The Union Square post office, located a few miles from Tufts, holds both cultural and historical significance to the Somerville community. Recently, the United States Postal Service has decided to close the post office and put it on the market. Though the post office is not yet officially closed, Somerville residents are concerned about the decision to sell the property and worried about the future of the historical mural housed within its walls.
The post office is just one example of a recent increase in sales of postal service properties across the country. Since 2006, a federal law has required the USPS to pay some of its employees' retirement benefits in advance, creating an additional yearly cost of $5.5 billion. This, combined with a steady decline in the American public's use of the postal service, has left the USPS in dire financial straits.
Located on 237 Washington St., the post office opened in 1936 and was placed on the national register of historic places in 1986. The building is home to a historically significant 1937 mural by artist Ross Moffett entitled "A Skirmish between British and Colonists near Somerville in Revolutionary Times." The work was commissioned under the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression, according to a March 12 article published in The Somerville Times.
Chris Poteet, a Somerville resident who is investigating the sale of the post office, explained that many public murals, like this one, were commissioned in the New Deal era.
"The post office murals are a really great thing," Poteet said. "They were put in post offices all across the country in the 30s during the Roosevelt administration, and they're really national treasures."
Poteet added that the Somerville mural was not created solely for aesthetic purposes, but also has a historical function.
"[Murals were] usually painted to tell the story of the town they were located in, and Somerville always had a tremendous resource, having this 1930's mural in [its] post office," Poteet said. "I've never felt like it was as promoted and celebrated as it should [have been]."
While the Somerville Historic Preservation Committee has played a large role in the debate over the mural's future, Poteet described his own efforts to help preserve the piece.
"The first thing I did was go and find out what protections were in place [for the mural]," Poteet said. "I found out that there's a process that's really a part of federal law on how to deal with historic post offices and historic New Deal artwork. It was then that I found that these processes were never followed in Somerville."
Poteet is referring to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which provides a series of guidelines to protect historic properties. It requires that the federal agency responsible for the sale of the property in question consult with appropriate state and local officials, as well as members of the public, when making final project decisions. Poteet explained that the community was taking action to ensure that there was transparency during the post office sale.
"The sale was supposed to have stopped back in January," Poteet said. "The [Somerville] advisory council for historic preservation has an open investigation about the Somerville post office sale."
Somerville Alderman At Large Bill White said that a public hearing was held in March to discuss the future of the mural, only after the post office had already been on the market for months.
"The historical preservation commission basically held a hearing just to take testimonies, to sort of compile the concerns of residents," White said. "Then, they themselves will send ... a report to the postal service to address how that mural should be handled when the post office is sold."
White described general disapproval among Somerville residents about how decisions regarding the sale of the post office were made.
"The concern that some people have is whether the [USPS] has followed federal law with regards to the way this post office has been closed and put [up] for sale," White said. "We've asked the city solicitor to look on that, to review that issue, and he has not gotten back to us yet on that."
A federal spending bill passed by Congress this January includes a provision that supports blocking the sale of post offices until both an inspector general and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) have issued reports on the building in question. White, however, reiterated the importance of including the public's opinion in this process.12
