Hello, new visitors, especially those who are here because they saw the article about the Postal Service on TIME.com this morning. I hope you enjoy this photo journal, in which I seek to present some of the more unique aspects of, and stories behind, a critical -- yet increasingly under-respected -- American institution and facet of our country's social fabric.
Read some of the "favorites entries", at left, for some unique places and stories.
I do this all for fun. [Unfortunately] no one pays me for it. (Anyone know how one might get a grant for this?) I just enjoy seeing the country, learning about the history of various communities, and taking photographs in unique places. Waymarking, as it were, by visiting post offices and obtaining postmarks to document one's travels is an effective way of making sure that you don't miss any communities -- for the time being, anyway...
I recognize that this hobby is incredibly uncommon, but it's most certainly worthwhile. And I don't believe that those who want to save post offices are on the losing side of history just yet.
P.S. That Malone, WA sign was acquired on behalf of the nonprofit philatelic PMCC Museum in Ohio, its new home. (It's not my own personal trophy.) Site-specific signage can be donated to non-profit organizations for preservation purposes.
P.P.S. To be sure, in the article I don't mean to claim that EVERY post office is in jeopardy. But various bureaucratic threats, such as "lease disputes," in addition to USPS's "hit lists", mean that you can never be fully sure how long a given facility will be around -- at least in its present form.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Beautiful [D]PO: Saint James, MD
What to do... It's late afternoon in rural north central Maryland and one is expected to be at one's friend's place in Pittsburgh at 7 p.m., yet you're tipped off that a post office has recently closed in a small town a few miles south of I-70, and the beautiful postal façade still stands in the general store. I'm guessing the obvious thing to do is to put off meeting your friend and have dinner on the road, because I definitely had to see the post office that was literally imported from Pennsylvania. (From where? I don't know. If my research turns any further details about this story, I'll keep you 'posted'.)
First, let's get a geographic fix on Saint James, MD (courtesy Wikipedia):
Originally established as the Lydia post office on July 15, 1889 with first Postmaster John F. Rowland (and renamed Saint James on Aug. 1, 1946), the post office served the community until it was discontinued earlier this year, April 30, 2011. The last acting Postmaster was Carolyn 'Cookie' Kline, presently at the Keymar, MD post office. She served from 2002 to 2007. The office was subsequently headed by two O.I.C.s (Officers-in-Charge), the last of whom is now a clerk at the Cascade, MD post office.
The U.S. Census Designated Place of Saint James covers six square miles and houses more than 1,600 residents. The nearest post office is Fairplay, MD, a 2.4-mile drive away. (Saint James residents must now also use the Fairplay ZIP code.) Packages must be taken to Fairplay, though residents can pick up their mail at a cluster box in front of the store. (In the photo below, the boxes are obscured by the gray Hyundai.)
Most recently, the post office was housed in the Saint James general store, which also houses a gas station, hardware store, and a gun shop. There is also a "collectors" store next door. Given this, it's not as though residents would otherwise have to, and it's doubtful that they would prefer, to leave town to conduct their business, so the discontinuance of postal operations is disappointing. Here is the store:
Here is the fantastic "imported" post office from Pennsylvania. Admire the craftsmanship and the woodwork, the old boxes, and the marble Money Order window. THAT's a post office.
Here are closeups of some of the details:
The most interesting detail was that the package / retail window (which measures approximately a foot square) was small enough such that packages larger than, say, a Large Flat-Rate Box had to be brought around by the customer outside and through the back door of the building. Similarly, large packages had to be given to the customer through the back door. How unbelievably quaint is that? (It's less of a security risk than you might think; the door has a peephole, and small-town Postmasters have this habit of knowing every local resident in any case.)
Furthermore, those P.O. Boxes aren't P.O. Boxes in the normal sense. They were actually General Delivery customer boxes (22 of which were in service before closure); General Delivery box owners, who had to live within a quarter-mile radius, had to come in during business hours and their mail would be handed to them only then.
The store is adjacent to a freight rail line. The post office itself was about 30 feet from the right-of-way. When trains rumbled by, this often caused the whole store to shake! I'd hate to be filling out my change-of-address form when this happened.
Saint James was not the only post office to serve this community. The Saint James School, a boarding school that's a 1.2-mile drive from "downtown" Saint James, had a post office of its own. That P.O. was known as College of Saint James from December 8, 1847 until its renaming to Saint James School: July 6, 1901. The post office office was discontinued November 15, 1943.
