Utah CPUs: University Edition

Several university campuses in Utah maintain postal operations in the form of Contract Postal Units (CPUs). I was able to visit four such operations last November. These operations, as they are in other parts of the country, tend to reside in campus student centers and campus stores. Here's a quick tour, and a map:



Salt Lake City: University of Utah
The University of Utah, established in 1850, maintains a sizable campus east of downtown Salt Lake City. Its post office (Contract Postal Unit) is located in the University of Utah Campus Store. There is clear exterior signage (rarely a given), and the operation blends into the store with great paneling.




Orem: Utah Valley University CPU
40 minutes south of Salt Lake City is the city of Orem. It and Provo make for a sizable metro area unto themselves, so much so that Provo had (and still has!) a mail processing center. What is now Utah Valley University, in Orem, was founded in 1941 and is now the largest public college in the state. Its enrollment exceeds 33,000! The post office (CPU) for UVU is located in the Sorensen Student Center. There's no exterior signage but the CPU itself is photogenic. I was in and out quickly enough that parking in... let's just say a no-parking zone... at the entrance by the Outdoor Adventure Center wasn't an issue.



Provo: Brigham Young University CPU
Brigham Young University is a private university operated by the [Mormon] Church of Latter Day Saints. It is located just four miles southeast of UVU, and like UVU, BYU has an enrollment in excess of 33,000. BYU's Contract Postal Unit resides in the Ernest L. Wilkinson Student Center:




BYU Print and Mail operates the CPU at the Wilkinson Center, and also has an operation a half-mile north on East University Parkway. Photos of the Mail Services operation there were taken by Postlandia friend John Gallagher, and they can be found here (ext.) and here (int.).

Price: Utah State University Eastern CPU
Head from the developed regions of the Wasatch Front, which includes all the places we've seen thus far, toward the stunning vistas of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks in eastern Utah, and you're likely to take the road through Helper and Price in Utah's Carbon County. The county is so-named for its coal deposits, though the area is also a sizable producer of natural gas. Utah State University Eastern is located in Price, and maintains an enrollment of 2,000. USU Eastern's Contract Postal Unit is informally known as "Eagle Station," and it is located just inside the N 300 E [street] entrance to the Purchasing/Police building.


Bonus—Logan: Utah State University
Postlandia friend Jimmy Emerson took a photo of the CPU at the Taggart Student Center at Utah State University's primary campus in Logan, Utah, back in 2009.



See you next time!

Postal Tour: Hoboken, NJ

Ah, Hoboken. In addition to being the worst-selling version of Barbie's beau in history (Hobo Ken), Hoboken is a bustling city that lies just across the river from lower Midtown Manhattan. The city is one of the densest in the country, with approximately 53,000 people crammed in its 1.28-square-mile land area (about 65 people per acre). The density of the city's post offices reflects its population: Hoboken houses a main post office, three classified (USPS-staffed) postal stations, and one Contract Postal Unit. No post office lies further than 0.7 miles from its nearest neighbor.

Here's an aerial view of the southern two-thirds of the city, with its post offices highlighted.
(Photo: D. Ramey Logan.)



And here's a map!



Hoboken's main post office, dedicated May 16, 2003 as the Frank Sinatra Post Office Building, was constructed during the early 1930s. This is not a New Deal post office, as it was constructed in 1931. All of Hoboken is covered by the 07030 ZIP code, and the author believes that all carriers for the city are based here. Address: 89 River St.





The land housing the 33,000-square-foot building has been owned by the U.S. since the late 1800s; Hoboken's former post office occupied the same plot of land as does its 1930s contemporary. The Hoboken Historical Museum has multiple great images of this old building, including this one, reproduced here:



Hoboken's three USPS-staffed (classified) post offices: Washington Street Station, Uptown Station, and West Side Station, are each small retail spaces, measuring 803, 1,101, and 1,018 square feet, respectively. Each has its own postmark / hand-cancellation.

Hoboken, NJ: Washington Street Station (734 Washington St.; since 1946)



Hoboken, NJ: Uptown Station (57 14th St.; since 1957)



Hoboken, NJ: West Side Station (502 Grand St.; since 1982)



(Did you notice the ADA handicapped lift to the left there?)

This brings us to the Castle Point Contract Postal Unit (CPU) at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, a campus atop a palisade with lovely views of New York. The CPU is located on the first floor of the Wesley J. Howe Center. It's by the entrance at the right side of this photo:



The postal window is at the end of a corridor surrounded by banks of P.O. Boxes.





Here's the view from back outside:

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Beautiful Post Office: Walla Walla, WA

You might know the name Walla Walla from the onions in your produce aisle, but I hope this blog entry gives you a better feel for the place behind the name. So, welcome to Walla Walla, Washington! The town lies in an agricultural region of southeast Washington that features rolling hills and close proximity to the Columbia River. Walla Walla's motto is The City So Nice, They Named It Twice! (Not to be confused with Texarkana: Twice as nice.)

