Postally Puerto Rico

Several have gotten me thinking about the U.S. Post Offices on Puerto Rico lately... 1. The island has been in the news of late. 2. The Living New Deal has been adding some great photos and information about F.D.R.'s impact on the island by way of the work of various New Deal agencies. 3. When writing this Postlandia entry last month ranking U.S. states by number of active post offices, I had to manually de- and re-sort Puerto Rico since the territory outranked three states. 4. Our friend Jimmy Emerson, DVM, having visited all 50 states, recently snagged a few photos from the island. 5. Now I can show you some awesome photos of Puerto Rican New Deal post offices scanned at the National Archives!

Let's play a game we're calling Basic Postal Q&A: Puerto Rico Edition!

1. Are post offices on Puerto Rico U.S. Post Offices?
   Absolutely! USPS operates the post offices in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and other U.S. territories such as Guam and American Samoa in the Pacific Ocean. They're just like any other post office and standard postal rates are exactly the same as they are for anywhere else in the country.
2. What's the USPS organizational structure for Puerto Rico?
   The Caribbean District, under USPS's Northeast Area, oversees postal operations on Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
3. Where is their mail processed?
   All Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands mail is processed through the San Juan Processing and Distribution Center, also home to the San Juan Main Post Office and Caribbean District offices: 585 Ave. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, San Juan, PR.
   It's responsible for ZIP code blocks 005-007 and 009 (P.R.) and 008 (V.I.).
4. How many post offices are in Puerto Rico?
   As of January 2017 Puerto Rico has 118 active post offices and 13 Contract Postal Units (CPUs). Most facilities are independent [main] post offices. There are just two (POStPlan) Remotely Managed Post Offices (RMPOs) on the island, and no Part-Time Post Offices (PTPOs). There are 21 classified (USPS-staffed) stations and seven classified branches, many of which center around San Juan.
5. Have you spent way too long examining any largely dull and random resources while researching this entry?
   You know it! Check out this document by USPS's Address Management Systems Office: Postal Addressing Standards for Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands. You only live once.

That seems good for now. So where can you see some pictures? Your first stop should always be the PMCC Online Post Office Photo Collection: Puerto Rico page. We're presently nearing 27,000 photos, of which 54 are from Puerto Rico. So we've presently got a bit shy of half the island covered.

The National Archives has a few Treasury Department photos of completed post office construction in Puerto Rico.

Ponce:
Now the Atocha Station post office, what had been Ponce's main post office was completed in April 1933, meaning construction was begun under the Hoover administration and completed soon after F.D.R. took office.



Mayagüez
Completed in 1937, the F.D.R.-era Mayagüez post office is the only one in Puerto Rico for which New Deal artwork was created. In fact, the post office houses two murals, which were installed in 1940. Titled "The Indian Mail System" and “Receipt of First Official Spanish Mail in the Island of Puerto Rico in 1541,″ the works were painted by Jose A. Maduro. You can see photos taken in 2017 of the post office and the artwork, courtesy Jimmy Emerson, in this album.

The following photos were taken in 1937 and 2000. The latter picture was taken by Postlandia friend John Gallagher.




Here's the building's entry on Living New Deal.

San Juan

Perhaps the most spectacular post office facility in Puerto Rico is [what is now known as] the Jose V. Toledo Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in San Juan. You can read more about the building's history at Living New Deal here. The facility was originally constructed in 1914, with its iconic towering addition built in 1940. While primary mail processing operations have been relocated, a postal station: the Old San Juan Station, is still housed in the historic facility.



Adiós por ahora!

Texarkana: The Post Office in Two States

Among the more than 31,000 postal retail operations currently active across the U.S., the downtown post office in Texarkana is definitely among the most unique post offices. It makes for a nice, quick visit if you find yourself along this part of I-30.

