The San Bernardino Downtown Station, located at 390 West 5th Street, is the main

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 ...

serving

San Bernardino San Bernardino (; Spanish for "Saint Bernardino") is a city and county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States. Located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, the city had a population of 222,101 in the 2020 cen ...

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 ...

. The post office was built in 1931 as part of the decade's federal construction programs; it is one of the few remaining buildings in San Bernardino which predates 1950. Architect Louis A. Simon designed the building, which incorporates a number of architectural styles. The general plan of the building is Beaux-Arts; however, the decorative details are inspired by 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 ...

and

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian ...

styles. The front of the building features an arcade with

acanthus leaf The acanthus ( grc, ἄκανθος) is one of the most common plant forms to make foliage ornament and decoration, and even as the leaf distinguishing the heraldic coronet of a manorial lord from other coronets of royalty or nobility, which us ...

capitals on the supporting columns and a second-floor porch. A red

terra cotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

tile roof tops the building. . 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 January 11, 1985.

References

Post office buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in California Italianate architecture in California Beaux-Arts architecture in California Government buildings completed in 1931 National Register of Historic Places in San Bernardino County, California 1931 establishments in California History of San Bernardino, California Buildings and structures in San Bernardino, California {{SanBernardinoCountyCA-NRHP-stub

See also

References