US Post Office--Spring Valley - Spring Valley, NY
Posted by: nomadwillie
N 41° 06.783 W 074° 02.727
18T E 580142 N 4551745
Its Colonial Revival design, unique to Spring Valley among post offices in New York, emphasizes the Greek Revival precedents of the style. Its interior, like many other post offices built during the New Deal, features public art, in this case a mural
Waymark Code: WME2AX
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 03/25/2012
Views: 1
Spring Valley's first post office was established in 1848, seven years after local farmers persuaded the New York and Erie Railroad to build a stop where a farm road (now North Main Street) crossed the tracks. The settlement grew rapidly due to the rail connection to New York City and incorporated as a village in 1902.
In 1931, Congress authorized 136 new post offices and extensions to existing ones in New York as part of an amendment to the Public Buildings Act it had passed five years earlier. The construction was meant to offer relief with the worsening of the Great Depression. Spring Valley's would not begin construction for another five years, in 1936. The site was purchased from a local lumber company that year. Construction began later that year, and the building opened in 1937.
Its Colonial Revival design, by Treasury Department Supervising Architect Louis A. Simon, is unique to Spring Valley among the many Colonial Revival post offices in the state, many of which use variations on a basic design. Other post offices in the state, such as Fredonia, Massena and Warsaw, use a projecting three-bay central pavilion with arched windows flanked by single-bay flat-roofed wings. Only Spring Valley's emphasizes the Greek Revival precedents of the style with the pilasters and pediment. Another architect, Jackson Flournoy, used them on his post office in the Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights, also listed on the Register.
Etnier's mural, meant to show how mail could and did reach even the most isolated people and linked the world, was added in 1938. Later renovations enlarged the lobby teller windows and added modern lighting. There have been no other significant changes to the building.
Source: (
visit link)