Employees at New Downtown Orlando Post Office Building
Orlando (Fla.)
Post offices
Postal employees after the construction of the new Downtown Orlando Post Office building, located at 51 East Jefferson Street, circa 1941. The photograph includes 109 employees ranging from superintendent to clerk. The Postmaster and Assistant Postmaster are included in the middle row of the photo. The group is comprised of mostly white men; however, the second row shows a woman, and the first and third rows show three African-American men. The building was constructed in a Spanish Colonial Revival style from 1939 to 1941 and dedicated on April 14, 1941. It has been occupied by the United States Postal Service since 1941, the Federal District Courthouse from 1941 to circa 1974, and the office of the Roman Catholic Church since 2003. <br /><br />The building was renovated in the early 2000s and was modified for office and retail use, with the post office retaining 13,200 square feet. Plans included an adjacent parking garage on the north side, though that that aspect never came to fruition. St. James Roman Catholic Cathedral, located across Court Street from the post office, purchased the parts of the building not utilized by the post office and use it for Chancery office space.
Original black and white photographic print: <a href="http://orlandoremembered.org/" target="_blank">Orlando Remembered</a> Exhibit, <a href="http://tinyurl.com/o4zfrls" target="_blank">Downtown Orlando Post Office</a>, Downtown Orlando, Florida.
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Downtown Orlando Post Office, Downtown Orlando, Florida
Our Post Office Executives and Staff
Orlando (Fla.)
Post offices
A newspaper article about Spencer Locke (b. 1904), a long-time employee of the Downtown Orlando Post Office in Downtown Orlando, Florida. Locke was born in Florida in 1904 and, at the time of this biography, had worked for the post office for 14 years.<br /><br />The original post office was housed in the Federal Building, located 44 East Central Boulevard in Downtown Orlando, Florida, from 1917 to 1941. In 1935, when James D. Beggs, Jr. became the postmaster, he began petitioning to move the post office from its Central Boulevard and Court Avenue location to a more spacious building. In 1939, St. James Catholic Church sold a plot of land on Jefferson Street for the new building. The building was designed by Louis A. Simon in the Northern Italian Palazzo Revival-style, and was constructed by J. P. Cullen & Son. The new building opened in 1941 and housed the post office, the courthouse, and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) offices. The building was named an Orlando Historic Landmark in 1989. However, it was eventually sold back to the St. James Church. In 2003, the building was renovated and came under joint ownership by both the church and the federal government. Today, the building retains its post office services but also includes offices for the Catholic Diocese.
Original newspaper article: "Our Post Office Executives and Staff": Private Collection of Texann Ivy Buck.
Buck, Texann Ivy
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Downtown Orlando Post Office, Downtown Orlando, Florida