Park View Postal History

The announcement yesterday that the USPS is considering closing the post office located on Georgia Avenue and Morton Street brought to mind an image of when Park View was starting out fresh and establishing services, like the post office. With village postal delivery beginning in 1912, Park View was somewhat progressive in getting an established station by 1918.

The images below are of that early station which was located in the Park View elementary school. That post office was officially dedicated on July4, 1918.

Georgia Ave. Post Office on List of Proposed Closures

Council member Jim Graham posted the following message to the Georgia Avenue listserv today. While I don’t necessarily like the current post office, it is critical to the neighborhood that we have a place to conduct our business. Perhaps the low usage at the Georgia Avenue station is in part due to the fact that it opens late and closes early on week days, giving many residents Saturday as the only real time they can use the station.

Graham’s message is below:

This morning I received a media call indicating that USPS was considering closing Georgia Ave P.O. at Georgia and Morton. It has been named “Columbia Heights” since USPS closed the former location–on the 1400 block of Irving– in the 1990s and relocated it.

We need a new post office back at 14th and Irving, and we also need to keep the post office on Georgia at Morton. The large number of elderly, alone, along the 14th St and Ga Ave corridors justify these actions! In addition, with its new residential and retail, 14th and Irving is vastly changed since a decade ago.

Please express your views on this to our Congresswoman, Eleanor Holmes Norton, by going to her website and sending an email. Click this link or copy and paste it into your internet browser’s address bar: http://www.norton.house.gov/

This Date in History

July 21, 1910: In the evening, thousands of people on Pennsylvania avenue unexpectedly witnessed the lighting of the tower at the Post Office building. They were left to wonder about the purpose of the illumination. One observer speculated it was a lighthouse for airplanes. The truth of the matter was that the big arc light was put in merely for the purpose of illumination and to make the high tower beautiful with its glimmering incandescents.

The General Post Office c1846

I love this photo. It is from a tin type of the General Post Office from the corner of 7th Street and E Street, NW, Washington, D.C. During the middle and late 19th century, 7th Street was the prestigious street to be on.

This building is now the Hotel Monaco. I also thought it would be fun to show the first two U.S. postage stamps, which were issued in 1847 and would have been used at this post office.