You might also know the town from the heyday of The Simpsons. Remember when Homer went to Clown College? "Memorize these funny place names: Walla Walla, Keokuk, Cucamonga, Seattle." (If you have the DVDs, Season 6, Episode 15 is worth watching again.)

Here's a map highlighting the town:


With 32,000 residents, Walla Walla is the seat of the county of the same name. While not huge by our standards, but it was big enough to earn a fantastic 1910s post office, which is still in use today. The cornerstone reads MCMXII (1912), and according to a description by courthouselover over on Flickr, the building "completed in 1914 using the designs of supervising architects James Knox Taylor and Oscar Wenderoth. It is still in use by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington."

Here are a couple of photos:




A rear extension to the building was added in the same style as the original. Sadly, the interior has since been renovate in a way that greatly diminishes its character, though you the old-style P.O. Boxes are still available.

The Walla Walla area is home to three local colleges: Whitman College, Walla Walla Community College (WWCC), and Walla Walla University (WWU) -- or, as I like to call it, "Quintuple-U". The latter is located in the adjacent town of College Place.



Walla Walla Community College houses a Contract Postal Unit (CPU), also known as Walla Walla Sta. #227 or "Postal Substation 4". It is located with the bookstore in the college's Main Building:





Other nearby sites include the National Park Service's Whitman Mission National Historic Site.

I'll leave you with a scene from the road east of Walla Walla.

Tennessee CPUs: University Edition

Usually I'd write something grand and poetic. But I've had a lot on my plate lately, so here's a bunch of Contract Postal Units (CPUs) serving colleges and universities in Tennessee. Most of these were visited July 2012.

The University of Tennessee in Knoxville lies just southwest of the city's downtown. When I visited it last summer there was no parking available anywhere due to massive construction projects. Like most college post offices / mail centers, this is located in the basement of the student center, here called the Carolyn P. Brown University Center. Fortunately I was in and out in three minutes, meaning my car didn't get towed from a reserved spot out back.

Knoxville, TN: University CPU




Tennessee Tech University lies in Cookeville, a town about 80 miles east of Nashville along I-80. The Contract Postal Unit lies in the basement of the Roaden University Center at the effective heart of the campus.

Cookeville, TN: Tennessee Tech CPU




Middle Tennessee State University possesses a CPU within the Keathley University Center, which also houses the Phillips Bookstore.

Murfreesboro, TN: MTSU CPU (Station A)




The elite Vanderbilt University in Nashville operates a CPU in the basement of Rand Hall, and was (at least when I visited it in 2009) one of the most packed operations I have witnessed to date.

Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University CPU (Station B)


Mail Services has uploaded a photo of its new station layout here.

Post Offices at Colleges

Most colleges in the country have their own private mailrooms. Many also feature an official U.S. Post Office or their own CPU. I've noticed that both categories of offices have been closing on college campuses at high rates. Many are also presently under closure study as part of RAOI. Here are some college campus POs, endangered or closed, that I've visited in the past.

I always question the closure of college post offices; after all, while the younger generations are supposedly those putting USPS out of business, they are also your future customers. Just about every other organization on Earth covets this demographic. But I digress.

Closed: Stony Brook, NY: SUNY CPO
I only found out about this while doing a Google Maps post office marker review; someone had marked this as closed. Lo and behold, it closed in December. Why? Who knows. Like most campus POs, this was located in the primary student center.




There is no post office within walking distance of this former location. (And due to the odd setting of this campus, the closest PO is East Setauket's: 2.3 miles away, rather than Stony Brook's itself.) I can envision this being an inconvenience for the thousands of students who live on the campus who likely don't have a car.

Closed: Boston, MA: Boston University Station post office
Also located in the student center, I wasn't comfortable parking within a half mile of this dense campus. Ah, Boston. But I did find this location before it was discontinued early last year as part of the SBOC study. The post office closed during the summer; its clerks were borrowed from nearby Kenmore Station. That location, the closest to the former site, is a 15-minute walk away from the student center, though many locations on campus are closer to Kenmore than to the former B.U. Station.



Two other college locations in the Boston downtown vicinity are presently in jeopardy: MIT Station and Boston College Station (the latter which I've not yet visited). These are huge campuses. Neither closure would be a good idea.

In jeopardy: Cambridge, MA: MIT Station post office



As you can see, given the old brass mailboxes, MIT's post office has been at this site for a very long time. In fact, this location's postmark was one of the first my father every obtained back in 1961! There were six customers at the office when I visited in late 2010.

I detailed a closed CPU at Northern Kentucky University in this entry, and two college POs -- one endangered, one already closed, in Providence, RI here.

In jeopardy: Wellesley, MA: Babson Park Station post office


Another self-contained campus; nearest post office, while 'just' 1.3 miles away, cannot safely be accessed without a car.

In the future I'll try to cover an interesting instance: Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, which featured five CPUs on five different campuses throughout the area. Two of the five have closed.