March 5, 1938: Boyertown's Post Office Dedicated in Well-attended Ceremony

By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.

March 5, 1938: The Boyertown Post Office at 27 North Reading Avenue was dedicated today in an impressive ceremony attended by more than 1500 people. There were speeches from national, state, and local officials and the Keystone Band serenaded the audience. The flag was raised in front of the new building, and a community sing followed the ceremony.

It was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project, a federal program during the Great Depression to put people ack to work. The Robinson Company of Baltimore, Maryland, built it at the cost of $70,000 on property purchased from the Boyertown Burial Casket Company. A large rooming house on the site was torn down to make way for this building.

The lobby creates a very impressive entrance with its marble wainscoating, darker enamel woodwork, bronze boxes and red quarry tile flooring. Catching the eye of everyone who enters the building are the magnificent wall sculptures, called Barnyard, Harvest, Transfer of Skill and Education, that symbolize the productivity and other vital aspects of the rural life of the area, symbolic and reflective of the richness of the American experience. They were the work of Moissaye Morans, from Brooklyn, New York, who was selected in a nationwide competition, and were an immediate hit with the people in town.

They can now be seen adorning the walls of the current Post Office on South Washington Street that was opened in 1988.

More News from Boyertown

• May 16, 1937: Angry Laborers Cause Damage in Home of Hosiery Mill Foreman Angry laborers left their foreman a message of their displeasure over the company's wage scale by throwing oil through a window of his home, ruining walls and furniture.
• Boyertown Offers an Interactive Heritage Day Mystery Building a Better Boyertown invites citizen detectives to solve a mystery while learning history.