A Stamp Issue to Make FDR Proud

A drizzle couldn't dampen the mood at the historic Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York last Tuesday as a crowd of 175 gathered to celebrate the issuance of ten WPA Poster-themed Forever postage stamps. Speakers at the First-Day stamp ceremony included Library and Museum director Paul Sparrow; Megan Brennan, Postmaster General; Anthony Musso, FDR author and historian; and David Roosevelt, grandson of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.


Postmaster General Megan Brennan speaking at WPA Posters stamp First-Day ceremony.

The series of ten stamps was made available for sale nationwide in a booklet-of-20 format beginning on March 7. The Works Progress Administration (later Work Projects Administration—each WPA) was perhaps the capstone of Franklin D. Roosevelt's ambitious New Deal, a set of programs which impacted all corners of the American social and geographic landscape as part of a massive effort to combat the effects of the Great Depression. The WPA operated between 1935 and 1943, and is best known for the staggering array of physical infrastructure development projects it undertook: more than 1,000 airports were developed; 24,000 miles of sidewalks, and sewers were installed; 40,000 public buildings were constructed, including schools, libraries, and hospitals; thousands of parks were developed; and hundreds of thousands of miles of roads built or improved with WPA labor. The list goes on. 8.5 million unemployed Americans were put to work as part of WPA projects that benefited the public good.

In addition to manual laborers the WPA put thousands of white-collar workers to work. Women were employed as seamstresses (creating and repairing 382 million articles of clothing), nurses, and school cafeteria workers (serving 1.2 billion school lunches). The new WPA Posters stamp issue celebrates a lesser recognized accomplishment of the WPA: poster artwork produced by a division of an arts program, which was known as Federal Project No. 1. As part of "Federal One" WPA artists created murals and sculptures for public buildings; musicians played in Federal Music Project orchestras; and thespians performed in Federal Theatre Project plays. WPA artists also created posters that were displayed in public places. These posters encouraged exploration of America's landmarks and natural treasures, "education, health, conservation and other civic ideals" (USPS). Two million posters of approximately 35,000 designs were produced. Ten of these designs are commemorated with the new WPA Posters stamp issue.


Left to right: Paul Sparrow, Megan Brennan, David Roosevelt, and Anthony Musso.

"These stamps commemorate the work of my grandfather's most ambitious New Deal program and the artwork generated from the WPA artists," declared David B. Roosevelt, grandson of Franklin and Eleanor.

Postmaster General Megan Brennan dedicated the stamps at the ceremony, lauding the "simple, effective, and striking" style of the artwork created as part of the WPA's poster program. FDR, an avid stamp collector, "understood the power of visual design" and the WPA's artwork was "bold and energizing." The designs featured on these stamps are "classic and enduring" images that continue to appeal today.

The Library of Congress maintains the largest collection of surviving WPA poster artwork. Digitized images can be viewed here.

It's only fitting that the stamps were inaugurated at Hyde Park in Dutchess County, explained Anthony Musso, author of FDR and the Post Office. Dutchess County is home to the five 'FDR Post Offices': Beacon, Wappingers Falls, Poughkeepsie, Hyde Park, and Rhinebeck. Each of the five distinctive post offices was constructed during FDR's presidency, and FDR himself had a hand in the design of each. Each was built with locally quarried stone and each possesses sizable or otherwise distinctive works of New Deal artwork inside. (Beacon, Hyde Park, and Rhinebeck house full lobby-wraparound murals; Wappingers Falls has two triangular murals painted directly on walnut wood, and Poughkeepsie's houses five large murals on two stories.) In each case the New Deal artwork displays aspect of the community's heritage. The art was created and installed in public buildings so to be accessible to all people. Four of the five post offices (all but Beacon) were designed after historic buildings in each community. Poughkeepsie's post office— the "Grand Palace"—was designed to emulate the former courthouse in the city in which New York became the 11th state to ratify the Constitution, in 1788. Collectively the five FDR post offices in Dutchess County are among the finest and most concentrated collection of New Deal post offices in the country.


The "Grand Palace" Poughkeepsie post office, recently completed, Dec. 1938.

