Pride in the Post Office, Proud to be an American
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Take a tour around Texas and look at that old post office in the center of town, no matter how small a town it has a post office.
Following a set blueprint, local architects tweaked the design, depending on the "power" of a congressman in Washington, many post offices in Texas received special treatment. The main post office in Fort Worth and Texarkana stand out with elegant features added to the Postal Department's plan in Washington D.C., to “give proud Americans a new kind of grand public space that reflected the federal government’s achievements and their own aspirations as a great people second to none,” wrote Winifred Gallagher in How the Post Office Created America.
Some legislatures even argued that since the post office was a symbol of America, balancing the postal budget wasn’t really important.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration wanted to put people to work and commissioned large murals to hang in the smaller post offices. Many of these post offices remain in service, still displaying those 1930s murals and still delivering the mail. Other post offices have been recycled and have been recycled into the public library, federal courthouse, bank, city hall, event hall, tourist center, etc.
Some post offices are now listed as historic sites, like in booming Austin, where construction has to work around the old post office. Now part of the University of Texas.
When traveling in Texas, have some respect for the old Post Offices. -JGD
Following a set blueprint, local architects tweaked the design, depending on the "power" of a congressman in Washington, many post offices in Texas received special treatment. The main post office in Fort Worth and Texarkana stand out with elegant features added to the Postal Department's plan in Washington D.C., to “give proud Americans a new kind of grand public space that reflected the federal government’s achievements and their own aspirations as a great people second to none,” wrote Winifred Gallagher in How the Post Office Created America.
Some legislatures even argued that since the post office was a symbol of America, balancing the postal budget wasn’t really important.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration wanted to put people to work and commissioned large murals to hang in the smaller post offices. Many of these post offices remain in service, still displaying those 1930s murals and still delivering the mail. Other post offices have been recycled and have been recycled into the public library, federal courthouse, bank, city hall, event hall, tourist center, etc.
Some post offices are now listed as historic sites, like in booming Austin, where construction has to work around the old post office. Now part of the University of Texas.
When traveling in Texas, have some respect for the old Post Offices. -JGD