Strange to say, the great metropolis, in which the largest postal
business in the country is transacted, has never had a building for a
Post-office, which was erected for that purpose. It has been compelled
to put up with any temporary accommodation that could be obtained, and
for many years past its Post-office has been simply a disgrace to the
nation.
In the days of the Dutch, letters were brought over from Europe by the
shipmasters and delivered to some coffee house keeper, who took charge of
them until the persons to whom they were addressed could call for them.
This custom was continued under the English until 1686, when the
authorities required that all ship letters should be placed in charge of
the Collector of the Port. In 1692, the city authorities established a
Post-office, and in 1710, the Postmaster-General of Great Britain removed
the headquarters of the postal service of the Colonies from Philadelphia
to New York. The first city Post-office was located in Broadway opposite
Beaver street. About the year 1804, the Post-office was removed to No.
29 William street, corner of Garden street, now Exchange Place, where it
remained until 1825, when the Government leased the "Academy building" in
Garden street, now Exchange Place, and opened it as a Post-office. In
1827, the office was transferred to the basement of the Merchants'
Exchange, the site now occupied by the Custom House. Wall street was
then just undergoing the change from private residences to bankers' and
brokers' offices. The Merchants' Exchange was destroyed in the great
fire of 1835, and the next day a Post-office was extemporized in a brick
building in Pine, near Nassau street, and shortly after was transferred
to the Rotunda, in the City Hall Park, which had been offered to the
Government by the municipal authorities. The Rotunda, however, proved
too small for the business of the department, which had been greatly
increased by the establishment of lines of railways and steamboats
between New York and the various parts of the country, and in 1845 the
Post-office was removed to the Middle Dutch Church, in Nassau street,
between Pine and Cedar streets, its present location, which was purchased
by the Government for the sum of $350,000.
[Picture: THE OLD POST-OFFICE.]
This building has always been entirely unsuited to the needs of a
Post-office for such a city as New York. It was dedicated in 1732, and
was used for worship by one of the Dutch congregations of the city. In
1776, the British having occupied the city, it was converted into a
prison by the conquerors for the incarceration of their rebellious
captives. It was subsequently used by them as a riding school for the
instruction of cavalry. After the British evacuated the city, the
congregation reoccupied it, and refitted it for religious worship. After
paying for it the large sum mentioned above, the Government was compelled
to make a further expenditure of $80,000, to fit it up for its new uses.
Since then many changes, some involving a heavy outlay, have been made in
the building, but even now it is not capable of meeting the demands upon
it, and the Government is now engaged in the erection of a new building
expressly designed for a Post-office.
The Pine street front is devoted to the reception and departure of the
mails. The street is generally filled with wagons bearing the mystic
words, "U.S. Mail." Some are single-horse vehicles, used for carrying
the bags between the main office and the numerous stations scattered
through the city; others are immense wagons, drawn by four and six
horses, and carrying several tons of matter at a time. These are used
for the great Eastern, Western, and Southern, and the Foreign Mails. The
Pine street doors present a busy sight at all hours, and the duties of
the men employed there are not light. Huge sacks from all parts of the
world are arriving nearly every hour, and immense piles of similar sacks
are dispatched with the regularity of clockwork.
The body of the building, by which is meant the old church room itself,
is used for opening and making up the mails. This work is carried on on
the main floor, and in the heavy, old-fashioned gallery which runs around
three of the sides. Huge semi-circular forms are scattered about the
floor, each divided into a number of open squares. From each of these
squares hangs a mail bag, each square being marked with the name of the
city or town to which the bag is to be sent. A clerk stands within the
curve of the form, before a table filled with letters and papers, and
tosses them one by one into the squares to which they belong. This is
done with the utmost rapidity, and long practice has made the clerk so
proficient that he never misses the proper square. The stamping of the
office mark and cancelling of the postage stamps on letters to be sent
away is incessant, and the room resounds with the heavy thud of the
stamp. This is no slight work, as the clerks who perform it can testify.
The upper floor is devoted to the use of the Post-Master and his
Assistants, the Superintendent of the City Delivery, and the Money Order
and Registered Letter Offices. A wooden corridor has been built along
the side of the church along Nassau and Cedar streets, and here, on the
street floor, are the box and general deliveries, and the stamp windows.
This is the public portion of the office, and is always thronged.
