558 Grand Concourse, New York, New York. County/parish: Bronx.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places May 06, 1980. NRIS 80002584.
1 contributing building.
The Bronx General Post Office (also known as the Bronx Central Post Office or Bronx Central Annex) is a historic post office building at 558 Grand Concourse in the South Bronx in New York City, New York, U.S. Designed by Thomas Harlan Ellett, the four-story structure was completed in 1937 for the United States Post Office Department and later served as a United States Postal Service (USPS) branch. The interior includes a series of 13 murals created by Ben Shahn and Bernarda Bryson for the U.S. Treasury Department's Section of Fine Arts. The building's facade and interior are New York City designated landmarks, and the structure is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The building is three stories high. It occupies an entire city block and is surrounded on all sides by a granite terrace. The facade of the basement is made of granite, while the rest of the facade is made of gray brick with marble arches. On the facade, flanking the main entrance on the Grand Concourse, are two sculptures: The Letter by Henry Kreis and Noah by Charles Rudy. The building has about 170,000 square feet (16,000 m2) of interior space, spread across a basement and three above-ground stories. The murals are in the lobby, the only part of the building that is customarily accessible to the public, while the rest of the building included offices, equipment, and employee rooms.
Efforts to develop a central post office for the Bronx date to 1902, and the site was acquired between 1910 and 1913. There were various attempts to provide funding for the building in the 1910s and 1920s. U.S. Postmaster General James A. Farley and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. announced plans for the building in 1934. A groundbreaking ceremony took place on June 13, 1936, and the building formally opened on May 15, 1937, as the Bronx Central Annex. Shahn and Bryson were hired in 1938 to paint the murals, which were finished the next year. The building became the Bronx General Post Office in 1963, when the sectional center facilities for Manhattan and the Bronx were split. The murals were renovated in the 1970s and 1990s. The USPS sold the building in 2014 to Youngwoo & Associates, which began redeveloping the building. Subsequently, Youngwoo tried to sell the structure in 2019 and again in 2024.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75316451