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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Post Office Building Plan Detail, 1860
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| bet | 3/5 | | Sana | 22.07.2021 | | Hajmi | 5.51 Mb. | | #15686 |
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Post Office Building Plan Detail, 1860
This detail of the building plan for the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Post Office, designed by Ammi Burnham Young in 1860, shows a separate window for ladies picking up letters, as well as a separate window for gentlemen picking up ladies' letters.
From Architectural Drawings for Government Buildings (U.S. Treasury Department, Office of the Supervising Architect), in Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
Anthony Trollope, the popular novelist and influential British postal official, disapproved of the degree to which the sexes were segregated in the U.S. In 1863, he wrote “I confess that in the States I have sometimes been driven to think that chivalry has been carried too far….There are ladies’ doors at hotels and ladies’ drawing-rooms, ladies’ sides on the ferry boats, ladies’ windows at the post office for the delivery of letters.”(4) Trollope felt that ladies delivery windows, in particular, were
an atrocious institution, as anybody may learn who will look at the advertisements called personal in some of the New York papers. Why should not young ladies have their letters sent to their houses, instead of getting them at a private window? The post-office clerks can tell stories about those ladies’ windows.(5)
Ladies delivery windows were established at Post Offices in more than 75 cities coast to coast (see "List of Known Post Offices with a Ladies Delivery Window" beginning on page 4). In 1888, Postmaster George Paul of Milwaukee claimed that “most cities of over 100,000 inhabitants” had special windows for women.(6) Even Post Offices in some smaller towns such as Tombstone, Arizona, and Perth Amboy, New Jersey, with less than 10,000 inhabitants, maintained ladies windows.
Women were able to have mail addressed to them in care of the ladies window, allowing them to shield their addresses from correspondents. In 1867, an article in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine noted that some American women even enjoyed
the privilege, if she chooses to exercise it, of her own private box or pigeon-hole at the post office of the town where she resides, where she can have her letters addressed, and whither by a “Ladies’ Entrance” where no profane male can intrude, she can resort when she pleases and unlock her box from the outside, and take away her letters without observation.(7)
In 1871, a writer for Harper’s Magazine found “people of every nationality” in line at the ladies window at the New York City Post Office and felt that “the appearance of the sex dressed in gay colors and wreathed in smiles lightens up the otherwise care-worn, pell-mell, rushing, and sombre-looking crowd.”(8)
Other New Yorkers feared that trips to the Post Office could provide an opportunity for women to encounter unsavory company. In 1869, author Junius Browne claimed that New York’s Post Offices were “the favorites of intriguers of both sexes, and are frequently made rendezvous for interdicted communication and illicit pleasures.”(9) The next year, another New York author alleged that madams preyed upon young women at the Post Office, attempting to lure them into prostitution.(10)
Newspaper writers, meanwhile, condemned the ladies delivery window for allowing women to carry on courtships away from the scrutiny of their parents; a New Orleans journalist stated that it “affords opportunities for modern Juliets to carry on clandestine correspondence.”(11) A newspaper account reprinted across the country claimed that a New York Postmaster decried the ladies delivery window as “that satanic ladies window,” upset that he could withhold letters from those underage but “all the women who are of age can keep on misusing the government’s service and there is no lawful way to stop them.”(12)
In 1887, Rose Elizabeth Cleveland was said to have written to her brother, President Grover Cleveland, and to Postmaster General William Vilas, complaining that ladies delivery windows had become “an agency of demoralization,” charging that they were used to circumvent parental authority and encourage improper relationships.(13)
In San Francisco, the press was more positive. An article in Hutchings California Magazine observed that the polite conventions of society were being maintained at the San Francisco Post Office in 1858:
Further on, too, at the end of the building, and apart from the rest, is the ladies’ window; and here stand a row of ladies and gentlemen, waiting as patiently as at the others, the gentlemen, who form part of the line, do so to obtain letters for their wife, or sister or perhaps sweetheart, or other lady friend; and if they are there first, they invariably give precedence to the ladies no matter how many may come, or how long they may be thus detained.(14)
In 1869, the San Francisco Post Office was again commended for providing a ladies delivery window where “women are shielded and will be protected.”(15)
In some Post Offices the ladies windows were staffed by female postal clerks. In 1858, it was reported that the Postmaster of New York City “placed on duty a lady, to attend the window at the ladies’ delivery.” The reporter continued “this is a good move and will meet with the hearty approbation of our citizens.”(16) In 1865, Chicago’s ladies delivery window was staffed by women to “stop the flirting with the clerks.”(17) It was not stated if this was to increase employee productivity or safeguard female propriety.
As free mail delivery was introduced in cities, the delivery of letters at gender-segregated Post Office windows gradually ended.(18) Residents of cities having free mail delivery were discouraged from calling at the Post Office for their mail. Section 342 of the 1879 Postal Laws and Regulations stated
mail-matter directed neither to a box-holder nor to a street and number, must be delivered by carrier if its address is known or can be ascertained from the city directory; otherwise, at the general delivery.(19)
The November 18, 1879, issue of the Sacramento Daily Union reported
Owing to a reduction in the number of callers at the Postoffice since the establishment of free delivery, the delivery of ladies' letters at a separate window was yesterday discontinued, and hereafter ladies must apply at the general delivery for their letters.(20)
In 1887, postal regulations reiterated that general delivery windows in Post Offices were meant for the use of travelers with no fixed address, not residents:
Letters must be frequently and promptly delivered by the carriers, so that citizens may have no inducement to call at the post-office; and the local addresses of those receiving mail through the general delivery should be secured, and their mail delivered by carriers to the greatest practicable extent.(21)
In 1912, Postmasters were reminded to comply with this policy and were authorized to require any residents using the general delivery window to "furnish in writing … their reasons for preferring to be served at the general delivery."(22)
The last known reference to a ladies delivery window in a specific Post Office occurred on October 23, 1911, when the Atlanta Georgian and News noted that patrons could “get advertised letters at the ladies’ general delivery window.”(23)
Some modern writers have noted that the creation of separate areas for women in public spaces “reinforced the cultural message that, as the weaker sex, women needed special home-like havens when they ventured into the threatening public realm.”(24) Historian David Henkin has suggested that the gender separation had the effect of marginalizing women using the Post Office; at the same time, he acknowledged that it gave some women a new freedom, since previously, for many, "the mail box was inside the coat pockets of men.”(25)
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