The visitor will notice, in various parts of this corridor, the slides
for the depositing of letters and papers intended for the mails. The
accumulation of mail matter here is so great that it is necessary that
letters designed for a certain part of the country should be deposited in
one particular place. Letters for New England must be placed in a
certain box, those for the Middle States in another, those for the
Southern States in another, those for the West in another. The names of
the States are painted conspicuously above each box, so that there may be
no mistake on the part of strangers. Letters for the principal countries
of Europe and Asia are posted in the same way. Newspapers and
periodicals have a separate department. The mails of these journals are
made up in the office of publication, according to certain instructions
furnished by the Postmaster, and go to the Post-office properly assorted
for distribution. This system of depositing mail matter saves an immense
amount of labor on the part of the clerks, and also hastens the departure
of the mails from the office.
The Box Delivery contains nearly seven thousand boxes, on each of which
the enormous rent of $16 per annum is charged. Considering that the box
system is quite as advantageous to the Government as to the box holder,
this rent is simply extortionate.
The daily business of the New York Post-office is enormous, and is
rapidly increasing. The letters received by mail steamers from foreign
countries, partly for delivery in the city, and partly to be forwarded to
other places, average about fifteen thousand daily. The number
dispatched from this office by steamer to foreign countries is about
seventeen thousand daily. The number of letters sent from New York to
other offices in the United States is about one hundred and fifty-five
thousand daily. The number received from domestic offices for delivery
in the city is about one hundred and twenty-six thousand daily; in
addition to about seventy-two thousand per day, which are to be forwarded
to other offices. About one hundred thousand letters, and about twenty
thousand printed circulars, are mailed every day in the city, for city
delivery. The carriers deliver daily, to persons who do not hire boxes
at the general office, about fifty-three thousand letters; and collect
from the street boxes about one hundred and one thousand letters every
twenty-four hours. About five hundred registered letters, of which about
four hundred are for delivery in the city, are received, and about two
hundred and fifty are dispatched, daily. About one thousand dollars are
paid out daily on money orders, and a much larger amount is received for
orders granted to applicants. The sales of postage stamps amount to
about forty-four thousand dollars per week. About two hundred unstamped
letters are deposited in the office daily, and about one hundred letters
on which the name of the town or State is written improperly, or on which
the address is illegible. These are all sent to the Dead Letter Office,
in Washington.
The number of persons employed as clerks, porters, etc., in the general
office and the various stations, is 715.
The city is too large to admit of the transaction of all its business by
the general office. To meet the necessities of the town, and to insure
the rapid dispatch of the postal business, about 700 "lamp-post boxes,"
or iron boxes attached to the posts of the street lamps, are scattered
through the city. Letters for the mails and for delivery in the city are
deposited in these boxes, from which they are collected by the
letter-carriers nine times each day, except Sunday, between the hours of
seven A.M. and seven P.M. The Sunday collection is made once, at seven
in the evening.
There are fourteen branch or Sub-Post-offices, designated as "Stations,"
located in convenient parts of the city, north of the general office.
They are named from the letters of the alphabet, and are known as
"Stations A, B, C, D, E, F, G, J, K, L, M, N, and O." They are designed
to serve as distributing centres for certain sections of the city. They
receive from the general office all letters and papers for delivery in
their sections, and to them the carriers bring all the matter collected
from the lamp-boxes. There is no delivery from them except through the
carriers. They dispatch to the general office, at stated times
throughout the day, all matter deposited in their boxes or collected from
the lamp-boxes by the carriers.
A recent writer thus relates some of the gossip connected with the
office:
"People who come to the Post-office and make complaints of being robbed,
when they discover that they were mistaken never call and make
reparation, or relieve the department of the charge made against its
employes. A merchant, much excited, complained that a letter sent to him
'by a most responsible house,' containing $500, had not been received.
This charge was fortified by showing a letter from the postmaster who
mailed the missing letter, certifying that it was forwarded, and
contained the $500. Detectives were at once set to work to unravel the
iniquity, but all efforts proved unavailing. Finally the Post-office
authorities, after weeks of hard work, called on the complaining merchant
and asked if he had heard anything about the missing money. 'Oh,'
replied the gentleman, with great vivacity, 'that's all right; by mistake
that letter was thrown into the safe, and remained unopened nearly four
weeks. Funny, wasn't it?' Not even an apology was made for charging the
Post-office with purloining the money, or for giving its officers so much
unnecessary trouble.