So you can get an even better sense of scale for the place, that package window, and the location in which it resides, here's a photo of yours truly:
I was told that the general store, Shawley's, was hoping to apply for a Village Post Office to continue to serve its customers in any way that it can. They were in discussions with postal officials, but no official plans are in place at this time.
First, let's get a geographic fix on Saint James, MD (courtesy Wikipedia):
Originally established as the Lydia post office on July 15, 1889 with first Postmaster John F. Rowland (and renamed Saint James on Aug. 1, 1946), the post office served the community until it was discontinued earlier this year, April 30, 2011. The last acting Postmaster was Carolyn 'Cookie' Kline, presently at the Keymar, MD post office. She served from 2002 to 2007. The office was subsequently headed by two O.I.C.s (Officers-in-Charge), the last of whom is now a clerk at the Cascade, MD post office.
The U.S. Census Designated Place of Saint James covers six square miles and houses more than 1,600 residents. The nearest post office is Fairplay, MD, a 2.4-mile drive away. (Saint James residents must now also use the Fairplay ZIP code.) Packages must be taken to Fairplay, though residents can pick up their mail at a cluster box in front of the store. (In the photo below, the boxes are obscured by the gray Hyundai.)
Most recently, the post office was housed in the Saint James general store, which also houses a gas station, hardware store, and a gun shop. There is also a "collectors" store next door. Given this, it's not as though residents would otherwise have to, and it's doubtful that they would prefer, to leave town to conduct their business, so the discontinuance of postal operations is disappointing. Here is the store:
Here is the fantastic "imported" post office from Pennsylvania. Admire the craftsmanship and the woodwork, the old boxes, and the marble Money Order window. THAT's a post office.
Here are closeups of some of the details:
The most interesting detail was that the package / retail window (which measures approximately a foot square) was small enough such that packages larger than, say, a Large Flat-Rate Box had to be brought around by the customer outside and through the back door of the building. Similarly, large packages had to be given to the customer through the back door. How unbelievably quaint is that? (It's less of a security risk than you might think; the door has a peephole, and small-town Postmasters have this habit of knowing every local resident in any case.)
Furthermore, those P.O. Boxes aren't P.O. Boxes in the normal sense. They were actually General Delivery customer boxes (22 of which were in service before closure); General Delivery box owners, who had to live within a quarter-mile radius, had to come in during business hours and their mail would be handed to them only then.
The store is adjacent to a freight rail line. The post office itself was about 30 feet from the right-of-way. When trains rumbled by, this often caused the whole store to shake! I'd hate to be filling out my change-of-address form when this happened.
Saint James was not the only post office to serve this community. The Saint James School, a boarding school that's a 1.2-mile drive from "downtown" Saint James, had a post office of its own. That P.O. was known as College of Saint James from December 8, 1847 until its renaming to Saint James School: July 6, 1901. The post office office was discontinued November 15, 1943.
So you can get an even better sense of scale for the place, that package window, and the location in which it resides, here's a photo of yours truly:
I was told that the general store, Shawley's, was hoping to apply for a Village Post Office to continue to serve its customers in any way that it can. They were in discussions with postal officials, but no official plans are in place at this time.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
End of the Line: Frederick, MD P&DF
In 1995, Maryland's second-largest incorporated city heralded the advent of a new sectional mail processing facility. Smaller than a full-blown Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC), this P&D Facility (P&DF) housed 180 postal employees who were involved with the processing and cancellation of mail entering the mailstream from, as well as the distribution of mail getting delivered to, at least 60 217XX, 215XX, and some 267XX-ZIP-coded offices. The plant has been subject to a protracted two-year closure procedure which has gradually stripped away all of its responsibilities, and which will result in its final day of [diminished] operation this Friday, November 18.
I recently visited the facility while touring threatened post offices of northern Maryland.
The facility is located in Frederick's Industrial Center East southeast of town, south of I-70. Its address is 1550 Tilco Drive, an industrial loop which features a number of auto shops and equipment companies. Near to the P&DF is a colorful attempt at an industrial strip mall which is largely vacant. The processing site, too, will be added to the real estate market.
The building itself is par for the course as far as the architecture of small USPS processing facilities: a squat, flat building approximately 300 feet square, for an estimated 90,000 square feet of overall floor space.
