Added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 11, 1985

The monolithic, three-story post office on Beacon Street in San Pedro overlooks the main channel of the Port of Los Angeles. It’s right across the street from the old San Pedro Plaza Park, where once there stood a domed Carnegie library and a bandstand, and now there’s a row of palm trees framing unobstructed views of Terminal Island. Just west and south lies a historic district of intact single-family homes from the 1880s through the 1920s, called Vinegar Hill because of the vinous stench of grape skins and wine dregs that immigrants would throw in a ditch nearby after producing homemade wine. Put simply, this is a lovely place for a post office. And it smells better than it used to, too.

A new post office for San Pedro was planned at least as far back as 1913, when a federal funding bill was passed allocating money for the construction of a new post office and federal building in San Pedro. It’s unclear why no progress was made until the 1930s, but it’s likely that  the momentum picked up once the Keyes-Elliott Act was passed in 1926, which aimed to improve and expand the federal building program across the country.

We also know there was considerable disagreement over where to put the San Pedro post office. A short LA Times article from June 22, 1931 indicates that the federal government was eyeing a site at the north end of San Pedro Plaza, just across 7th street from the San Pedro Municipal Building. In August of 1931 the US government brought a suit to condemn the site so that they could take it over; defendants included both the City of LA, who operated the land as a park, and also heirs to the Sepulveda family who had deeded the land to the city specifically for use as a park. The Sepulvedas contended that its use as anything else would invalidate the deed, and the land should revert back to them. 

The government backed down on the San Pedro Plaza scheme, and by 1933, was focusing instead on the present location, just a block south and on the other side of Beacon Street. The LA Times describes a structure costing $517,500 that houses both the post office and “federal offices of Public Health, Customs, Immigration, Steamboat Inspection, Shipping Commissioner, Navy Hydrographic Office and other maritime agencies.” Ground was broken on September 9, 1935, the building was formally dedicated in mid-October of 1936, and the post office officially opened on October 19.

The San Pedro Post Office went up during a transitional phase in the history of federal building design. Since the late 19th century, federal construction was overseen by the Office of the Supervising Architect (OSA), which was a unit of the Treasury Department. The Supervising Architect exerted considerable influence on the design of federal buildings, and until the 1930s, that usually equated with Beaux-Arts classicism (e.g. Italian or French neoclassical stuff), with little influence of more regional architectural styles. 

The incoming Supervising Architect in 1935, Louis A. Simon¹, oversaw a broadening of the architectural palette for post offices. In the case of San Pedro, we see a merging of the “starved classical” style that typified a lot of ‘30s-era post offices with some art deco flourish that was all the rage at the time. On one hand, the main structure of the building feels like a toned-down version of a classical building, with a monumental, vertical feel but without much ornamentation – mostly some fluted pilasters up front that hint at old-world columns. On the other hand, this post office is sheathed in brass door frames and black marble walls, suggesting decadence, and some modern deco pizzazz in the sleek decorations flanking the entrance, echoed by stylized floral grills covering the exterior windows on the first floor.

Certainly much of the design here recalls WPA-era federal building, even though the post office itself wasn’t funded by a particular New Deal project. We do know that the “Mail Transportation” mural in the southern wing, painted by Fletcher Martin in 1937, was commissioned by a New Deal program, the Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture (later renamed the Section of Fine Arts). Martin was a fascinating figure, a one-time boxer and WWII correspondent for Life magazine who, in the early 1930s, befriended famed Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros and became his assistant for a spell. Martin won several solo federal commissions during the ’30s and early ’40s, including a controversial one for a post office in Kellogg, Idaho (here’s a study for it which was rejected), and “Legends of Fernandino and Gabrileno Indians,” which once graced the auditorium at North Hollywood High School (the Living New Deal site hints that it was painted over but is in the process of being uncovered).

Martin’s “Mail Transportation” mural at the San Pedro Post Office depicts various cultures hauling mail throughout history, and also shows some of the harbor area’s native inhabitants and main industries, all in the social realist style favored during the labor-centric New Deal era. 

While the post office’s purple paint job is new (and uber-stylish, methinks!), the San Pedro Post Office does contain a bunch of original furniture. The bronze and glass writing desks have been there since the ‘30s with their original lamps, though the service windows are sadly now plastic-laminate counters.

Many of the additional functions that this building once served have shifted elsewhere. The lettering above the entrances, which once announced “United States Post Office and Customs House,” now simply says “San Pedro United States Post Office.” There is one semi-hidden role that this building still plays – or at least I think it plays. Down a staircase from the lobby, you’ll find a door with a “San Pedro Postal Museum” logo painted on a frosted glass window.

The single-room museum was opened in 2001 after USPS employee Brian Bundy discovered a wellspring of historic photos and documents in a storage room. Does that “Ring for service” button next to the door actually do anything? It didn’t when I visited, but it sure is a tantalizing reason to return. Even if Bundy says there’s a ghost lurking about.

Thank you to Doug Hansford and the San Pedro Bay Historical Society for the photos of the groundbreaking ceremony

1. Louis A. Simon is the only architect listed on this post office’s cornerstone from 1935, and on many other documents. However I’ve seen references in several secondary sources to the involvement of architects Gordon Kaufmann (he of the Greystone Mansion and the original LA Times building downtown) and W. Horace Austin. While we know that the government frequently worked with private architects on post offices at the time, I haven’t run across definitive documentation of Kaufmann/Austin’s involvement yet. It does seem strange that a name as reputable as Kaufmann’s, especially, wouldn’t be more publicly connected to a building he designed. I’ll have to dig further.  ↩︎

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Cave, Wayne B.: “Shipping News and Activities at Los Angeles Harbor: Early Start on Postoffice Due” (Los Angeles Times, October 21, 1933 – via ProQuest)

+ “Federal Building and Post Office – San Pedro CA” (LivingNewDeal.org)

+ Gnerre, Sam: “Time stands still at the San Pedro Post Office” (South Bay Daily Breeze, May 23, 2015) 

+ “Legislative and Research History” (US General Services Administration website)

+ “New Federal Building Open” (Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1936 – via ProQuest)

+ “North Hollywood High School Mural – North Hollywood CA” (LivingNewDeal.org)

+ “Oral history interview with Fletcher Martin.” (Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, November 19, 1964)

+ Robertson, Doug, Beland/Associates, Inc.: San Pedro Main Post Office’s NRHP nomination form

+ Robertson, Doug, Beland/Associates, Inc.: US Post Offices in California 1900-1941 Thematic Resources – NRHP Nomination Form

+ San Buenaventura Research Associates: “Historic Resources report: Press-Telegram and Meeker/Baker Buildings, Long Beach, CA” (July 31, 2006, rev. August 15, 2006)

+ “San Pedro Contract Awarded” (Los Angeles Times, July 30, 1935 – via ProQuest)

+ “San Pedro Postoffice Site Sought” (Los Angeles Times, June 22, 1931 – via ProQuest)

+ “San Pedro Postoffice Suit Opens” (Los Angeles Times, August 14, 1931 – via ProQuest)

+ Snyder, Ted: “The Ghost in the Post Office” (Your Postal Blog, October 28, 2010)