The Long Beach Main Post Office is a

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 ...

building located on Long Beach Boulevard in downtown

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California. Incorporate ...

. The

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

and PWA Moderne style building opened in 1934 and 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 ...

(as U.S. Post Office-Long Beach Main) due to its architectural significance in 1985. It remains in operation as a post office.

Description

The structure was built from 1932 to 1934, out of large masonry blocks with terra cotta sheathing. The structure's most prominent feature is the central tower rising four-and-a-half stories from the street level. The building's design has been credited to

Louis A. Simon Louis Adolphe Simon (1867–1958) was an American architect. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Simon was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Following a tour of Europe, he opened an architectural office in Baltimore, M ...

and the

Office of 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 ...

under

James A. Wetmore James Alfonso Wetmore (November 1863 – March 14, 1940) was an American lawyer and administrator, best known as the Acting Supervising Architect of the U.S. Office of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department from 1915 through 1933 ...

. From 1933 to 1939, Simon was the head of the

, an agency of the

United States Treasury Department 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 ...

that designed federal government buildings. The building's architectural style has been described as " Starved Classicism" and " PWA Moderne". One writer has referred to the building as "Post-Quake Moderne," due to the fact that the Moderne style of

architecture was prevalent as Long Beach was rebuilt after the

1933 Long Beach earthquake The 1933 Long Beach earthquake took place on March 10 at south of downtown Los Angeles. The epicenter was offshore, southeast of Long Beach, California, on the Newport–Inglewood Fault. The earthquake had a magnitude estimated at 6.4 , and a ...

. In their book, "An architectural guidebook to Los Angeles," architectural historians David Gebhard and Robert Winter described the Long Beach Main Post Office as " PWA Moderne, accomplished with restrained and sophisticated taste."

History

Long Beach's postal system was established in 1885, predating the city's official incorporation. The first postmaster was Col. W.W. Lowe. The proposal for the new main post office building was officially accepted in March 1931, and the groundbreaking took place one year later in March 1932. Construction was underway when the 1933 Long Beach earthquake struck the city. Construction was halted briefly, but work resumed a week later after a survey by contractors showed little damage. The scaffolding was removed from the structure at the end of July 1934, and 5,000 persons attended the opening ceremony in September 1934. The structure has been in continuous operation as a post office since 1934.

Gallery

File:-172-3 - US Post Office Long Beach-W.jpg, Reliefs File:-172-4 - US Post Office Long Beach-W.jpg, Engraving File:-172-5 - US Post Office Long Beach-W.jpg, Fixture File:-172-1 - US Post Office Long Beach-W.jpg, View from 3rd Street

References

External links

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Long Beach Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California. Incorporate ...

and Los Angeles County , list1= {{Long Beach, California {{Post offices in Los Angeles County, California {{Los Angeles County, California {{Greater Los Angeles Area {{South Coast (California) Buildings and structures in Long Beach, California Downtown Long Beach Post office buildings in California Government buildings completed in 1934

1934 establishments in California 1930s architecture in the United States Art Deco architecture in California PWA Moderne architecture in California

Description

History

Gallery

See also

References

External links