World Post Offices Past & Present

Former Main Post Office
Bath, England

First of all, thanks to Robert (WERT ) for reviving this thread by posting again about old post offices.... it's a great topic!

All right, so we have seen some photos of old post offices that no longer exist, making way for other buildings or changes to the landscape in the name of urban development. But how about old post office buildings that still stand, but are now no longer serving as post offices?  Well, I have seen a few of these, and I hope to add a few images to this thread.


Photo: Exterior of the former main Post Office in Bath, which is now a women's clothing store trading under the name "Jigsaw".


Photo: Interior staircase of the former Bath main PO now decorated with a carpet in the design of a Cape of Good Hope triangle stamp, done to honor the original purpose of the building, I imagine. I was very pleased to see this tribute.

Received today, this 2020 Mauritius issue showing the Historical Post Office building:

I had the chance in 2016 to visit the central post office in Ho Chi Ming City (Saigon) which was built while Vietnam was part of French Indochina. It is still a working post office. 


The French influence shows. A beautiful well maintained building.


This was a display at the Museum of Ho Chi Ming City with a photo of the post office well before the war as well as some stamps. 


One of several handsome statues in front of the post office.


The interior was just one giant room but well maintained. 

Here are two former sites from Chicago.



This one you can drive under. 

As the highest post office in Taiwan, Alishan ('Mount Ali') Post Office is located at 2170 m above the sea level, at the entrance to Alishan mountain resort. The first post office established in 1907 during the Japanese rule, 4 years prior to the inauguration of the Alishan railway, was a wooden structure that was later destroyed by fire in 1941.

The second post office established between 1967 and 1976 was located at the train station, which was later severely damaged by fire. Although the post office had survived the fire, it was relocated due to reconstruction.

Unlike the previous wooden structions, this and the current post office -- the 3rd iteration -- was constructed using steel and concrete. It was conceived as a traditional palaise of 3 floors in the Chinese style . The post office occupies the first floor, the second and the third floors are used as lodge for post office staff.

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I didn't seem to have taken any picture of this post office during my last trip, so here is where the photo comes from:
www.post.gov.tw/post/FileCenter/post_ww2/Bulletin_File/files/1463016491759/7CDE7622-B6D8-46B7-A782-41661CF7461B.pdf

Reputed to be the oldest Post Office in UK & the world was still operational until a few years ago when it was put up for sale. Sanquhar Post Office in Dumfries & Galloway (Scotland) started out as a staging post for mail carriages in 1712. 

Beacon Hill Post Office
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

As long as we are on the subject of interesting old post offices, here is another one that I saw on my current trip.  We spent a couple of days in Boston before embarking on our cruise, and we did a bus tour, which took us through the old Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston, where I snapped this photo of the Charles Street Station PO.  It is a fine old post office and still in service, although I noted from my photo that one of the mailboxes out front seems to have been knocked off its moorings or something....

While on a tour of some of the colonial era buildings in Singapore today the guide mentioned that The Fullerton Hotel was the General Post Office among other things when first constructed in 1919.link 


An evening harbour cruise took us by the old General Post Office again. 

The post office in San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Spain. I took the picture in February 2022. The post office is only 200 metres from the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial Felipe II had built. The Spanish courts had been itinerant. Felipe II settled his court in Madrid and commissioned the construction of this palace-monastery, in the second half of the sixteenth century.

One of the first things I do when travelling somewhere is to buy stamps for the postcards several friends have asked me to send them. As I frequently travel to Spain, I do carry some Spanish stamps if I cannot find a post office, or when it closes during my stay. In 2022, Spain introduced a new tariff for the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Russia. Someone had pointed this out. The 'D' tariff was € 2.10, as it remains today. Since it was a new tariff for the postcards I send to Russian friends, I needed € 2.10 stamps.

It was raining heavily. I was soaked to the bone. The staff was very concerned with it. They did not know about this new tariff. I had to tell them sending a postcard to Russia costs €2.10 and a 'C' tariff stamp would not suffice. Domestic (A), European (B) and worldwide except aforementioned countries exceptions (C) tariff stamps are sold in packs of 5. Interestingly, since they did not have € 2.10 stamps, they gave me 'A' tariff stamps from the stock book plus make-up value stamps. So, they had non-value-indicated stamps other than in packs of five stamps.