The 2024 Calendar of Post Offices and Places

I've been visiting and documenting post offices for 15 years now. This means I'm a bit older than I used to be. Yet, it also means I still have ridiculous amounts of fun exploring various corners of the country and collecting stories along the way. I don't really share those stories on the blog anymore, but it's not to say these stories aren't worth sharing. These years I've just dedicated my time to distilling these experiences into a dozen really great photographs and captions. So now, without further ado, I present the eighth(!) annual Postlandia Calendar of Post Offices and Places.

[Edit: The calendar has been removed from public sale.] 2024 Postlandia Calendar Cover:


This year's calendar takes us from Hawaii to New England, features post offices large and small, presents some gorgeous Deco façades and details, and shares the history behind several [gorgeous] former post office sites. The photos, as always, are high-resolution (unlike the compressed versions I post here).

I spent weeks researching the stories, searching and reviewing old newspapers, checking historical society websites and National Register nomination forms, and even calling one P.O. to make sure the captions were accurate. It's hard work but it's super rewarding. Furthermore, as of this edition the Postlandia calendar has featured at least one post office from each of the 50 states! (Not to mention Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.) I might have made a color-coded map to keep track of all the featured post offices.

... I definitely made a map.

Hi, Hawaii!


Every calendar is printed to order. My publisher of choice is Lulu. They've proven reliable for as long as I've been making these calendars, and you should find that the printing and paper quality are top-notch. You can write on them with pen, Sharpie, whatever, and the pages hold up just fine.

In addition to the holidays you'll find on other calendars, you'll find historic tidbits and postal trivia. It's good stuff. It's even better for the loyal mail carrier or snail mail enthusiast in your life.

Nashvillage Square:


Sales of these calendars help support my ridiculous post office exploration endeavors, which included a 206-post office, two-week trip across three states in June and a 162-post office trip in September. Did I mention the 56 post offices I photographed this spring in Hawaii? Proceeds also support the time I continue to dedicate expanding the Post Mark Collectors Club (PMCC)'s Online Post Office Photo Collection, the freely available reference that recently surpassed 33,000 post office photos!

New England, old post office:


Thanks for checking this all out. I hope you give the calendar a shot if it's your first time encountering it, or, that you'll enjoy this year's edition if you're purchased other ones in the past.

Wishing you all a great and fulfilling holiday season!

Sincerely,
Evan (Postlandia)

Beautiful Post Office: Dubuque, Iowa

Dubuque holds a special place in history: It is, per its website, "Iowa's oldest city and is among the oldest settlements west of the Mississippi River. The first permanent settler to the area was French-Canadian fur trader Julien Dubuque." The region contained rich deposits of lead, and Mr. Dubuque worked with the native Mesquakie to mine it until the time of his death in 1810. Dubuque is also home of what was the first post office in Iowa! Per The Annals of Iowa: "The postal system in Iowa dates from 1833 the first postoffice being established in Dubuque (then called Dubuque's Mines) on May 27th." The City of Dubuque was chartered in 1837 and has had a post office by that name since that time (replacing the Dubuque's Mines P.O.). By 1837 two dozen post offices had been established in the territory, and by the time of Iowa's 1846 statehood there were dozens throughout the territory.

A great early history of the Dubuque post office, particularly during its early years, can be found at Encyclopedia Dubuque!

First, let's have a look at the former Custom House and Post Office building. Long gone, it was located at W 9th Street and Locust Streets. This image was taken ca. 1902:



Here is the current post office as of last year:


Dubuque's current post office is stately, located at West 6th Street across from Washington Park. I'll let Wikipedia tell the tale:

As Dubuque expanded during the 1920s, the post office was not large enough to handle the increasing volume of mail. Rather than enlarge the existing building, city officials decided to construct a new post office. Congressman Thomas J. B. Robinson led the effort to secure a more appropriate postal facility. Officials determined that the new building would function as both a post office and courthouse, and the building continues to serve these purposes today [author's note: I find no direct evidence that the courtroom is still in use by the Northern District of Iowa; the building does, however, serve other Federal functions].

The building was constructed with funding from the 1926 Public Buildings Act, in which Congress appropriated substantial resources for Federal buildings throughout the United States. Dubuque received approximately $650,000 for site acquisition and construction costs. Renowned city planner John Nolen intended for the building to be part of his civic design, "Administrative Center at Washington Park," which he developed in 1931. City officials hoped to construct a city hall, courthouse, and park adjacent to the post office, but these plans were never realized.