USPS shifted mail processing and cancellation operations to the Suburban Maryland processing plant by July 1, 2010, although consolidation with the Baltimore processing plant is the end result of the operations transfer, which was approved this August 3. In Frederick their machinery is gone, and distribution to local offices has been phased out since Columbus Day. When I recently arrived at the facility, there were a handful of cars in the lot. Again, the plant closes for all time this Friday, November 18.
Mail that would otherwise be processed in Frederick and stay within Washington County, MD still arrives overnight according to USPS's Postal Price Calculator, though I question whether service to portions of Pennsylvania suffered; a letter being sent from Frederick, MD to Altoona, PA, 130 miles away, or to Harrisburg, PA, 70 miles away, arrives in two days. I do not know what the service standard was before the shift to Baltimore, but mail originating in Baltimore receives the same treatment.
Of those 180 workers at the Frederick plant, nearby Hagerstown's newspaper the Herald-Mail states that workers will most likely be shifted to Baltimore's larger processing facility, which is 50 miles away. Of course, they aren't the easiest 50 miles for mail trucks when Baltimore traffic and Maryland hills are involved; but I digress. Some workers could be transferred to closer-by post offices.
Here is the main entrance (or at least, that for visitors) of the building:
Philatelically speaking, since the P&DF no longer processes mail, it has no cancelling devices, although it still possesses one black-inked round dater which is unique to its 21704 ZIP code; it says "Frederick MD 21704"; there is no indication of "P&DF" or the like.
USPS closed, -- rather, consolidated -- the plant due to what it claimed were $4.2 million in annual savings. Of course that number is not without dispute, but I don't know the details. Some against the change: "There are numerous reports across the country about the botched attempts of consolidations at other facilities," the workers wrote, citing audits by the U.S. Office of the Inspector General. Part of the justification for the Frederick closure involved workload declines; regardless, at the end the plant still processed nearly one million pieces of mail a day. (These figures, once again, are from the Herald-Mail article.)
The author's back-of-the-envelope calculation (est. 160 workers transferred * est. 350 work days a year * extra 100-mile commute / average 22 mpg * est. $3.50 per gallon of gasoline) suggests that savings realized by the postal service result in the transferal of nearly $900,000 in direct out-of-pocket expenses for affected postal workers in fuel costs alone. (Not to mention the wear and depreciation incurred by putting one's car through an extra 30,000 miles of driving per year.) Of course, there are additional transit costs incurred by USPS's fleet to bring all the mail down to Baltimore and back. I also suspect it will inhibit other mail processing, such as bulk mail. (Which to some might not come across as the biggest sin.) I don't know enough about parcel processing.
Further details of the Area Mail Processing study about Frederick can be found here -- note that there are two listings for Frederick, one for originating, and one for destinating mail, along with those from processing plant studies across the country.
I recently visited the facility while touring threatened post offices of northern Maryland.
The facility is located in Frederick's Industrial Center East southeast of town, south of I-70. Its address is 1550 Tilco Drive, an industrial loop which features a number of auto shops and equipment companies. Near to the P&DF is a colorful attempt at an industrial strip mall which is largely vacant. The processing site, too, will be added to the real estate market.
The building itself is par for the course as far as the architecture of small USPS processing facilities: a squat, flat building approximately 300 feet square, for an estimated 90,000 square feet of overall floor space.
USPS shifted mail processing and cancellation operations to the Suburban Maryland processing plant by July 1, 2010, although consolidation with the Baltimore processing plant is the end result of the operations transfer, which was approved this August 3. In Frederick their machinery is gone, and distribution to local offices has been phased out since Columbus Day. When I recently arrived at the facility, there were a handful of cars in the lot. Again, the plant closes for all time this Friday, November 18.
Mail that would otherwise be processed in Frederick and stay within Washington County, MD still arrives overnight according to USPS's Postal Price Calculator, though I question whether service to portions of Pennsylvania suffered; a letter being sent from Frederick, MD to Altoona, PA, 130 miles away, or to Harrisburg, PA, 70 miles away, arrives in two days. I do not know what the service standard was before the shift to Baltimore, but mail originating in Baltimore receives the same treatment.