[Note: I must correct a popular misconception that was repeated several times by the speakers at the stamp ceremony (and, alas, even by me in the past). New Deal post offices and their attendant artwork were not themselves products of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Rather, they were products of parallel but separate New Deal programs that were overseen by the federal Treasury Department. Post office building construction was overseen by the Public Buildings Branch (1933—1939) and Public Buildings Administration (within the Federal Works Agency, 1939+), with many facilities funded in conjunction with the Public Works Administration (PWA). Federal building artwork was commissioned by the Treasury Section of Fine Arts ("the Section", or SFA) and Treasury Relief Art Project (TRAP), not the WPA's Federal Art Project.]


David Roosevelt speaking at the WPA Posters stamp First-Day ceremony.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was an avid stamp aficionado. At its peak his collection of stamp numbered 1.2 million items. Collecting and studying stamps "helped save his life," declared Ms. Brennan. Philately was "like a Zen meditation for him," stated Mr. Musso. According to the National Postal Museum, "As a child, he looked to stamps for knowledge about the world. As a polio-stricken adult, they offered solace." David Roosevelt affirmed the value of philately: it "makes us better citizens and innumerable ways enriches our lives."

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum granted free admission to all attendees of the stamp ceremony. FDR's first stamp album was put on display at the museum for the first time.

One special guest at the ceremony was Jeremiah Brennan, Postmaster General Megan Brennan's father. He lived through the Depression and was an admirer of FDR. Mr. Brennan came from Pennsylvania to attend the event.

The Colors were presented by New York State Police Troop K. The National Anthem was sung by the First Ladies a cappella group from Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in Hyde Park. (Now Haviland Middle School, the former Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School building in Hyde Park was constructed as a New Deal project with Public Works Administration funds!)


First Ladies a capella group singing at the WPA Posters stamp First-Day ceremony.

In addition to stamp designer Maribel Gray, USPS personnel from Postal Headquarters, the Westchester District, and Hyde Park Post Office were on-hand. A first-day hand-cancellation and Hyde Park "bullet" dater were available for postmarking purposes.

Local coverage by the Poughkeepsie Journal and Hudson Valley Post.

Unique Stop: Postal History Foundation

I spent two afternoons at one post office. But this isn't your average P.O. The Postal History Foundation (PHF) in Tucson, Arizona (est. 1960) is an institution that's more than worth a visit for a postal buff.





Many stamp collectors recall that two of the best USPS Philatelic Centers in the country lied in Providence, RI and Tucson, AZ. These were located within each city's respective main post office and had all the stamps you could want, and more. They would feature frequent pictorial cancellations as well. These are now gone, though my father obtained a postmark from Tucson's "Old Pueblo" Philatelic Center before it closed:



Without a dedicated philatelic staff, something unique has happened: present-day Tucson pictorial cancellations are now serviced, instead of by USPS, by a Contract Postal Unit (CPU): namely, the Postal History Foundation's. Longtime readers might recall that there was an 11-11-11 pictorial cancel available in Tucson. Look closely at the image, and you can see the address is that of the PHF. Here's a cancel I received back in the mail―beautifully struck, as you can see.



Effectively, the PHF is now the Philatelic Center for Tucson. But I'd realized none of this when I walked in. I just went to visit a CPU and get a cancel for my collection. The PHF maintains a Postmark America-style permanent pictorial, as well as a couple of standard round daters. The stamp selection was impeccable (read: much more thorough than that of nearly any 'standard' post office), and I bought a sheet of the U.S.S. Constitution stamps.



But the PHF had much more, so I was lead around the floor of the foundation and library. I spent most of my time with the amicable and knowledgeable Paul Nelson, and took photos so you can take a tour along with me!

Look―I'm the Naco Postmaster!


Naco is a Mexican border town about 100 miles southeast of Tucson. The old interior structure, including P.O. boxes and window, is at the Postal History Foundation. They preserve many postal artifacts there, which I'll let you visit and discover for yourselves. Or you can view their website here. But you're allowed in the back, and I found it loads of fun.

The primary work room was decorated with many enlarged stamps along the walls. Around the room there were two primary clusters of tables, each of which contained work stations at which volunteers sorted stamps -- cancelled or mint -- and other materials for the foundation, much of which is available free of charge to educational institutions around the country. There were about four volunteers for most of the first afternoon I spent there.

Beyond this there is a reading room with art exhibits and two libraries stacked with goodies, including every issue of Linn's Stamp News ever publishe, as well as archives of other philatelic publications, postal references, and other history books.



In the museum there are older donated stamps available for at or below face value; I bought $40 worth. Here Paul told me about the PHF's many youth education initiatives. If you donate your cancelled stamps to the PHF, they will make packets available to teachers to help teach kids about anything from history to transportation. They make these themed sets of stamps available to teachers absolutely free. I think it's a great cause.

