History Walk Site 7: Post Office

The Downers Grove Post Office was constructed in 1937 to designs that came from the Department of the Treasury, Louis A. Simon, Supervising Architect. It is typical of a kind of post office built during the Works Progress Administration, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Part Art Moderne and part Classical Revival, the Downers Grove Post Office is austere and elegant, evoking both progressivism and tradition. Built of blond brick and cream terra cotta on a local limestone base, the symmetrical building is raised up on a small plinth to increase its civic presence. 

The focal point of the interior is an oil-on-canvas mural entitled “Chicago, Railroad Center of the Nation” by Elizabeth Tracy (1911-1992), commissioned by the Section of Fine Arts in the Department of the Treasury. Installed in 1940, the 6-foot-by-13-foot painting depicts workers in a rail yard with a cart of US mail as the centerpiece. Born in Boston, MA, Tracy was a Fine Arts graduate of Radcliffe College and completed several murals during the New Deal. 

On September 11, 1838, Eli Curtiss was named Downers Grove’s first Postmaster, which required him to ride horseback to Plainfield Road to meet the stagecoach that carried the mail. In September of 1843, Henry Carpenter succeeded Curtiss as Postmaster; he established the Post Office in his home and general store on Maple Avenue and Lane Place. 

After several more moves, including a stint in the Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank (see #10), a small building was erected expressly as the Post Office immediately across Curtiss Street from the bank. This building served as the Post Office until 1937 when the present building was constructed.