Texas became the 48th state into which I set foot, on August 5, 2012. It was the first time I'd first set foot into a state on Federal/postal property: the Downtown Station post office of Texarkana—the city that's "Twice as Nice," if you believe the water tower off I-30—is perfectly bisected by the Arkansas/Texas state line. The state line is appropriately marked by State Line Avenue, along which northbound traffic is in Arkansas and southbound traffic is in Texas. This means that the photo below was the effective result of a jaywalking misdemeanor I was able to commit in two states at once. Not that anyone cared—only one car passed me that sweltering [95°] Sunday afternoon, and the driver shrugged off my daring photo op maneuver as old hat.

Let's show you a map and the building in question.





This federal building is indeed the only one of its kind that physically straddles two states, and it serves as a Federal Courthouse as well. As it turns out its location makes things a bit tricky. You see, the Constitution's Sixth Amendment dictates that "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." Meaning, if you commit a crime in Arkansas, you must be tried by a jury of your Arkansas peers. You'd also have to be tried in Arkansas. Similarly in Texas. So what's the architect behind a federal courthouse in Texarkana to do? Well, you could build two distinct courthouses, one on each side of the state line, or you could save the government a whole lot of money by just constructing one courthouse, physically along the state line. Inside the building, the courtrooms for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas lay within the western side of the building fully within Texas; while courtrooms for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas are fully within Arkansas. Savvy, no?

The United States Courts website thoroughly discusses the nuances of this situation.

A historic marker at the building reads: "Each state [Arkansas and Texas] had separate post offices until 1892," at which point the first joint post office was constructed on the state line. That building was demolished in 1930, and the present structure, constructed on the same site, was completed in 1933. "The base is of Texas pink granite while walls are of limestone from Arkansas," the marker continues.

(Note: Construction on the building actually began in 1932.)

As these two old postcards show, the two sides like to have a little fun with each other...

(Source)


(Source)

Inside the postal lobby (according to my sources; alas, the lobby is locked on Sundays), the postal retail counter is located on the Texas side of the state line, while PO Boxes (with separate sections for Texas and Arkansas box mail) are located on the Arkansas side of the line. According to the General Services Administration (or GSA, which operates the building and runs this thorough webpage describing the architecture and renovations of the building): Although the postal lobby, located immediately beyond the first floor elevator lobby, has undergone repeated modifications since construction, including the introduction of an inappropriate post office box "hut" and customer corral, it retains much of its original character.

Many photos of the building are available at the GSA's website, though only one includes the post office lobby and the aforementioned "PO Box hut". Sadly, the photos, taken in 2003, were taken with a shoddy camera and are of subpar quality. But, they're all we've got and nonetheless one can get a basic sense of the postal lobby with this picture:



From the looks of it one might need to pass through security to enter the postal lobby. It is possible that packages being mailed at the facility must be scanned by security, as is the case at Providence, Rhode Island's downtown Annex Station post office, which also houses federal court facilities.

There are other notes of postal interest as well. For example, the postal management center (District) responsible for the operations in Texarkana—Texas and Arkansas, is based in Dallas. USPS's Dallas District is responsible for the operations for every ZIP code in [northeastern] Texas beginning with '75', and only those ZIP codes, except that it also oversees operations within the 71854 ZIP code for Texarkana, Arkansas. Every other ZIP code in Arkansas is subservient to USPS's Arkansas District.

I think it's interesting to see how Texarkana plays out in the postmark arena.

Here's a Texarkana cancellation from 1966 that uses the city's Texas ZIP code:


... and a more recent cancellation that uses Texarkana's Arkansas ZIP code:


This postmark, from a since-discontinued carrier annex in Texarkana's Texas half, keeps things simple:


There are just a handful of analogous administrative crossover instances in the country, most of which involve communities in Appalachia, including: Bristol, TN/VA (whose three Tennessee ZIP codes are not managed by the USPS's Tennessee District, as one would expect, but rather by the neighboring Appalachian District); South Williamson, KY 41503 (managed by Appalachian instead of the expected Kentuckiana, based on its ZIP code); and South Fulton, Tennessee 38257 (Kentuckiana instead of Tennessee). In a similar vein, Fishers Island is the only community in New York that has a Connecticut ZIP code, 06390, owing to the fact that the Fishers Island ferry that carries the town's mail is based in Connecticut. But that's another post.

