United States Post Office (Poughkeepsie, New York)
The central U.S. Post Office in Poughkeepsie is located at the intersection of Market Street ( the westbound route of U.S. Highway 44) and Mills Street ( New York State Route 55) in the center of the City of Poughkeepsie, New York, in fact, the address however, 55 Mansion Street. The post office is responsible for the ZIP code 12601, the City of Poughkeepsie, covering the parts of the Town of Poughkeepsie, adjacent to the City. About a hundred people are employed here and about 300,000 pieces of mail are handled daily. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
History
The building was the second of five post offices in Dutchess County New York, which was built during the New Deal by the Works Progress Administration. It was the first of these, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt personally interested in which for framing. Roosevelt came from the nearby New York. This had in 1928 written by his desire to get the stone building in the valley of the Hudson River as part of the historic preservation, which were built by the early Dutch settlers in the region, including its ancestors. Roosevelt feared that this simple and modest style of these built of fieldstone houses would disappear. For him, this style was desirable and a role model for all.
In the 1930s, located not far from Beacon already had received a new post office, which was designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood using the locally occurring boulders. As the planning of the new building for Poughkeepsie has been addressed, asked Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, in whose jurisdiction at that time was the U.S. Post Office that the building of fieldstone in Dutch style, modeled on the 1809 built and now demolished Courthouse of the county was created. The architect of the post office, Eric Kebbon, fulfilled these requirements, however, the planned use of granite. Roosevelt finally pointed him personally to amend the plans according to his wishes and stopped the construction work up to this point.
Roosevelt laid the occasion of celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the settlement on October 13, 1937 the foundation stone itself. On the construction of 5670 m² building a total of 500 workers were involved in the next two years.
The building has a lobby with murals showing scenes from the six local and state history, among others, the ratification of the Constitution of the United States by the State of New York. The success of the design led Roosevelt to lobby for a similar construction in other cities in the Dutchess County to be built post offices, such as in Ellenville, Hyde Park, Rhinebeck and Wappingers Falls. The new office building for the newspaper Poughkeepsie Journal newspaper was influenced by it.
The Smithsonian Institution has selected the Post Office Poughkeepsie as one of ten post offices in upstate New York for his list of the 500 most beautiful post office building in the United States.