The Courthouse was designed by the Office of the Supervising Architect under James A. Wetmore, who received input from Iowa architects. Among the local designers was the office of Proudfoot, Rawson, Souers & Thomas, a highly respected Des Moines firm. This venerable firm (including earlier variations of the founding office) had a long of history of designing high-profile public buildings in Iowa, including the Polk County Courthouse in Des Moines and buildings for Iowa State University and the University of Iowa. Although little is known about the Dubuque architect involved in the project, Herbert Kennison, he likely served as an onsite consultant and provided the valued contribution of a designer who was also a local resident.

The building's cornerstone was laid in 1932, and a dedication ceremony was held the following year. The building was occupied in early 1934. In 1985, it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing resource within the Cathedral Historic District, which encompasses historically significant residences and public buildings.

Building cornerstone:


Beyond the fact that the structure was built by Chiabi & Garriup Construction Co., Wikipedia actually seems a more reliable source than the National Register of Historic Places nomination form that includes this federal building, which wrongfully states that the building was built in 1930; was built by the Works Progress Administration (WPA)—which wasn't around at the time of its construction; and featured artwork by just one artist. A URL on the GSA cited by Wikipedia is no longer valid, so let's continue our discussion of the two Treasury Section (New Deal) murals with the Wiki text!

The interior features ... important murals in the lobby vestibule. The murals were funded with $2,000 of the original money allotted for construction of the building. Although a competition to select an artist was held, officials intended to select Grant Wood, the famous Iowa painter of "American Gothic," to complete the murals. When Wood did not enter the competition, William E. L. Bunn was selected. The selection was subsequently overturned in favor of a painter named Bertrand Adams. As a compromise, both Bunn and Adams, who each studied and worked with Wood and were friends from the University of Iowa, were allowed to paint murals. Adams painted "Early Settlers of Dubuque" in 1936 and 1937. The painting depicts several symbols of the city's pioneering days, such as the Julien Dubuque Monument and the Mesquakie Native American village. Adams also represented impending industrialization by painting the Dubuque Shot Tower and a bridge. Bunn painted "Early Mississippi Packet 'Dubuque III'" (also referred to as "Early Mississippi Steamboats") at the same time. His mural illustrates life in Dubuque in 1870, when steamboats were a primary method of transportation in the Midwest. The two murals show a harmony of scale and color use.

Bertrand Adams: "Early Settlers of Dubuque"


William E.L. Bund: "Early Mississippi Steamboats"


I am totally digging those radiator grilles at the bottom; aren't you?

Postlandia bonus: Compare the final artwork with an initial "cartoon" by the artist! (Note: The perspective on the modern image is a bit warped, and thus not exactly to vertical scale.)



My favorite part of the vestibule is the plaque describing the murals; specifically:


Imagine that.

A Positive Impact of POStPlan?

Editor's notes: In discussing the nationwide implementation of POStPlan we consider frequently the reduction of retail hours at rural post offices and the dismissal of Postmasters. Often overlooked is the need for local residents who have no rural delivery to be able to pick up their mail beyond the hours of a post office's new reduced hours of, say, 8—10 A.M. Here's how that issue is being addressed in many parts of the Midwest and in particular at one office affected by POStPlan in eastern Iowa. Mr. Bahnsen is encouraging and working with various postal officials around the country to improve access to Post Office Box lobbies, whether or not those post offices are impacted by POStPlan and its attendant reduced window hours. (This post does not necessarily endorse the latter policy.)

A POStPlan Perspective by Steven Bahnsen, retired Postmaster:

POStPlan is sweeping rural America. Perhaps you have heard of it, or even had this affect your community's post office. It was designed to eliminate Postmaster jobs, and while small post offices will remain open, their window hours will be reduced to 6, 4, or even 2 hours a day.

Postal Service Headquarters in Washington, D.C. selected which offices would be impacted by POStPlan, and gave guidance to its local Districts regarding the logistics of its implementation.

POStPlan mandates that residents' ability to access their Post Office Boxes [in the post office lobby] not be reduced upon the plan's implementation. If a lobby was open all the time, access would not change. If the boxes were available from, say, 7:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., or even if the boxes were only accessible during the morning, lobby access hours would not be reduced even as retail hours were impacted. Nowhere within POStPlan were there instructions that box lobby hours could not be expanded, only that they could not be reduced. In this way POStPlan has afforded the Postal Service with the opportunity to re-evaluate and in many cases improve P.O. Box mail access.

Clinton, Iowa post office (taken 1989)


My own postal history dates to about 1965 when I discovered the glorious 1902 post office in my hometown of Clinton, Iowa. I was mesmerized by the marble walls and floors in this building where people came to buy stamps and mail things. The whirr of the cancelling machine in the late afternoon and evenings was music to my ears, as was the idea that any person could come into this building at any time to get their P.O. Box mail. The concept that everyone should be able to get their mail at any time has stayed with me for 50 years.

