The former United States Post Office is a historic building located in Creston, Iowa, United States. Built in 1901, the building housed the post office on the main floor and a federal courtroom on the second floor. The combination Beaux-Arts and Georgian Revival structure was designed by James Knox Taylor who was the

Supervising Architect The Office of the Supervising Architect was an agency of the United States Treasury Department that designed federal government buildings from 1852 to 1939. The office handled some of the most important architectural commissions of the nineteenth ...

of the

United States Department of the Treasury The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States, where it serves as an executive department. The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and t ...

. The Beaux-Arts style is found in the

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

lucarne In general architecture a lucarne is a term used to describe a dormer window. The original term french: lucarne refers to a dormer window, usually set into the middle of a roof although it can also apply to a façade lucarne, where the gable of th ...

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cult ...

, and the door and window enframements. The Georgian Revival is found in the general mass and elevation of the building, window detail, use of brick, the

hipped 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, ...

, and the division of the main facade into a projecting central pavilion and single-

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a Gulf (geography), gulf, sea, sound (geography), sound, or bight (geogra ...

wings. The building was listed on 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 v ...

in 1978. The post office has subsequently been relocated to a more modern building, and this building has been converted into commercial space.

References

Government buildings completed in 1901 Creston, Iowa Beaux-Arts architecture in Iowa Georgian Revival architecture in Iowa Buildings and structures in Union County, Iowa Post office buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Iowa National Register of Historic Places in Union County, Iowa 1901 establishments in Iowa {{UnionCountyIA-NRHP-stub

See also

References