The Hamilton Station is a historic

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional ser ...

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. Formerly the main office for the city of Palo Alto, the post office was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

on April 5, 1981, as the U.S. Post Office.

History

The post office was constructed from 1932 to 1933 and was designed by Palo Alto architect Birge Clark; during the Great Depression, the Post Office department hired local architects to design post offices rather than designing them in

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

. The building was designed in the

Mediterranean Revival Mediterranean Revival is an architectural style introduced in the United States, Canada, and certain other countries in the 19th century. It incorporated references from Spanish Renaissance, Spanish Colonial, Italian Renaissance, French Colonia ...

style and features a tile

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

in varying shades of red, an open

arcade Arcade most often refers to: * Arcade game, a coin-operated game machine ** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade game's hardware ** Arcade system board, a standardized printed circuit board * Amusement arcade, a place with arcade games * ...

with round arches in the front, and round arched entryways at both ends of the arcade. The entries have bronze frames and decorative bronze transoms; the doors were originally bronze as well but were replaced with lighter metals. While the Mediterranean Revival style was at the time an unusual choice for a post office, it was widely used in Palo Alto and at Stanford University; the post office is one of the few that reflect regional architecture.

References

External links

* *

Mediterranean Revival architecture in California Government buildings completed in 1933 Buildings and structures in Palo Alto, California National Register of Historic Places in Santa Clara County, California {{SantaClaraCountyCA-struct-stub

History

See also

References

External links