Of those 180 workers at the Frederick plant, nearby Hagerstown's newspaper the Herald-Mail states that workers will most likely be shifted to Baltimore's larger processing facility, which is 50 miles away. Of course, they aren't the easiest 50 miles for mail trucks when Baltimore traffic and Maryland hills are involved; but I digress. Some workers could be transferred to closer-by post offices.
Here is the main entrance (or at least, that for visitors) of the building:
Philatelically speaking, since the P&DF no longer processes mail, it has no cancelling devices, although it still possesses one black-inked round dater which is unique to its 21704 ZIP code; it says "Frederick MD 21704"; there is no indication of "P&DF" or the like.
USPS closed, -- rather, consolidated -- the plant due to what it claimed were $4.2 million in annual savings. Of course that number is not without dispute, but I don't know the details. Some against the change: "There are numerous reports across the country about the botched attempts of consolidations at other facilities," the workers wrote, citing audits by the U.S. Office of the Inspector General. Part of the justification for the Frederick closure involved workload declines; regardless, at the end the plant still processed nearly one million pieces of mail a day. (These figures, once again, are from the Herald-Mail article.)
The author's back-of-the-envelope calculation (est. 160 workers transferred * est. 350 work days a year * extra 100-mile commute / average 22 mpg * est. $3.50 per gallon of gasoline) suggests that savings realized by the postal service result in the transferal of nearly $900,000 in direct out-of-pocket expenses for affected postal workers in fuel costs alone. (Not to mention the wear and depreciation incurred by putting one's car through an extra 30,000 miles of driving per year.) Of course, there are additional transit costs incurred by USPS's fleet to bring all the mail down to Baltimore and back. I also suspect it will inhibit other mail processing, such as bulk mail. (Which to some might not come across as the biggest sin.) I don't know enough about parcel processing.
Further details of the Area Mail Processing study about Frederick can be found here -- note that there are two listings for Frederick, one for originating, and one for destinating mail, along with those from processing plant studies across the country.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
11/11/11 Postmarks
For the philatelist in you, you might think it fun to obtain a cancel commemorating this once-a-century mathematical treat. Unfortunately, as Veterans Day is a federal holiday, very few post offices are actually open and thus few Nov. 11, 2011 hand-cancels are actually available.
Here are some ways to get 11/11/11 cancels. The first four methods are date-specific -- that is, they can only be done on 11/11/11 itself. The last way could be accomplished after the fact.
1. Find a post office that's actually open. I'm thinking the Main Post Offices of New York and Chicago as well as a few scattered Air Mail Centers. Even offices open seven days a week in rather large cities, such as in Philadelphia, are closed on Veterans Day. Some post offices in malls are required by lease to be operational during all mall hours, seven days a week; but Veterans Day generally trumps even that.
2. Accept a potentially horrible spray-on cancel from the local processing facility of your choice. That is, just put a letter in a mailbox today. Mail it to yourself. Admire the wonder that is overnight delivery, especially because some postal executives would rather not have it around for too much longer.
3. Go to a Contract Postal Unit (CPU). If you're anywhere near a city in Ohio, Michigan, or Iowa, you're especially in luck because Meijer stores and some Iowa regional super-supermarket chains have CPUs at each of their locations. You can use the USPS Locator to see if there are any contract facilities near you. Most sizable towns/cities have at least one, and since they're not staffed by USPS workers they should be open today. Note: This is always an iffy proposition, because the workers / manager there might have no idea what you're talking about, and/or they might have been instructed not to cancel anything with their dating devices. It's not their fault.
4. Pop in at the nearest USPS processing center Bulk Mail Entry Unit -- assuming there's a visitor or bulk mailer entrance so you wouldn't get arrested for trespassing. I believe these are open on federal holidays. See if you can plead with them to get an 11/11/11 cancel. There might be a non-bulk mail-specific dater lying around that could be used for this.
5. The most recent Postal Bulletin details several 11/11/11 pictorial cancellations, which one can request through the mail for 30 days. Some are Veterans Day-specific, others are coincidental. But for pure numerals, they can't be beat. Instructions are shown in the (rather large) graphic.
Groton, CT is a philatelic stalwart. Combine a local Naval Sub Base and an active local philatelic society to obtain frequent pictorial cancellations. The 30th anniversary of the U.S.S. Ohio is also being commemorated on a pictorial on our other coast in Keyport, WA! Collect them both!
