The volume of mail collected at the close of business in the lower part of the city, and largely from buildings equipped with chutes and boxes, exceeds that handled by many first-class post-offices for an entire twenty-four-hour period.
Rear view of New York General Post Office and Pennsylvania
Railroad tracks. Manufacturers Trust Company, West
Side offices, nearby (in semi-circle).
The Stations
For greater efficiency in handling the mails, to shorten the trips of carriers and collectors and to serve the public convenience, as the city has grown, various classified or carrier stations have been established, and of these there are now no fewer than forty-eight in operation and also two financial stations. The classified or carrier stations are practically complete post-offices, so far as the public is concerned, affording full facilities for the sale of stamps, money-orders, postal savings, registration of mail, acceptance of parcel post, the distribution of mail, etc., and for the delivery and collection of mail by carriers. The financial stations afford all the conveniences mentioned for the benefit of the public, except that they do not make delivery of mail nor effect its distribution.
It is estimated that the delivery division effects the delivery daily through the carriers assigned to the general office and to the various stations of approximately 5,000,000 letters, cards, and circulars, 800,000 papers, periodicals, and pieces of printed matter and small parcel-post packages, and 65,000 bulky parcel-post packages, or, in all, close to 6,000,000 pieces of mail of all classes.
But the delivery of mail is only part of the story, for it is estimated that the public mail daily in the various chutes, classified station "drops," and street letter boxes, etc., approximate 5,000,000 pieces of first-class mail and several million circulars, all of which have to be gathered together and put through the various processes of cancellation, sorting, etc., before the actual work of delivery or despatch begins.
The tremendous magnitude of the business of the various stations is shown not only in the volume of mail received and delivered, but in the sale of stamps, the collection of postage on second-class matter, etc., constituting the receipts.
The receipts at the City Hall Station, for instance, are greater than the receipts of any post-office in the United States except Chicago, Ill., Philadelphia, Pa., and Boston, Mass., as shown by the table below, giving figures for the fiscal year 1921. In the case of all the offices named, the figures include not only the main office but all the stations of the offices. In the case of the City Hall Station alone, the figures are for this unit exclusively, and no other point.
RECEIPTS FOR FISCAL YEAR 1921