In 1965, the Queen Anne Post Office opens for business at 415 1st Avenue N in Seattle. Architect Thomas Albert Smith of Seattle designs the building in the Modernist style of New Formalism. At the time of its construction, it is the largest postal building, in terms of stories and square footage, built in the Western states.
The Post Office and Its Buildings
The Post Office Department (now United States Postal Service) commissioned the building of a new facility to house administrative offices as well as a mail-processing station following a decision in 1961 to move the Northwest regional office from Portland to Seattle. Prior to the Queen Anne Post Office location, Seattle regional offices were housed in various disparate downtown buildings.
Contracts went out to several Seattle firms for the building’s design and construction, reflecting the Post Office Department's preference for utilizing local firms to integrate buildings into the community. The department retained architect Thomas Albert Smith (1913-1996) of Seattle for the building’s design and Lawrence M. Baugh and Baugh Enterprises for the construction contract.
Although the Post Office commissioned its construction, the building was not actually owned by the federal government until 1972. From the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, government-designed and -owned downtown buildings housed federal agencies. However, in the late 1950s, the Post Office Department was struggling financially. Postage rates did not cover operations, much less the acquisition of new real estate or the construction of new, larger facilities in order to meet the growing mail flow. Leasing space from private landlords allowed the Post Office Department greater flexibility in adjusting the size and location of their facilities.
Under the Commercial Leasing Program, private investors constructed new buildings according to Post Office Department needs. These buildings then remained in private ownership, with space leased to the post office. This construction-ownership model retained leased postal facilities on local tax rolls and provided the Post Office Department with flexible operational space under faster construction timelines than federally owned projects.
In 1970, the Postal Reorganization Act ended the Post Office Department and removed the associated Cabinet position of Postmaster General. The new entity, known as the United States Postal Service (USPS), began operations the following year, in 1971. Prior to the act, the General Services Administration (GSA) acted as the property manager for federal agencies, including the Post Office Department. From 1971-1972, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers temporarily took over as property manager for the new USPS. Within that role, the Corps purchased the Queen Anne Post Office Building in 1972, on behalf of the USPS.
Architect Thomas Albert Smith
Throughout his 40-year career, Thomas Smith designed a wide variety of commercial, institutional, industrial, and residential buildings throughout the Puget Sound region. One of Smith’s earliest commissions was the clubhouse at Sand Point Country Club (1949) in Seattle. The Seattle Times featured some of his 1950s designs in its “Open House” column, which described the design of each house, showed a floor plan, and praised the architect for creating a home that served the needs of the modern family. Notable residences designed by Smith include the Marchisio House (1957) in the Hilltop Community near Bellevue; a home in Bellevue’s Norwood Village (12311 SE 23rd Ave.;1954); a country home on a 40-acre estate for the Ray Wesley family in Bothell (1955); and, the Schoen Residence (1955) on Lake Washington in Juanita.
By the late 1950s, Smith had shifted away from residential architecture and focused more on commercial and industrial projects. He designed many shopping centers and bowling alleys in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a reflection of post-war suburban development and the demand for recreational and consumer-oriented spaces for the bourgeoning population. Notable projects include the Holly Park Lanes and Duwamish Bowl in Seattle (1960); Villa Plaza Shopping Center in Lakewood (1959); Highland Bowl & Shopping Center in Renton (1960); Mercer Island Shopping Center (1961); and, the Queen Anne Post Office (1965).
Smith also designed apartment buildings and small-scale commercial buildings such as the Irving on the Lake Apartments (1958); the Clayton Building (1958) in Columbia City; and the International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots Building (1957) in Seattle. Smith was known for his contribution in developing early designs for tilt-up construction. This type of construction became an important and popular method of building utilitarian structures in Seattle and the country. He designed the largest civilian aircraft hangar in Alaska for the International Airport in Fairbanks and designed the world’s largest prefabricated arches for use in the Snohomish Airport Hangar (1957).
Smith’s Queen Anne Post Office (1965) came near the end of his career in private practice. With the Queen Anne Post Office, Smith created a building designed to serve the function of the post office as a regional headquarters. He also chose an architectural style that was popular for government and private office buildings at the time -- New Formalism. Modernism was in full force by the mid-1960s, and architects in Seattle and throughout the country were designing buildings in the various styles of the Modern era. At the time of the construction of the Queen Anne Post Office in 1965, all the fanfare and excitement of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair was over, but the Century 21 Exposition left a legacy of some of the finest architecture from the Modern Movement in the city. The site on which the post office building sits is directly west (across 1st Avenue N) of Seattle Center.
New Formalism
New Formalism developed in the mid-1950s and continued through the early 1970s. It was a move away from the rigid principles of the International Style, which embraced stylistic minimalism and rejected historical precepts. In contrast, New Formalism architecture combined decorative elements and established design concepts of classicism with the new materials and technologies incorporated in the International Style.
Three prominent architects were the primary developers of New Formalism -- Edward Durell Stone (1902-1978), Minoru Yamasaki (1912-1986), and Philip Johnson (1906-2005). Already well-established and well-regarded in their profession, they had worked well within the International Style and other Modern design modes but wanted to experiment with new styles and materials. New Formalism was well suited for cultural and performing arts centers, as well as institutional and civic buildings, which strove to achieve monumentality in an urban landscape.
Common features of the New Formalism Style include columnar supports, the appearance of monumentality, flat projecting rooflines, classical features, smooth wall surfaces, symmetry, and formal landscaping, usually set within a plaza. New Formalism also used high-quality materials, such as travertine, marble, and granite, or manufactured materials that imitate their luxurious qualities.
An Exceptional Building
Compared to other post office buildings from the Modern era in Seattle, the Queen Anne Post Office stands out in terms of scale and size, architectural style, and function. Most of the other post office branches are located in neighborhood commercial areas and housed in one- or two-story buildings (most designed in the International Style). The Queen Anne Post Office building is quite massive relative to most other commercial buildings in the neighborhood. The columnar supports give the building the appearance that it is floating. The Queen Anne Post Office is the only one designed in the New Formalism Style. The architect’s choice of style and use of higher quality materials fit with the importance and role that the building played as a regional headquarters for the U.S. Postal Service.
Significant for its embodiment of the New Formalism Style and its role as the Pacific Northwest Regional Office, the building was the office location for James Symbol (appointed 1961) and Fred Huleen (appointed 1969), the only two Seattle-based Pacific Northwest Regional Directors of the Postal Service. The national postal service was structurally reordered in 1970, blending 15 regions into five. The USPS then created the new Western Office in San Francisco in 1971, taking away 200 jobs from the Seattle office. However, the district management has remained in this building through the present.
As of this writing the United States Postal Service plans to sell the building.