The Ocala, FL pictorial is the only one that overtly commemorates Veterans Day, though Abbot, ME's Monument Square Station cancel could be seen as related to the date, given its Honor Roll Dedication. Normal, IL's post office sesquicentennial postmark and Tucson, AZ's centennial Steam Train Station postmark are coincidental to the date, but I'll still mail for them anyway!
Yours in collecting,
-- Evan K.
Here are some ways to get 11/11/11 cancels. The first four methods are date-specific -- that is, they can only be done on 11/11/11 itself. The last way could be accomplished after the fact.
1. Find a post office that's actually open. I'm thinking the Main Post Offices of New York and Chicago as well as a few scattered Air Mail Centers. Even offices open seven days a week in rather large cities, such as in Philadelphia, are closed on Veterans Day. Some post offices in malls are required by lease to be operational during all mall hours, seven days a week; but Veterans Day generally trumps even that.
2. Accept a potentially horrible spray-on cancel from the local processing facility of your choice. That is, just put a letter in a mailbox today. Mail it to yourself. Admire the wonder that is overnight delivery, especially because some postal executives would rather not have it around for too much longer.
3. Go to a Contract Postal Unit (CPU). If you're anywhere near a city in Ohio, Michigan, or Iowa, you're especially in luck because Meijer stores and some Iowa regional super-supermarket chains have CPUs at each of their locations. You can use the USPS Locator to see if there are any contract facilities near you. Most sizable towns/cities have at least one, and since they're not staffed by USPS workers they should be open today. Note: This is always an iffy proposition, because the workers / manager there might have no idea what you're talking about, and/or they might have been instructed not to cancel anything with their dating devices. It's not their fault.
4. Pop in at the nearest USPS processing center Bulk Mail Entry Unit -- assuming there's a visitor or bulk mailer entrance so you wouldn't get arrested for trespassing. I believe these are open on federal holidays. See if you can plead with them to get an 11/11/11 cancel. There might be a non-bulk mail-specific dater lying around that could be used for this.
5. The most recent Postal Bulletin details several 11/11/11 pictorial cancellations, which one can request through the mail for 30 days. Some are Veterans Day-specific, others are coincidental. But for pure numerals, they can't be beat. Instructions are shown in the (rather large) graphic.
Groton, CT is a philatelic stalwart. Combine a local Naval Sub Base and an active local philatelic society to obtain frequent pictorial cancellations. The 30th anniversary of the U.S.S. Ohio is also being commemorated on a pictorial on our other coast in Keyport, WA! Collect them both!
The Ocala, FL pictorial is the only one that overtly commemorates Veterans Day, though Abbot, ME's Monument Square Station cancel could be seen as related to the date, given its Honor Roll Dedication. Normal, IL's post office sesquicentennial postmark and Tucson, AZ's centennial Steam Train Station postmark are coincidental to the date, but I'll still mail for them anyway!
Yours in collecting,
-- Evan K.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
For the Record: What's a Carrier Annex?
(Folks can get full information about Carrier Annexes, at least if they know where one is, or if one's mail is delivered from one, by using 1-800-ASK-USPS, selecting option 5 from the main menu, stating "delivery offices", and entering the ZIP code in question. These locations' addresses are also noted on USPS's published Leased / Owned Facilities Report. So what I'm posting here, while not commonly known, is not really sensitive information. The photos I provide here are solely of the buildings' fronts and taken from public roads. For the record, the fantastic resource that is the Post Mark Collectors Club (PMCC)'s impeccable Post Office Directory notes the existence of annexes.)
The postal facilities with which most of the American populace is familiar are USPS retail facilities -- Post Offices, classified branches and stations. Of course, USPS involves the delivery of mail as well as its intake. Excluding the world of CPUs, P&DC/Fs, Vehicle Maintenance Facilities, and other various postal knickknacks, of interest in this entry is the delivery operation, which is often conducted at a postal Carrier Annex. Many post offices will have both retail and carriers in the same facility, but sometimes these operations are separated. Retail-only urban locations are often called Finance Stations, and carrier-only bases are called Carrier Annexes (or, at times, Detached Carrier Units).
Since not many people get to see them, I thought it would be fun to show a couple and explain how they can come to be.
Standalone Carrier Annexes
A good example of a standalone carrier annex is Connecticut's Guilford/Madison Carrier Annex, which lies between the two pleasant towns on the state's coast (south of I-95). Constructed in 2000, it is overseen by the Guilford Postmaster and is responsible for the delivery of mail to two towns.