Tucson's got several other interesting postal facets to it. But those will have to wait for another post.

Good Stamp; Bad News?

To my knowledge this is the first outlet to publish this information! That might be because I was able to pick up on this in person earlier this afternoon. It also apparently means my blog's an outlet now.

(Perhaps what you're about to read is a solution to USPS's monetary woes?)

If you've been to a post office within reasonable bounds of civilization, you've probably seen the computerized system, known as POS, that takes care of every conceivable operation that a postal clerk needs to do on a day-to-day basis. In this case, what's important to know is that the system is used to scan the back of stamp sheets being sold in order to ring them up for sale. That is, it reads barcodes and places the cost on the screen. The machines are rather sophisticated: they're coded not to allow the sale of an item before X day, not to allow it after Y day, and so forth. They require an Internet connection to the outside world so that they can obtain their data from a central USPS server. They're basically on a universal standard.

(These machines are now so pervasive in the postal service's operations that offices have been known to completely shut down if their POS machines weren't working that particular day. In two instances I've been to post offices that didn't even let customers into the building, when they were supposed to be open. To be fair, that is a pretty rare occurrence.)

So, someone who codes at USPS screwed up: the brand-new set of four stamps honoring artist Romare Bearden, which were released for sale today, happen to come on a sheet of 16. If you've bought a sheet of stamps recently you know that most designs come in a sheet of 20. Well, if you tried to buy a $7.04 sheet of 16 stamps at any post office that uses the electronic POS system, it wanted to charge you for 20 at $8.80. By default; it's just the way these machines are. I'm guessing that in some cases it succeeded: if neither you nor the clerk knew about or remembered the error, then you could have gotten ripped off to the tune of $1.76 per sheet of stamps.

Fortunately the system can be overridden, so there was a solution that clerks nationwide had to put into practice all day: Scan the barcode on the sheet, say the customer's really only buying one stamp, but then multiply that $0.44 by the 16 or however many stamps the person is actually buying.

The postal service was aware of the issue and from what I hear issued a nationwide memo to all of its postal Districts. My research finds that individual offices were notified at different times: one reports receiving a fax early in the morning Tuesday (the day before the stamps went on sale), one area notified all its offices this [Wednesday] morning at 8:00, though another was notified this [Wednesday] afternoon after its District was notified of scanning issues at other locations. Since every clerk had to manually override the system in every instance regardless, it's possible that a few forgot.

The stamps are of a nice design. Here are the four distinct stamps:


** Reports indicate the paper used for this stamp is 'glossy', so hand-cancellation ink fails to absorb and bleeds across the surface of the stamp. **

A fix for the issue is on the way. A source at the managerial level tells me the issue should be resolved by tomorrow; the "Universal Source" is supposedly sending out a software fix this evening.

My question is, if this was known beforehand: Why in the world can't USPS change a single number in a computer somewhere to fix the problem for its offices around the country?

Stamp Issue: New River Gorge Bridge

(Click for larger view. Copyright USPS, of course.)

On April 11, USPS introduces a new Priority Mail stamp commemorating the New River Gorge Bridge in rural West Virginia. If it weren't for the recent completion of the Mike O'Callaghan – Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge (that bypasses the Hoover Dam connecting Nevada and Arizona), this would still be the highest vehicular bridge in the hemisphere. (It crosses at 876 feet above gorge level.)

I came across the site while randomly exploring rural West Virginia (... for its many small post offices) during my first cross-country road trip in 2008. How could one resist stopping and taking in the sights when the sign says "Western Hemisphere's Longest Arch Bridge"?

I explored for a couple of hours, visiting the NPS's New River Gorge Visitors Center, and driving the old route across the gorge, which the Bridge then bypassed. (See below.)



The closest post office to the bridge is that of the small town of Lansing. Its USPS Locator Tool listing is by no means accurate; it's helpful to either ask for directions, or, read this blog! This map is a result of Google Maps satellite view and my memory of my visit to the office:

A is the location of the post office, and B represents the NPS Visitor Center.


View Larger Map

Here are two photos of the Lansing office:

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Lansing, WV post office; generic signage

The First-Day ceremony of the stamp will actually be held in Fayetteville, across the bridge from Lansing. Yes, I visited that, too:



P.S. Here is one of my own photographs from the bridge: