U.S. Post Office (Poughkeepsie, New York)
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U.S. Post Office
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Post office viewed looking north on Market Street, 2007
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| Location | 55 Mansion St. Poughkeepsie, NY |
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| Coordinates | 41°42′21″N 73°55′40″W / 41.70583°N 73.92778°WCoordinates: 41°42′21″N 73°55′40″W / 41.70583°N 73.92778°W |
| Built | 1937-39 |
| Architect | Gerald Foster, Eric Kebbon |
| Architectural style | Colonial Revival |
| MPS | US Post Offices in New York State, 1858-1943, TR |
| NRHP reference # | 88002413 |
| Added to NRHP | 1989 |
The main U.S. Post Office, Poughkeepsie, New York, USA, is located at the intersection of Market and Mansion Streets downtown (actual address is 55 Mansion Street). The Post Office serves the 12601 ZIP Code, which covers the city of Poughkeepsie, New York and portions of the Town of Poughkeepsie adjacent to the city. It employs a hundred people and handles 300,000 pieces of mail a day and 10 million a year.
The building was the second of five post offices in Dutchess County built during the New Deal by the Works Progress Administration. It was the first for which President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a native of Hyde Park, took a close personal interest in the design. He had written in 1928 of his desire to preserve the stone buildings in the Hudson Valley built by early Dutch settlers of the region, including his ancestors, which he feared was disappearing. The simple and modest style of the stone houses built by all those early settlers regardless of wealth was, to him, an example that should be followed by everyone.
Earlier in the decade, nearby Beacon had gotten a new post office in local fieldstone designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood. When Poughkeepsie's turn came, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau demanded that it be made of irregular fieldstone in the Dutch style, modeled after a demolished county courthouse that had been built in 1809. Architect Eric Kebbon followed the design but originally turned in a building that was to use granite. Roosevelt personally ordered him to redesign it to his specifications and would not let construction proceed until it was.
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