Guilford, CT: Guilford/Madison Carrier Annex
60 Shoreline Dr., Guilford, CT
I don't believe there's customer package pickup at this location.
Saco, ME: Biddeford/Saco Carrier Annex
81 Industrial Park Road, Saco, ME
Similar to the Guilford/Madison Annex, this serves multiple towns, and it reports to the Saco post office. Based on what I saw there is no passenger pickup at this location.
In most cases, standalone Carrier Annexes are constructed because a community has grown and a post office's operations have outgrown its present space. This was the case in Springfield, New Jersey (below). The Carrier Annex was originally the Main Post Office, but the retail and delivery operations have since split. In the case of Springfield, NJ, the retail operations moved just across the street.
Former Springfield, NJ post office and current Springfield, NJ Carrier Annex:
There is customer package pickup available at this location.
Present Springfield, NJ [retail] post office:
In large cities it is often the case that a classified station, which used to maintain both retail and carriers, has split into two operations. One great example is my favorite carrier facility, the Ryder Carrier Annex in Brooklyn, NY. I wrote all about that in this GP entry. (If you haven't seen that entry before, check it out -- I promise it's worth it.)
Several such splits have occurred in the Philadelphia area, wherein the retail operations of at least three post office stations bubbled off and left their carrier operations behind. One is the Fairmount Station / Carrier Annex, both shown in this post. Another is the Roxborough Carrier Annex, which, as seen from the signage, used to be a full Station:
The retail operations moved a couple of blocks away, into a former movie theater.
Philadelphia, PA: Roxborough Station post office
(Bonus: The former former Roxborough Station, now a beer distributor!)
Similarly, Philadelphia's Point Breeze Carrier Annex was a full-fledged station and also has customer package pickup:
The Point Breeze Station post office now lies in a strip mall:
I've witnessed a couple of instances in which one town's carrier annex is attached to another town's Main Post Office. One such example is the Scarsdale, NY Carrier Annex, attached to the Hartsdale, NY post office. They occupy the same building, but the Scarsdale Postmaster runs the Annex while the Hartsdale Postmaster manages his operations separately.
Here's a view of that building, focusing on the Scarsdale Annex side:
The Bear, DE post office houses the carriers for Newark ["Nu-WARK"], DE; so in the front is the Bear Post Office, and in the back is the Newark Carrier Annex. Here is the building:
Some annexes can be rather large, like the Trenton, NJ Carrier Annex, which is located in Yardville and is located near the Main Office on Rt. 130.
In Camden, NJ, the carriers for many ZIP codes are all located in one facility known as the Camden Delivery Distribution Center:
This is among those annexes that are off-limits to the general public. Only postal employees are allowed to enter. You wouldn't believe how many No Trespassing signs they have put up there.
Sometimes you get facilities which used to handle primarily packages: Parcel Post Annexes, which these days I'm rather certain are just carrier annexes. One example is Rutherford, NJ's East Rutherford Parcel Post Annex. Another is the New Hyde Park, NY Parcel Post Annex, located two short blocks from its principal office:
The only standalone annex in Salem, OR is known as the Hollywood DCU [Detached Carrier Unit]:
(Yep, that was off postal property; just a telephoto.) There are plenty of DCUs in the Portland, OR area as well.
In many cases, carrier annexes, which might have been founded ten years ago, are being reconnected with their long-lost retail counterparts due to the consolidation of carrier routes (or, as USPS would say, 'diminishing mail volume'). This often results in a game of what I like to call "Musical Carriers", in which (for one example I know), carriers are being moved from a Main Post Office that is being sold into two outlying carrier facilities; a few months later one of those buildings is expected to close and the carriers once again move into another or two carrier-only facilities. It's not easy being a carrier these days.
Hope you enjoyed this hodgepodge of an entry!
The postal facilities with which most of the American populace is familiar are USPS retail facilities -- Post Offices, classified branches and stations. Of course, USPS involves the delivery of mail as well as its intake. Excluding the world of CPUs, P&DC/Fs, Vehicle Maintenance Facilities, and other various postal knickknacks, of interest in this entry is the delivery operation, which is often conducted at a postal Carrier Annex. Many post offices will have both retail and carriers in the same facility, but sometimes these operations are separated. Retail-only urban locations are often called Finance Stations, and carrier-only bases are called Carrier Annexes (or, at times, Detached Carrier Units).
