WASHINGTON CITY POST OFFICE

The Washington City Post Office moved into its present quarters on September 5, 1914. The building faces on Massachusetts Avenue and extends from North Capitol Street to First Street NE.

At the time of occupancy it was considered the model post office for the rest of the country, being provided with the most modern mail-handling equipment that human ingenuity could devise. There are conveyor belts through a tunnel under the streets for bringing the enormous amount of Government mail from the Government Printing Office directly into the post office, where it is made up for dispatch to trains; other belts for conveying mail from one section of the office to another; bucket lifts for raising mail from a lower to a higher floor; gravity chutes to send mail from an upper to a lower level; miniature trolley systems to carry smaller amounts of mail, or even single important letters, from one section of the workroom floor to another; and other devices to save footsteps of the employees and conserve their time.

The building is three stories above the ground level and two stories below. The two upper floors and one of the lower ones are given over to Post Office Department activities, such as the Postal Savings Division, the Division of Stamps, the Division of Equipment and Supplies, and others. The building is so constructed that the maximum of natural daylight is permitted to enter. It has no heating plant of its own, being supplied with heat from the plant located at First and E Streets SE. that supplies the Capitol, Senate and House Office Buildings, and the Government Printing Office. The necessary pipes are brought into the building through underground tunnels.

There are approximately 6 acres of floor space available for the Washington Post Office. This additional space was secured by a new addition. It was thought at the time the post office moved into its new quarters that the floor space provided would be ample to take care of all increases in the volume of mail for a period of 50 years. In a few years the office far outgrew this space, and Congress appropriated for an addition to the building about equal in size to the original one. The construction of this addition cost $4,000,000.

The original building cost $3,028,000, and the general style of the architecture is that of the monumental work of Roman times and was designed by Peirce Anderson, architect, to harmonize with the Union Station, which adjoins, and to which it is connected by a covered bridge, over which mail to and from the trains is trucked.

The main exterior motive consists of an Ionic colonnade flanked by corner pavilions treated with round arches, inclosed in a strong frame of columns and pilasters and surmounted by solid attics carrying inscriptions as follows:

MESSENGER OF SYMPATHY AND LOVE
SERVANT OF PARTED FRIENDS
CONSOLER OF THE LONELY
BOND OF THE SCATTERED FAMILY
ENLARGER OF THE COMMON LIFE

CARRIER OF NEWS AND KNOWLEDGE
INSTRUMENT OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY
PROMOTER OF MUTUAL ACQUAINTANCE
OF PEACE AND OF GOOD WILL
AMONG MEN AND NATIONS

Many visitors to Washington will stop and read these inscriptions and, being interested in the authorship thereof, will make inquiry concerning it. Research shows that the originals were prepared by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, at that time president of Harvard University, but that some slight changes were made in the text by the late President Wilson to the extent of the alteration of some three or four words. It is this revision that appears on the building.

The material of the exterior of the building is Vermont white granite and is the same as that used in the construction of the Union Station. The general treatment of the main lobby, which is 250 feet in length, is that of a high cella, 30 feet wide and 53 feet high, and surrounded by an order of pilasters in Tavernelle marble. The adjoining vestibules are ornamented by 24 monolithic columns of gray-green granite from New Hampshire. These columns are 2 feet and 4 inches in diameter and 20 feet in height. The floor is of Tennessee marble, laid in patterns of pinks and grays. The main lobby ceiling has an elaborate coffered design inspired from the best period of the Italian Renaissance.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The gross receipts of the Washington Post Office have increased from $1,792,917 in 1914 to nearly $7,000,000 in 1938.

In order to make postal facilities as easily accessible as possible, there are located throughout the city 31 classified and 41 contract stations.

To properly transport mail from the main office to the various stations, electric-line terminals, steamboat wharves, and aviation fields, and to make collections from the street letter boxes and deliver parcel-post packages, the office operates a fleet of fully 100 Government-owned automobile trucks.

Designed by Graham Anderson, Probst & White and built of white Vermont granite, the addition was completed in 1937 and it doubled the size of the city post office.