For decades Iowa has housed hundreds of post offices whose lobbies are accessible at all hours. Plenty of other offices maintain lobbies that are accessible into the evening courtesy of automated time locks, many of which were installed during the 1980s.

POStPlan has provided the impetus to turn off the time locks at many offices and just leave the lobby open all the time. [The postal Districts governing] Minnesota, northwestern Wisconsin, Missouri, southern Illinois, and Indiana are among those that have joined Iowa['s] in simply leaving post offices' lobbies open once POStPlan impacts them.

The expanded lobby hours have been a boon to many communities. Residents need no longer race home from work just to pick up their mail before the post office is locked for the evening. Now they can get their mail after dinner, on Saturday afternoons, or even Sundays and holidays — any time that suits them. Only minor security modifications have been required at many offices for this plan to succeed.

A novel idea was implemented in Goose Lake in eastern Iowa, a town of 250 people (and a large school complex) about 15 miles from the Mississippi River. Their post office building was hastily constructed 35 years ago [in 1978] with the P.O. Boxes and window counter all occupying the same room. The entire building needed to be locked while the Postmaster took lunch [before window hours were reduced upon the implementation of POStPlan]. A 24-hour lobby here is out of the question.

Here the Postal Service provided and installed four large cluster boxes in front of the post office building, meaning residents can pick up their mail whenever they want to -- for the first time in history in Goose Lake. The equipment also includes eight parcel lockers (another first), which enable most customers to pick up a package that is too large for their mailbox at any time.

[Below: the Goose Lake post office featuring cluster boxes for increased P.O. Box mail access. The boxes were added upon the implementation of POStPlan as the post office lobby could not be left unlocked beyond the newly diminished retail hours.]


Some residents preferred to keep their Post Office Boxes inside. Those are accessible from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM during the week as well as for a couple of hours Saturday morning.

The standard blue collection box is emptied each afternoon after 4:00 P.M. by the Highway Contract Route driver and taken to the Quad Cities P&DF [about 45 minutes south].

POStPlan has its downsides, but I firmly believe that in this respect people are being better served now by being able to access their mail every day, even if the retail window is open less.

Steven Bahnsen, Chicago, Illinois

Note: During my own travels I've observed that post offices in the southern part of the country are much more likely to maintain P.O. Box lobbies that are accessible 24/7. Rare is a 24-hour lobby in the Northeast, even in remote and presumably safe areas in Pennsylvania and New England. In the South 24-hour lobbies are pervasive.

Man, Oh Amana: Post Offices of the Colonies

Edit—May 12, 2013: The Middle [Amana] post office has since reopened. The below content will remain as written on May 5, 2013.

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The "lease dispute" strikes again, and according to KCRG-TV out of Cedar Rapids another small-town office bites USPS's emergency suspension dust. The victim this time: Middle, Iowa, also known as Middle Amana. If Amana sounds like the name on your refrigerator, that's because that now-Whirlpool subsidiary began manufacturing coolers in this very town in 1934. But the seven villages that comprise the Amana Colonies have a history that long predates electricity. The villages were founded by immigrant members of the Community of True Inspiration religious sect, who fled Germany in search of religious freedom.

These colonies were called by some "utopian experiments", and they were in fact communal, with "all property was held in common". (The Amana Heritage Society has further details.) The town of ["main"] Amana was settled in 1855, with the surrounding six villages established within eight years.

The Amana Colonies are located in eastern Iowa, about halfway between Des Moines and the Quad Cities and a tad north. Cedar Rapids and Iowa city each lie about 25 miles away, to the northeast and ESE, respectively. The seven villages are Amana, Middle [Amana], High Amana, West [Amana], South Amana, East Amana, and Homestead.

Here's a map presenting the landscape:


Of the seven towns in the Amana colonies, six (all but East Amana) have possessed a post office. With the suspension of the Middle post office, that leaves the colonies at two operating post offices: Amana and South Amana.

Photos from 2012 are my own; prior photos come courtesy the Post Mark Collectors Club (PMCC) Museum post office photograph collection — in physical form, that is.

A post office has been operating in Middle since Jan. 14, 1933, and it has been at its present location for most of that time. USPS's Leased Facilities Report sheds light on some of the history of the Middle Amana post office and the terms of its lease. The present site has been occupied since April 1948; the site was likely moved in tandem with Carl Hergert's being named Acting Postmaster that February. (Research shows that Mr. Hergert, a New Year's birthday boy, was 29 years old at the time he became Postmaster; he died in 2003 at the age of 84.) Maintenance is conducted by the landlord (the Amana Society), which cuts down on USPS's operating expenses at this location. The terms for the five-year lease ending April 30, 2013 provided for a 523-square foot site leased for $2,520 a year.