Since not many people get to see them, I thought it would be fun to show a couple and explain how they can come to be.
Standalone Carrier Annexes
A good example of a standalone carrier annex is Connecticut's Guilford/Madison Carrier Annex, which lies between the two pleasant towns on the state's coast (south of I-95). Constructed in 2000, it is overseen by the Guilford Postmaster and is responsible for the delivery of mail to two towns.
Guilford, CT: Guilford/Madison Carrier Annex
60 Shoreline Dr., Guilford, CT
I don't believe there's customer package pickup at this location.
Saco, ME: Biddeford/Saco Carrier Annex
81 Industrial Park Road, Saco, ME
Similar to the Guilford/Madison Annex, this serves multiple towns, and it reports to the Saco post office. Based on what I saw there is no passenger pickup at this location.
In most cases, standalone Carrier Annexes are constructed because a community has grown and a post office's operations have outgrown its present space. This was the case in Springfield, New Jersey (below). The Carrier Annex was originally the Main Post Office, but the retail and delivery operations have since split. In the case of Springfield, NJ, the retail operations moved just across the street.
Former Springfield, NJ post office and current Springfield, NJ Carrier Annex:
There is customer package pickup available at this location.
Present Springfield, NJ [retail] post office:
In large cities it is often the case that a classified station, which used to maintain both retail and carriers, has split into two operations. One great example is my favorite carrier facility, the Ryder Carrier Annex in Brooklyn, NY. I wrote all about that in this GP entry. (If you haven't seen that entry before, check it out -- I promise it's worth it.)
Several such splits have occurred in the Philadelphia area, wherein the retail operations of at least three post office stations bubbled off and left their carrier operations behind. One is the Fairmount Station / Carrier Annex, both shown in this post. Another is the Roxborough Carrier Annex, which, as seen from the signage, used to be a full Station:
The retail operations moved a couple of blocks away, into a former movie theater.
Philadelphia, PA: Roxborough Station post office
(Bonus: The former former Roxborough Station, now a beer distributor!)
Similarly, Philadelphia's Point Breeze Carrier Annex was a full-fledged station and also has customer package pickup:
The Point Breeze Station post office now lies in a strip mall:
I've witnessed a couple of instances in which one town's carrier annex is attached to another town's Main Post Office. One such example is the Scarsdale, NY Carrier Annex, attached to the Hartsdale, NY post office. They occupy the same building, but the Scarsdale Postmaster runs the Annex while the Hartsdale Postmaster manages his operations separately.
Here's a view of that building, focusing on the Scarsdale Annex side:
The Bear, DE post office houses the carriers for Newark ["Nu-WARK"], DE; so in the front is the Bear Post Office, and in the back is the Newark Carrier Annex. Here is the building:
Some annexes can be rather large, like the Trenton, NJ Carrier Annex, which is located in Yardville and is located near the Main Office on Rt. 130.
In Camden, NJ, the carriers for many ZIP codes are all located in one facility known as the Camden Delivery Distribution Center:
This is among those annexes that are off-limits to the general public. Only postal employees are allowed to enter. You wouldn't believe how many No Trespassing signs they have put up there.
Sometimes you get facilities which used to handle primarily packages: Parcel Post Annexes, which these days I'm rather certain are just carrier annexes. One example is Rutherford, NJ's East Rutherford Parcel Post Annex. Another is the New Hyde Park, NY Parcel Post Annex, located two short blocks from its principal office:
The only standalone annex in Salem, OR is known as the Hollywood DCU [Detached Carrier Unit]:
(Yep, that was off postal property; just a telephoto.) There are plenty of DCUs in the Portland, OR area as well.
In many cases, carrier annexes, which might have been founded ten years ago, are being reconnected with their long-lost retail counterparts due to the consolidation of carrier routes (or, as USPS would say, 'diminishing mail volume'). This often results in a game of what I like to call "Musical Carriers", in which (for one example I know), carriers are being moved from a Main Post Office that is being sold into two outlying carrier facilities; a few months later one of those buildings is expected to close and the carriers once again move into another or two carrier-only facilities. It's not easy being a carrier these days.
Hope you enjoyed this hodgepodge of an entry!
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