I was listening to the * Jack Benny Show [/I ] last weekend, and they had an offer for a picture
They wanted a quarter and a box top of “Grape Nuts Flakes”
And they said
“Send to: Jack Benny, Hollywood California. That address again is Jack Benny, Hollywood California. And don’t forget to include your quarter and box top from any size package of Grape Nut Flakes.”
My question is back then is that all the address they needed? A name and a city?
This had to be in the '50s
For somebody as famous as Jack Benny, sure. Probably not if you were not famous and lived in even a moderate sized town.
I recall in the early 1960s Mad magazine received several postcards or letters in which the address was nothing more than a picture of Alfred E. Newman, which delighted them because it showed how famous he was.
In the museum in which I work, I frequently see envelopes addressed, “Miss Jane Smith, Main Street, City.” The assumption was that mail carriers would know the names of the people on their routes, and didn’t need a house number in order to make a delivery.
Patty Duke states that after her autobio “Call Me Anna” came out, she started getting letters address to: Patty Duke USA.
I think it was in the early 80’s, there was a cute story that was eventually published in the Reader’s Digest. It seems this young lady’s boyfriend joined the Army and was stationed at Fort Huachuca, AZ.
She sent him a letter, but couldn’t remember the exact name of the Fort. She put his name and “Fort Sneeze, Az.”, he got the letter.
Rural addresses used to, and probably still do in some places, just require the family name, the route number and the name of the post office. i.e.: Smith, Rt. 3, West Undershirt, IA. and of course, now, the ubiquitous zip code.
Playboy has had the same thing done with the bunny logo. The letters get delivered to the Chicago offices without a problem.
It depends on a lot of factors. I live in a small town, where a letter would almost certainly get to me if you just wrote my name and the ZIP code on the envelope. In fact, when I’d only been living here a few months, I found out just how good the USPS can be when they want to.
I actually live between towns. I could either get a P.O. box with the closer (smaller) town, or a rural route address with the farther (bigger) town. I chose the P.O. box at the smaller town. A few years ago, somebody assumed I had picked the RR, and mailed me a letter addressed to (my name), Rural Route, (wrong town), (wrong ZIP code). I received the letter the next day.
It did depend, but the Post Office was required to try to delivery any first-class letter, so if there was a way to figure out the recipient, they’d deliver it.
I remember in The Maltese Falcon, Bogart sends a letter to himself addressed, “Sam Spade, General Delivery, City,” (The City being San Francisco) and later picks it up at the PO. The movie (and probably the book) assumes this would go through (the contents are important). Most post offices had a “General Delivery,” which were basically a “will call” window – you’d show up and ask if there were any letters for you. Not sure if they asked for an ID, but Bogart didn’t have to show one.
Oh, and when I was a kid, we’d get mail with just our name and the name of the town and state. But that was a small town; the postmaster probably knew everyone.
I remember being amazed the first time I sent my tax refund forms to the IRS and the address was just “Internal Revenue Service, (city), (zipcode)” with no street name or number.
The Power… I thought.
Ah, but how things have changed. My company sends letters that get returned by the post office because the client forgot to include his apartment number. Or because the person to whom it was being sent was not on the post office’s official list of residents for that particular address.
That’s only because they have the exclusive use of that zip code. Technically, in that case, you don’t even need the city name.
I’ve sent postcards with nothing but a ZIP code. An odd friend lives in a small town in northern NH, and they know that anything odd pretty much goes to Nelson. 
It’s worth remembering, too, that ZIP Codes didn’t exist until about 1963 or so. ZIP stood for Zoning Improvement Plan.
Also, much of the correspondence in days of yore appeared to be social in nature. Now, It’s mostly business. I recall one cite* saying that by 1980 or so, 80% of all mail was business oriented. What with so much e-mail and chat now days, I wonder what the percentages have become.
*not online, from research for a school report, some decades ago
BTW, AFAIK the White House is the only officially USPS sanctioned place in America that needs no street address on the envelope (although, of course, it has one).
Hey! I found a cite that mirrors my recollection!
Cool.
When ZIP codes were first introduced, they were touted as being optional. AFAIK that is still the case, although some classes of business mail are required to be pre-sorted by zip code.
Is it possible to send a letter with just Name, Postal Code/Post Code/ZIP Code, Country and it’ll get through?
In England you would tend to need a house number, but otherwise that would be enough. Letters addressed to me often miss out the village entirely and give only the city name, thirty miles away. They still turn up OK with the postcode.
I once had a crank letter turn up with no address information apart from name and village. My surname’s not that wacky but there was only one other family with the same surname, so it got to me second try.
When my office first moved into this never-before-used-building, we put our name on the front in eight inch high gold letters.
Our mail was not being delivered, despite filing many change of address forms. Calls to the post office did no good. Finally, we went to the post office in person and found out that, while this building had been here for twenty-five years, nobody had ever used it, so the Post Office did not have it registered. According to them, it did not exist!