Let's see what we're looking at!

Middle [Amana], IA post office, June 2003 (by J. Gallagher)


Middle [Amana], IA post office, Oct. 2012


A comparison of the photos (including this one, at Iowa Backroads) suggests that a new sign was installed between 2003 and 2010. You can read more about a previous closure scare in 1995 at that link as well.

Under USPS's POStPlan the operating costs at the Middle post office were slated to decrease anyway once POStPlan was implemented at the office by next summer; a minimum-wage Postmaster Relief would have been hired to operate the facility for four hours a day.

Additional commentary is available at Save The Post Office, here.

Next up in our Amana postal tour is the town of Homestead, the last town to join the Colonies, in 1861. The post office predates even that development, having been established Aug. 16, 1852. The post office here, too, was suspended, Nov. 28, 2011. Until its suspension the post office was at the same site since 1913. Iowa Backroads discovered this photo, from the Amana Heritage Society Collection, showing the post office in 1919. Physically, IB notes, the building had changed in several ways: "a ramp has been added added, chimneys removed, and supports now prop up the west wall of the building."

Homestead, IA post office, June 2003 (by J. Gallagher)


I came across the site in 2012, and though the sign had been removed the building was clearly the site of a former post office.

Homestead, IA post office site, Oct. 2012


The South Amana post office was established Jun. 19, 1874 and is now one of the two that continues to operate in the Amana colonies. It is scheduled to be reduced to a two-hour office as part of POStPlan. (Full information regarding hours reduction in Iowa can be found at Iowa Backroads, here.)

South Amana, IA post office, Sept. 1989 (by M. Anderson)


A new sign has since been installed.

South Amana, IA post office, Oct. 2012


The post office has been at its present site since June 1952; its present lease lasts until 2015, is for $5,040 a year, and is also held by the Amana Society. (Keep your fingers crossed.)

Amana's post office, by far the biggest in the Colonies, was established Sept. 3, 1884 and is not slated to incur any cuts as part of POStPlan. The post office has been at its present site since Feb. 1972. Its current lease, also with the Amana Society, costs the Postal Service $14,400 per year and lasts until 2016.

Amana, IA post office, Jun. 2003 (by J. Gallagher)


A comparison with a more recent photo reveals substantial landscaping changes at the building's front entrance.

Amana, IA post office, Oct. 2012


The post office in West [Amana] was established Feb. 28, 1902 and was discontinued March 1991.

Amana, IA post office, Mar. 1990 (by M. Anderson)


The post office in High [Amana] was established Apr. 6, 1901 and was discontinued Feb. 29, 1968. We do not have a photograph of this operation available.

What's in a Name: Brooklyn

The author of the blog has been busy working full-time, working more hours, rectifying incorrect policies at some unnamed regional post offices, and preparing to move to Pennsylvania for graduate school later this summer. Hence why I haven't been posting much.

For this post, several post offices I've visited around the country, named Brooklyn.
Portland, OR: Brooklyn Station

Visited March 2010. One of 40 post offices I visited in five days in Oregon before flying to Hawaii. When I was there a lawyer was buying 40 panes of the Supreme Court Justices stamps.

Brooklyn, Wisconsin

The first post office photographed on my 2008 cross-country road trip! Most likely the first post office I have ever photographed, in fact. This office was closed by the time I visited it on a Saturday.

Brooklyn, Iowa

Visited, and photographed (rather poorly, I know), October 2008.

My family has long visited the Brooklyn Museum [of Art] in New York. Brooklyn, Iowa had the Brooklyn [Historical] Museum, and featured a venerable globe's worth of flags outside. Indeed, the town bills itself as a "Community of Flags."

Brooklyn, New York: General Post Office
February 2011. It's big. 'Nuff said. Capisce?

Why, oh Iowa

The Des Moines Register and the Iowa Backroads blog both have very thorough lists of post offices in Iowa that have already been closed, or which are being slated for potential closure this year. The latter link features a gallery of many of these post offices!

In 2008 I passed through the town of Thayer, Iowa and stopped by the post office. I found it undergoing what appeared to be rather extensive renovations. It was 4 p.m. Below, a USPS employee who trucked in to pick up the day's mail:



The post office of the town of 59 people is presently open three hours a day: 10:30 to 1:30 weekdays. It features two Saturday hours as well.