The U.S. Post Office-Naugatuck Main, also known as Naugatuck Main Post Office, is a historic former post office building at Church and Cedar Streets in

Naugatuck, Connecticut Naugatuck is a consolidated borough and town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The town spans both sides of the Naugatuck River just south of Waterbury and includes the communities of Union City on the east side of the river, which ...

. Designed in 1915 and completed the following year, it is one of the most architecturally sophisticated post office buildings in the state. It is set among a cluster of civic buildings designed by

McKim, Meade & White McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm that came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in fin de siècle New York. The firm's founding partners Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), Wil ...

. and 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 1986. Naugatuck's current post office is located at 170 Water Street.

Description and history

Naugatuck's former main post office is located north of the town green, at the southeast corner of Church and Cedar Streets. It is a single-story masonry structure, its original main block finished in buff brick trimmed with terra cotta and marble, and covered by a hipped red tile roof. A later 20th-century addition extends to its rear; it has a frame of steel and concrete, but is finished with similar materials and covered by a flat roof. The main facade is dominated by five large round-arch openings, with the four outer ones housing windows that flank the main entrance in the center bay. A frieze dotted with terra cotta and marble inlays extends below the bracketed cornice. The building was one of the first of forty-five post offices built by the federal government in 1916. The government had just produced a set of standards governing the size, scale, and architecture of post office buildings based on the size and importance of the community. Naugatuck was at the time a highly successful industrial community (home to

Charles Goodyear Charles Goodyear (December 29, 1800 – July 1, 1860) was an American self-taught chemist and manufacturing engineer who developed vulcanized rubber, for which he received patent number 3633 from the United States Patent Office on June 15, 1844. ...

United States Rubber Company The company formerly known as the United States Rubber Company, now Uniroyal, is an American manufacturer of tires and other synthetic rubber-related products, as well as variety of items for military use, such as ammunition, explosives, chemi ...

aka Uniroyal), and its center had recently been graced by the sophisticated architectural contributions of McKim, Meade & White. The city was consequently given a post office building of somewhat more elegance than was typically found in communities of similar size.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:United States Post Office, Naugatuck, Connecticut

Naugatuck Naugatuck is a consolidated borough and town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The town spans both sides of the Naugatuck River just south of Waterbury and includes the communities of Union City on the east side of the river, which ...

Government buildings completed in 1915 Buildings and structures in New Haven County, Connecticut Naugatuck, Connecticut National Register of Historic Places in New Haven County, Connecticut

Description and history

See also

References