The fading genius of the U.S. post office

On 9 June, the General Services Administration threw Modesto's downtown post office onto the auction block. Like so many other postal facilities, the Renaissance-style palazzo had long served as an anchor for downtown stores of the California town, a public space where citizens met to exchange news as well as transact business in an ennobling lobby of polished travertine and marble beneath murals of local farming activities.

The federal government once designed its post offices to elevate and inspire the public whose assets it is now selling. An architectural journal in 1918 spoke of the tutelary value of post offices:

"They are generally the most important of the local buildings, and taken together, [are] seen daily by thousands, who have little opportunity to feel the influence of the great architectural works in the large cities."

President Hoover's administration built facilities such as Modesto's in a last-ditch effort to end the Depression, before Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal unleashed a far greater torrent of public works that succeeded where Hoover had failed (pdf). In less than a decade, the Roosevelt administration built over 1,100 post offices, distinguished by fine architecture, materials and detailing, as well as by a lavish programme of public art that, for the first time, reflected back to patrons and workers their regional identity.