Texarkana's [now-]downtown post office served as a regional mail processing hub until its operations were moved into a rather generic building on the Texas side of town in 1971. The building's address is 2211 N. Robison Rd., 75501.



As a result of USPS's Area Mail Processing program both originating (to-be-cancelled) and destinating (to-be-delivered) Texarkana mail now gets processed in Shreveport, Louisiana, 70 miles away.

Postmark scans used in this entry were kindly provided by Kelvin Kindahl from his personal collection.

Triboro Misses the Mark (but Eventually Hits it Again)

First, some background:

New York City's Triboro postal District is among the nation's smallest in terms of geographic area served as well as number of postal facilities operated. That said, it services five million people, more than three times the population within the vast Dakotas District (which includes North and South Dakota as well as Montana). Within NYC the adjacent New York District takes on Manhattan and the Bronx, while Triboro manages Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.

In 2009, before its nationwide Area Mail Processing initiative, USPS consolidated many operations from the mail processing facilities in Staten Island and Queens into Brooklyn's massive Processing and Distribution Center (the Brooklyn P&DC), home of the Triboro District offices. (Said was previously featured and pictured on this blog.) Previously, nearly all mail from within New York City would be cancelled with a postmark bearing the name of its respective borough. Within Triboro, however, everyone would receive a postmark that reads the following:
TRIBORO NY 112
BKLYN-QNS-STATEN ISL
(It could be worse; the Bronx lost all recognition when mail processing consolidated into New York's Morgan Annex a couple of years ago.)

Mind you, there's no real connection between the 'Triboro' boroughs beyond their postal affiliation—the Triborough Bridge connects Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx, after all. The New York Times, in a rather thorough article, reported that various folks around the city were dismayed by this development. But at least Queens and Staten Island still held their (if diminished) statures on their mail.

Over the course of 2012 my father and I (Queens residents) were perplexed and/or annoyed to discover that most mail processed with a TRIBORO cancel began to shortchange our fair borough: the 'QNS' had vanished. The truncated postmark now read "TRIBORO NY 112 / BKLYN-STATEN ISL." Here's an example:

What is this—BIBORO? It felt a bit like a Carmen Sandiego episode.

Let's put this in perspective: the population of Queens exceeds 2.3 million. Houston proper contains 2.1 million people; Philadelphia: 1.5 million. Phoenix: 1.5 million. USPS had just deleted one of the nation's largest cities from the mailstream.

By the end of November I'd heard nothing from a handful of my contacts, so I decided to call the Plant Manager's office directly to see if there was any rationale for the change. I reached someone in the support staff and apprised him of the issue. No one seemed to know anything about the invisible borough. But, the nice guy I spoke with said he'd look into it.

Happily for folks who reside in our fantastic and diverse borough, all letters I've received that have been cancelled on or after December 17, 2012 have been cancelled with the reinstated QNS. Here are a couple of before-and-afters:

Brooklyn P&DC [AFCS] machine 1:


Brooklyn P&DC [AFCS] machine 3:


Brooklyn P&DC [AFCS] machine 6:


Brooklyn P&DC [AFCS] machine 7: no 'before' example.


Small details add up when it comes to serving folks. Unfortunately medium-sized cities across America are losing their postmarks, but hopefully my three letters .

DPO'd: Cleveland Edition

Downtown Cleveland holds several post offices, though now it possesses one fewer: the Postal Bulletin reports that the Huntington Finance Station was officially discontinued on December 24, 2010. Here's a mediocre-quality photo I took of it back in the day:



It wasn't a large or particularly busy office; just one woman in the basement of an office building. It had a nice, large-ring postmark when I visited it back in October 2009. It was on the Hit List, and so its closure is not a surprise. Several others in Cleveland are in jeopardy as well.

Here's another photo from near-downtown Cleveland: The Northern Ohio District offices (formed from the recent merger of the Cleveland and Akron Districts) feature some artwork -- a large image of a Forever stamp. In the back of the building are the main office carriers; the Main Post Office is in a large building next door.