The imposing United States Post Office in New York City was a very late work of McKim, Mead & White—so late that two of the firm’s namesake founders, Charles McKim and Stanford White, had been dead for several years when it was completed in 1913.
By that point, McKim, Mead & White was a well-oiled machine that ran on an army of anonymous architects, but the project is now primarily credited to William M. Kendall.
The gleaming white five-story structure occupies two blocks of prime real estate in Midtown Manhattan and was built to complement its original neighbor, Pennsylvania Station,1 also designed by McKim, Mead & White, and demolished in 1963.
The firm’s output in later years was often unremarkable and derivative, but there’s something special about this building, which is chock-full of exquisite materials and elegant details that reveal thoughtful attention to design despite the project’s massive scale.
Built for a hefty $6 million, the original structure included over 400,000 square feet of floor space and was composed of 165,000 cubic feet of Massachusetts granite, 18,000 tons of steel, 7 million bricks, and 200,000 square feet of glass.2
Most of that glass was used in the giant skylight over the building’s central workroom, which was reportedly the largest room in the United States when the facility opened.3
The building’s public-facing interior spaces were elaborately decorated with Tennessee marble on the floors and walls, topped by ornamental plaster ceilings featuring the seals of 10 nations recognized for doing “great things for the advancement of the universal mail service.”4
A Harvard professor reportedly suggested that the architects add the inscription spanning the building’s facade, quoting Herodotus: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”5
The statement originally referred to mail service in ancient Greece, but its inclusion in the building’s design made it an unofficial motto of the U.S. Postal Service.
A portion of the building is still used as a post office, but the bulk of the structure now houses the Moynihan Train Hall, which opened in 2021.
The demolition of Penn Station is often cited as the event that launched the historic preservation movement in the United States, and the dark, dank, subterranean maze of low-slung corridors that replaced it is entirely unworthy of one of the world’s great cities.
Although that unnavigable mess still exists, the conversion of the former post office into a modern train hall has restored much-needed prestige to New York’s landscape, and it’s encouraging to see such a fine building put to a worthy new use.
I spotted him in the woods from behind
He was completely naked,
Seated in the lotus position.
I quietly walked around him and observed:
Lean and muscular with dark hair,
Neatly trimmed in all the right places.
The fragrance of the firs intoxicated me,
So I shed my clothes and sat with him on the mossy rock—
He never even squinted his eyes.
I’m sure in some deep chasm of his mind
He detected my presence.
Still, he didn’t make a move.
In that high place, there is no sound or motion:
No birds, no breeze, just silence.
I expected a momentary dalliance
But we remained for hours—
I couldn’t believe his endurance.
My legs began to ache, and I periodically fidgeted
As bugs from the moss crawled through my crack.
Somehow, he was blissfully unaffected.
I drifted in and out of a series of trances:
Long stretches of calm followed by rapid elation.
The air was cool, so I never sweated.
It felt so good to be primal and free.
Daylight barely penetrated the canopy,
But as night slowly enveloped the trees,
He finally awakened, nodding to me with a gentle smile.
We slipped on our clothes in tandem,
Then stepped away in different directions.
We never saw each other again.
This postcard depicts the Bellevue Hotel in Gadsden, Alabama, designed by G.L. Norrman and completed in 1890.
“The ground is covered with snow. Wish you were here to snow-ball,” Edith wrote to Mrs. W.W. Edwards in Smithville, Texas. Think that was a euphemism?
Published by the Souvenir Postcard Company of New York, the card was postmarked in Gadsden on February 14, 1907. Hmm.
This postcard depicts the Printup Hotel in Gadsden, Alabama, designed by G.L. Norrman and completed in 1888.
“This looks fine on paper,” Alex wrote on the front. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Published by the AH Company, the card was postmarked in St. Louis on November 11, 1907, and addressed to Mr. W.A. Yule in Scotforth, Lancaster, United Kingdom.
Alex wrote on the back:
“Have rec’d quite a number of postals from you, which I am glad to have. Pls accept thanks. Glad to hear you are having such a good time. Alex”
The fat old fucks rot in their tacky mansions
Staring at numbers on a screen—
Their flimsy god of no protection.
One wrong move from an old pedo politician
And those precious digits will evaporate;
They’re closer to street beggars than they think.
They’ve built lonely, suspicious lives on fear
And the collection of meaningless shit—
Their selfishness has made them whiny and weak.
In the absence of true power, they throw fits
And threaten violence like stupid children—
They should all be smacked across the face.
This is the world they wanted:
A massive shit show of their own making,
A polluted, stinking heap to mark their pathetic existence.
When they soon pass from this mess—
And may they do so quickly—
The rest of us will dance in joy at their absence.
I, for one, can’t wait to destroy their legacy.