21 West Second Street

Old Post Office Building

1935*

Narrator: Tim Hubbard, Town Board Member

Hello, this is Tim Hubbard. Welcome. I’m proud to be a member of the Riverhead Town Board.

This elegant federal style building served as Riverhead’s main post office from 1935 until the new one was built on West Main Street.

Riverhead has had a post office since the late seventeen hundreds. Originally it was called Suffolk Court House. There is a legend that Benjamin Franklin set out from there on a famous carriage ride in 1755 to lay out milestones along Main Road from Riverhead to Orient.

But you know what? None of that story is true!

The milestones did exist, and they did measure the distance from Suffolk Court House. Franklin did pass through here five years earlier, but that was before he was Postmaster General. But he never laid out those milestones! They came much later, after he was no longer alive.

Officially the post office was still called Suffolk until 1855 when they finally renamed it Riverhead.

The Riverhead post office has moved around a lot over the years.

It was once in this house.

Later it occupied one of the bays in the old Bank Building on Main Street.

It moved here when this building was finished in 1935.

The project was part of a relief program authorized in1931 during the administration of Herbert Hoover. The program earmarked $1,165,000 for post offices on Long Island, including a new one in Riverhead, and was much praised by the area's Republican congressman. The original appropriation was $125,000 for land and construction. After rejecting all of the initial bids, the Treasury Department offered to purchase this site from Raymond H. Vail, who retained the western portion of his property onto which he planned to move his old house. It’s still there next door.

Total cost was $81,000, including land -- 35% below the initial appropriation for the building. Can you imagine that happening today!

Like most other post offices built during the 1930s, it was designed by the Office of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury, Louis A. Simon. The Colonial Revival style, with its evocations of the nation’s earliest days, was the post popular post office style of the period.

This building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 11, 1989.

While you are here, notice the former headquarters of the Suffolk County National Bank across the street. Riverhead-based architect Gary Jacquemin carefully designed this structure – with its classically inspired pediment – to relate to the Suffolk County Court House, Post Office, Roanoke Avenue School and other historic buildings in the neighborhood.