"Charges of dishonesty against the Post-office are made where nobody but
'extraordinary circumstances' are to blame. A letter containing two
$1000 bills in it was delivered by the carrier, who, according to custom
(ignorant of its contents, of course), at the house of its owner, shoved
it into the hallway, under the door. The letter was missing. Complaint
was made at the Post-office; evidence was produced that the money had
been forwarded. The detectives were set to work to trace out the
robbery. The poor carrier, and the clerks in the office who handled the
letter were placed under surveillance. The clerks where the letter was
mailed were 'shadowed.' Every dollar they expended after the probable
robbery was secretly inquired into, to see if any of them had been at any
given time, after the letter was lost, unusually 'flush;' but all signs
failed. After a long time the floor covering of the hall was taken up,
and there was the letter, 'safe and sound;' the unfortunate carrier had
thrust it under, instead of over, the oilcloth.
"The misdirection of letters is the cause of serious charges against the
Post-office. A letter containing $700 was mailed from Albany to New
York. It was sent from a well-known person, and the package which was
supposed to contain the letter, made up in Albany, was not opened until
it reached New York. Both ends of the line were under suspicion. It was
stated that the letter was addressed to Mr. --- ---, Broadway, New York.
After a long search it was found that the letter had never left Albany at
all, being directed by mistake, Mr. --- ---, Broadway, Albany, and the
faithful clerks had thrown it into their own city delivery box instead of
forwarding it to New York. The confusion in the mind of the writer grew
out of the fact that there is a Broadway in both cities, and from force
of habit he wrote the wrong address.
"Miserable chirography is one of the most prolific causes of Post-office
inefficiency. It is safe to say that unmistakably written directions
would remove nine-tenths of the complaints. What is a non-plussed clerk
to do with letters addressed to 'Mahara Seney,' 'Old Cort,' or 'Cow
House,' when Morrisonia, Olcott, and Cohoes were really intended?
"One day, possibly four years ago, Mr. Kelly was sitting in his private
office opening his _personal_ letters, and enjoying the delusion that
everything was working satisfactorily, when, to his surprise, he found
one letter from Washington calling his especial attention to the
'inclosed editorial,' cut from the _Tribune_, in which the carelessness
of his clerks, and the generally unsatisfactory manner with which he
carried on his business, were dilated upon, ending with the startling
announcement that, under the present management of the department, it
took _four days_ to get a letter from New York to Chappaqua, distance
about thirty miles, and made literally no distance by a fast railway!
Consternation ensued, and Mr. Kelly, to commence examination into these
serious charges, sent a special agent to Chappaqua for the envelope of
said delayed letter. At the place named the official fortunately not
only found what he went after (the envelope), but also Mr. Greeley and
'Miles O'Reilly.' After due explanations, the envelope was handed to
Miles O'Reilly, with the query of what he thought was the meaning of the
superscription.
"Why,' said that genial wit, who had once been a deputy postmaster, 'the
devil himself couldn't make it out.'
"The envelope was then brought to the attention of the berated clerks,
who looked at it with glazed eyes, the hieroglyphics suggesting somewhat
the same intellectual speculation that would result from studying the
footprints of a gigantic spider that had, after wading knee-deep in ink,
retreated hastily across the paper.
"At the Post-office, when they distribute letters, those on which the
direction is not instantly made out, to save time, are thrown in a pile
for especial examination; if a second and more careful study fails, they
are consigned to an especial clerk, who is denominated the chief of the
bureau of 'hards.' To this important functionary the envelope of
Chappaqua was at last referred. He examined it a moment, and his eye
flashed with the expression of recognizing an old acquaintance. 'This
thing,' said he, holding up the envelope with the tip ends of his
fingers, 'came to me some days ago along with the other "hards." I
studied the superscription at my leisure a whole day, but couldn't make
it out. I then showed it to the best experts in handwriting attached to
the office, and called on outsiders to test their skill; but what the
writing meant, _if it was writing_, was a conundrum that we all gave up.
Finally, in desperation, it was suggested, as a last resort, to send it
to Chappaqua, which happened to be its place of destination.' Such is
the _literal_ history of the reason of an earnestly written denunciation
of the inefficiency of the city post."