Description

The old Winnemucca Post Office was built by the Treasury Department in the 1910s, when William McAdoo was Secretary of the Treasury. Curiously, the date and other information has been erased from the bottom of the cornerstone. 

The building was renovated and expanded in 1940 by the Federal Works Agency (responsibility for federal buildings had been transferred from the Treasury Department in 1939). Judging from photographs on display in the New Post Office, the building was gutted and the interior rebuilt.

Some of that interior, with its Art Deco curve and glass-block wall, appears to have survived the subsequent conversion to the City Hall in 1992.

The old Winnemucca post office was placed on the national register in 1990, just before the 1992 renovation. The building’s Neo-Classical/Federalist exterior came from standardized plans developed by the National Office of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department.

Winnemucca was the second Nevada town in the 20th century to receive a federal building, after Reno.