For many years (and still today in certain areas), post offices acted as both physical and cultural community centers. In the physical sense, many post offices were placed towards the center of a town. As many of the FSA photographs show, mail was important to many U.S. residents and placing the post offices in the center of town made it easier for people to access mail when in town running errands. In many cases (especially in small towns), post offices were combined with other locally important buildings such as general stores and city halls. This combination of post office/general store is one that cropped up many times during the searching of the FSA Collection. This marriage of two businesses made it possible and more convenient for people to make one stop to pick up goods and mail instead of two (photos five and six). People would run into neighbors, speak with the store owner, and be informed of any local information that was relevant. Many post offices had local message boards for people to place advertisements or information. In this way, the local post office became a cultural center as well as a physical one (photos seven and eight). With the combination of its location along with the frequency of patrons visiting, a local post office in smaller towns at the time of the FSA photos became a meeting place for residents. In photo nine it can be seen that farmers are using the front porch of the post office in Linwood, Kentucky as a way to meet and talk.
It is important to note that exceptions to the pattern of post offices as community centers were evident in urban areas, where post offices were physically separate from other businesses. While this was the case in some areas, the overall notion shown through the FSA’s photography is that post offices acted as both physical and cultural centers of many communities throughout the United States.
THEME TWO: POST OFFICES AS FEDERAL INSTITUTIONS IN LOCAL SETTINGS
While local culture and feelings can affect the way a certain post office is run and its physical location in a community, it can not be forgotten that the United States Post Office was a federal institution. All post office buildings are technically branches of the broader postal system and thus are federally operated. This federal connection was noted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as he was trying to bring the country back from the Great Depression. As James H. Burns says in his book Great American Post Offices, “Roosevelt realized that the Post Office Department was the visible form of the federal government in every community”.1 Although Roosevelt used this realization to create new community jobs through the construction of post offices, it was also used during WWII as a way of distributing federal information and services to local people. According to former Smithsonian curator Carl H. Scheele, in addition to the increasing volume of mail being sent during wartime, “the [Post Office] Department found itself increasingly involved in non-postal matters”.2 Many of these matters were highlighted by the FSA photographs from the mobilization and wartime periods.
