Tom Weber thinks it’s about time for St. Louis architecture to go postal
Illustration by Angela Pierchorowicz
I once coined a term when an ex-girlfriend couldn’t seem to do the small things in life, such as paying bills or remembering driving directions. When the world threw her the curve of increased postage rates, I called it one of those “two-cent stamps” in life that she’d rather have someone else deal with while she focused on the big picture.
A recent deadline from the folks at St. Louis Magazine forced me to ponder why I would equate life’s mundane chores with stamps. Inner reflection revealed that although stamps aren’t always boring, the buildings where we buy them usually are.
Unless you live or work downtown, chances are, your time in a post office is as dull as the reason for going there. It hasn’t always been that way, though, and I think it’s time for the Postal Service to return to its once heralded position as a beacon of American culture.
Mail used to be the only way to communicate, and the post office used to be the center of town, a place to meet and catch up on gossip and connect with people.
Later, during the Depression, FDR used the post office as a symbol of your American government at work in the community. Large post offices, such as the one at 16th and Market, were built; New Deal programs, including the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, doled out $650 to $750 to muralists to paint the 12-by-5-foot area over the postmaster’s door. In 1939, the FAP organized a “48 States” contest and received 3,000 entries, with an artist in each state commissioned to beautify one lucky post office.
But cost-cutting has left post offices with less cultural importance and fewer architectural flourishes, especially as other means of communication came along.
Thus we have a series of post offices built during the hereby declared Go Postalism movement. We mail letters in such marvels as the Benton Park post office, near Jefferson and Gravois (best feature is that it’s easy to miss); the Gravois post office on Ridgewood (best feature is the shock of locals who are learning that the city actually has a Ridgewood Avenue); and the Soulard post office on Broadway, which offers views of both the Arch and the Anheuser-Busch brewery from its front doorstep but remains humdrum inside.
City leaders strove to save the Old Post Office downtown—but I wonder what kinds of chain-yourself-to-a-tree protests will happen when it’s time to replace the Soulard station.
Post offices will never be as central to life as they once were, and there doesn’t seem to be the slightest attempt to make them a part of our culture. (Eat-Rite has more public space than some of these lobbies do.)
But surely one of the 50 area post offices needs replacing soon. Let’s have design contests—submit ideas, zany and otherwise. Let’s force The New York Times’ architecture critics to hop a plane to write about—gasp!—post offices.
“It would be nice to have a building that relayed a sense that government can be competent,” notes local architect Phil Durham. “The older buildings did that. They inspired you; they were an experience, even if it’s now hard to change the light bulbs in them.”
Durham bemoans the conservativeness of St. Louis architecture, the sad fact that no one tries anything daring and everything is made “retro.” He envisions a building that transmits the message This is a public area, meaning large open spaces and contemporary lighting.
“When you find a way to let in light in an inspiring way,” he says, “people don’t tend to notice that the garbage cans haven’t been emptied.”
Of course, there are probably rules for post-office construction, but surely we could waive some rules in the name of creativity. And, in a time when politicians drool over “public-private partnerships,” maybe we could find private funding to cover costs above what a normal, boring, depressing post office would run.
It seems that, in a city so revered for its architecture, we really are missing a lot.
Frank Gehry has designed concert halls, museums, and—if you believe other attempts at journalism—ballpark villages. But why never a post office? Maybe he’s never been asked. If he were, even those who hate life’s “two-cent stamps” might make an exception to go.
