It’s hard to believe today, but once upon a time, the people running the U.S. Post Office invested in facilities that were supposed to speed up mail deliveries. Moreover, they celebrated those efforts, most notably in today’s 4-cent #stampoftheday, which commemorated the opening of America’s first automated post office in Providence, Rhode Island on October 20, 1960.
The project was a high priority for Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield, a former GM auto dealer who had become active in Republican politics in Michigan and played a key role in getting the party to nominate Dwight D. Eisenhower for president in 1952. Noting that mail volumes had increased dramatically but that the post office was still conducting many sorting and processing operations by hand, Summerfield – who also earned some notoriety for trying to ban the mailing of D.H. Lawrence’s novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”—tried to modernize the postal system. To fund these improvements, he also pressed for increases in postal rates, a fight he won in 1958 when the price of a first-class stamp, which had been 3 cents since 1932 were increased to 4 cents. Thanks to these efforts, he asserted, “we stand on the threshold of rocket mail,” which meant that “before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California.”
In many respects the automated post office was the culmination of Summerfield’s efforts. I’m not sure why, the Post Office decided to put it in Providence. But it did, on a site in what was then known as the West River Development, an area close to major transportation arteries serving Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts.
The project was dubbed “Operation Turnkey” because the post office would be able to process mail with the “turn of a key.” The machines and interior were was designed, built and operated on a contract with Intelex, subsidiary of International Telephone & Telegraph. The machines were to be housed in one-story building that had 126,000 square feet of space and only two interior columns.) the building had almost 16,000 feet of conveyor belts that moved more than a million pieces of mail a day. A 25-foot tall control tower that stood in the center of the building served as the nerve center of the operation that also included six culling machines, six positioning and canceling machines, 11 letter sorting machines, and two parcel post sorting machines.
Built at a cost of $20 million (about $179 million today’s dollars, the building which was designed by Maguire and Associates,’ features a complex parabolic roof structure that seems designed to reflect the innovative activities occurring inside the building. According to the Guide to Providence Architecture, “there’s more than a hint here of Eero Saarinen’s Trans World Airlines Terminal (1956-62) at Kennedy (then Idlewild) Airport in New York.” However, the guide notes that the building lacks Saarinen’s other touches and instead features very utilitarian finishes, “almost as though this were the love child of Saarinen and Mies van der Rohe.” For this reason the guide concludes, while the project is “too big to be considered delightfully quirky, it is an interesting, unusual, and highly visible landmark that should be better appreciated than it is.”
Moreover, the post office itself wasn’t the success that Summerfield hoped for. It didn’t process the mail fast enough for the area, some machines were not being used to their full potential and others not being used at all. One key problem was that postal employees hadn’t been trained on how to use the new machines, which caused them to malfunction and sometime break. In 1961, these problems led a US House subcommittee to conclude that Project Turnkey “failed miserably” a conclusion that led Summerfield’s successor, J. Edward Day to suggest that project’s name “might be rendered more appropriate by knocking out the “n” in turnkey.”
In addition, while the exterior is striking the interior is not. Writing on Boston.com several years ago, William Morgan, a Providence-based architectural historian recalled “I had long wanted to see this spectacular piece of civic architecture – or what appeared to be in the rendering on the stamp or from a distance.” However, he noted, “up close, the exterior is a pedestrian blend of grey bricks, opaque Lexan panels, and ho-hum concrete. Most disappointing, there’s nothing to be seen inside – no great halls that recall European basilicas, markets halls, or train stations. The public sees nothing but the usual soul-deadening Postal Service dreck, jammed into a windowless, low-ceilinged hall.”
Despite of these problems, the post office continued to experiment with automation, leading several other cities to adopt similar technology. Over the years, new advancements helped improve the automation process, which was adopted in most of the nation’s post offices today. Of course, this summer those efforts were set back when Postmaster Louis DeJoy ordered cutbacks that included the removal of some of those sorting machines, including some from the Providence facility.
In August, Rhode Island’s two US Senators and two US Representatives held a press conference outside the building to denounce DeJoy’s changes. Letter carriers, “can’t do what they used to do,” charged Senator Jack Reed. “It’s deliberate inefficiency that they are creating, which is ironic.” Indeed it is especially ironic that the press conference was held outside a building that was the culmination of a Republican-led effort to make the post office better, not worse. Times apparently, have changed. But you already knew that.
Be well, stay safe, fight for justice (and timely mail deliveries) and work for peace.