Every week we publish a historic photo highlighting a story from Naperville’s past from the history archives of Naper Settlement.
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With the holidays upon us, many people are making trips to the post office to send or pick up cards and packages so the timing is right to take a look at Naperville’s postal history.
We have to go back nearly 190 years — to Feb. 1, 1834 — for the city’s first post office. It was located in the Pre-Emption House, which was at the corner of what is now Main Street and Chicago Avenue. (A replica of the building can be found on the grounds of Naper Settlement.)
George Laird was the first postmaster for the nearly two years it was based there.
In March 1836, Alexander Hamilton Howard became the next postmaster — a job he would hold for 12 years — and operated what was called the Paw Paw Post Office, named for a nearby grove of paw paw trees, out of his home and his carpentry business at the northeast corner of Main Street and Jefferson Avenue.
In those pre-Civil War days, the postmaster decided where the post office would be located. As a result, the post office had several homes in the 1800s, including Naperville National Bank, Kreger’s Pool Room, First National Bank, and other businesses and personal residences.
An actual post office was built at the southeast corner of Jefferson and Main Street but it, along with several nearby businesses, was destroyed by fire in December 1874.
Naperville was on a mail route that stretched from Chicago west to the town of Dixon’s Ferry, now known as Dixon, and mail arrived by stage coach once a week.
Because there was no home delivery, you had to go to the post office to see if you had mail. Interestingly, the mail recipient — not the sender — was responsible for paying the postage.
Farmers were not forgotten. Rural free delivery using horses started in 1900. Naperville had four routes, each of which covered about 25 miles and had about 75 stops.
The use of automobiles cut that number of routes from four to two. Letter carriers used their own cars to deliver mail on the rural routes.
City folk living in Naperville finally started receiving home mail delivery in August 1906.
As the nation climbed out of the Great Depression and with Naperville’s population growing, it became clear a larger, more permanent post office was needed.
In 1938, the Federal Public Buildings Appropriation Act allocated $90,000 to cover the cost of the site, building and administration of a new post office in Naperville. The site selected was the southwest corner of Benton Avenue and Washington Street.
Construction was to cost $50,400 for the 3,695-square-foot building, which was to have a lobby, five service windows, 132 lock boxes, a work room and the postmaster’s office.
In 1939, the U.S. Treasury Department commissioned a mural through the Fine Arts Project as part of the construction plan. Rainey Bennett, working on his third federal commission, completed a mural in 1941 that showcased city history and featured images of Joseph Naper, George Martin and Bailey Hobson as well as the Naper Mill and Century House.
By 1950, Naperville had 22 regular postal employees and six temporary workers. There were still two rural routes that covered more than 100 miles and made more than 1,000 stops.
Fifteen years later, Naperville post office employees were handling a whopping 10 million pieces of mail annually.
An addition was built to the post office’s south side in 1966, which is the post office in use today. In 2012, the original building was renovated for use as the Naperville Bank and Trust, where Bennett’s mural can still be seen.
The Naperville post office building is located within Naperville’s Federal Historic District and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Andrea Field is the curator of history at Naper Settlement. For more information, go to www.NaperSettlement.org.
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Steve Metsch is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.