Post Office – Spring Valley NY

Description

“In 1931, Congress authorized 136 new post offices and extensions to existing ones in New York as part of an amendment to the Public Buildings Act it had passed five years earlier. The construction was meant to offer relief with the worsening of the Great Depression. Spring Valley’s would not begin construction for another five years, in 1936. The site was purchased from a local lumber company that year. Construction began later that year, and the building opened in 1937.

Its Colonial Revival design, by Treasury Department Supervising Architect Louis A. Simon, is unique to Spring Valley among the many Colonial Revival post offices in the state, many of which use variations on a basic design. Other post offices in the state, such as Fredonia, Massena and Warsaw, use a projecting three-bay central pavilion with arched windows flanked by single-bay flat-roofed wings. Only Spring Valley’s emphasizes the Greek Revival precedents of the style with the pilasters and pediment.”