues
Earlier this week the Postal Service announced that it planned to sell the historic post office on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, New York. There's an excellent article about the post office by David W. Dunlap in Friday's New York Times. The Bronx General Post Office is the largest of twenty-nine Depression-era post offices in New York City. Built in … Read More
Our post offices are not for sale: Radio interview with New Deal scholar Gray Brechin
Gray Brechin, a UC-Berkeley professor and founder and project scholar of the Living New Deal, was on the WNUR radio show “This Is Hell” yesterday to talk about the selling off of historic post offices and the push to privatize the Postal Service. Gray is one of the organizers of the effort to stop the sale of the 1914 Berkeley … Read More
Dateline Danville VA: The VP visits, the USPS cuts hours at the PO
On Tuesday of this week, Vice President Biden told a largely African American audience in Danville, Virginia, that Mitt Romney wanted to put them "back in chains" by "unchaining Wall Street." Republicans jumped on the VP for playing the race card, Romney called the remark "reckless," and the story was all over the national news. There's another story coming … Read More
Citizens Rally to Save the Berkeley Post Office
About a hundred people gathered for a rally in front of the post office in Berkeley, California, yesterday. The historic 1915 post office is for sale, and the citizens of Berkeley are going to do everything they can to stop what New Deal geographer Gray Brechin calls “an old fashioned 19th century land grab.” There’s more on the story in the … Read More
Eureka! The Postal Service finds gold in California
The Postal Service has been actively selling off historic post office buildings for over a year now. About forty have been sold or put up for sale. They’re scattered around the country, but for some reason more than a third of them are in California. Last week news came out that one of the most beautiful post offices in the … Read More
Historic Post Offices: An Inventory of the Legacy
Last week the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Historic Post Office Building to its annual list of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. The historic post office faces an “uncertain future,” observes the National Trust in its press release. The Postal Service has been closing post offices at an unprecedented pace, announcing one downsizing plan after another, and … Read More
The Selling of the Venice Post Office: More than a touch of evil
BY GRETA COBAR Venice Beach, California, is an idyllic, bohemian, beach-side community that was once home to The Doors, Jimmy Hendrix, Janice Joplin, and Beat generation poets Stuart Perkoff and John Haag. Today it still embraces alternative lifestyles and artists and performers who don’t seem to fit in anywhere else. The town's romantic archiecture, beaches, and piers have also … Read More
Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Campaign to Dismantle the Post Office
The leaders of the Postal Service have made no secret of their plans for reforming the postal system. They have issued white papers, given speeches, presented “optimization” programs, and appeared before Congressional committees. The plans are clear: eliminate the layoff protections in union contracts; cut the career workforce by nearly half while tripling the number of non-career workers; reduce service … Read More
Philistines at the Gate: The Venice Post Office on the Chopping Block
On Monday of this week, Ruth Goldway, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), will be speaking in Venice, California, at a meeting of the Venice Post Office Task Force. The subject of the meeting: the fate of the Venice Main Post Office, a beautiful example of New Deal architecture, which the Postal Service has decided to close and sell, … Read More