I was standing outside of Penn Station in Manhattan and noticed the giant post office across the street. A pattern hit me: the big post office in Boston is right by South Station, and there’s a big post office right by Union Station in Washington, DC. The proximity would make sense in a time when much mail between cities was carried by train, which presumably was the case at some point, and perhaps still is.
Is this obvious explanation correct? Are other cities like this?
The big post office on 34th Street is in fact the biggest post office in the country. It’s also supposed to be the site for the new(est) Penn Station, if that project ever gets off the ground. The current Penn Station is a pit of despair.
Post offices near train stations were in fact quite common. In fact, they used to have special rail cars where they would sort mail as the train was moving, then snag a bag of mail on a hook as the train passed through a station, to be picked up by the local mailman later.
I imagine it would be correct. I’ve also noticed post offices near train stations, but just figured it was because the trains carried the mail. Remember the song “City of New Orleans,” which was about a train carrying “fifteen restless riders, three conductors, and twenty-five sacks of mail.”
Certainly Union Station in Toronto follows the same pattern. Just south of the station was a large post office (which is now the Air Canada Centre, an NHL and NBA arena). Interestingly, just east of Union Station was the main Customs House for the city–presumably, it was there that mail from outside the country went through Customs before being forwarded.
But that may give you something else to look for near the train station in major cities near a border: a Customs House.
There is (or was; I haven’t been there lately) a large postoffice across from 30th St. station in Philadelphia. It certainly made sense.
There are still mail trains in Britain - they were contraversially dropped a few years ago and then brought back. I think they use goods (freight) stations rather than passenger stations though.
Chicago’s old post office isn’t particularly near any train stations — it’s about three blocks away from the nearest currently active railway terminus, Union Station. However, there are several Chicago stations that have been vacated & torn down, and one of these might have been closer. What’s more, the tracks leading to Union Station actually run under the Old Post Office, so it’s possible that they just did their offloading directly there.
St. Louis’ Old Post Office is some distance away from Union Station as well – and there’s a tunnel that runs between them. A little research shows the tunnel was unusable though, because of the trains’ smoke continually seeping into the post office.
This is also the case in Dallas and Fort Worth, although none of the facilities are used for their original purposes any longer, so it’s not as obvious.
In Dallas, the old Terminal Annex building (next to Dealy Plaza, where JFK was shot) is now the home of the Department of Justice, the EEOC, an Armed Forces induction center and miscellaneous other government offices. THe old main rail station is now the DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) light rail hub station, so it at least still hosts trains.
I don’t know, but L.A., too, used to have its main post office across the street from the main train station. The building is still there but it isn’t used by the post office any longer.
I thought all domestic first-class mail went by air, or at least it did if it wasn’t considered local.
No cites, but I believe the trains are still used, to transport mail, but the full role of the Travelling Post Office, with mail sorting taking place on board, was not revived. And also only from memory, but I think their base was/is at Willesden Junction. Earlier TPOs did operate from mainline stations.
They certainly used to use both types of station. I recall being on a sleeper from Glasgow to Euston in the 1990s. Couldn’t sleep, of course, and at about 3am we stopped for 40 minutes in Preston to load/unload mail. It was the regular passenger station. I watched out of the window. Hell, I was bored 
Here in Ardsley-on-Hudson, NY (pop. ±100), the post office is the train station.
The Farley Post Office Building in New York, just across Eighth Avenue from Penn Station shares direct access to the tracks below. I believe that there are still some trains that carry mail, but when Penn Station was built (and the tracks and tunnels were excavated) rail was the primary method that inter-city mail was carried. It made perfect sense for the major Post Office to be located with direct access to the rail tracks.
By the way, add Philadelphia to the list, with the main Post Office directly across from 30th Street Station.
If you can, try and catch a screening of Night Mail . This is the 1936 documentary film about a Travelling Post Office on its journey from London to Scotland. It has music by Benjamin Britten and includes the famous poem by W.H. Auden :-
This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Still is. Plus another large post office down at 9th and Market – convenient to Reading Terminal.
The poem segment is here.
It used to be that way in most of NZ’s cities and smaller townships. In many places, the station was the post office, usually with the area’s first telegraph/telphone connections. But gradually the two services separated, post offices being located wherever the department chose, and not necessarily all that clost to the local station. The stations moved, as well. As last century wore on, the physical separation widened and when mail started to be delivered between the cities and airports by truck, that was it. Now, in the main, we have minimal railway stations and minimal post offices. Those two really should have stuck together.
According to Wiki (link), the mail processing station for all of Oregon and SW Washington was built right across the street from Union Station. That was in 1964. I imagine if they’d built it even a few years later it would have been placed near the airport.
It is still there. Its also the only area post office that is 24 hours as far as I know.
However, in keeping with the times, the major sorting facility has been recently relocated to the airport area.
The Tokyo central post office is right in front of Tokyo Station.
If they put the main post office next to the airport, it would add an extra two days to every delivery.