On the afternoon of May 1, 1939, in the idyllic town of Rhinebeck, in Dutchess County, NY, a large and excited crowd gathered to witness President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) officially dedicate the new Dutch Colonial-style post office. Other esteemed guests included First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the president’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, and James Farley, Postmaster General.
Two special visitors were Frederick, Crown Prince of Denmark and Iceland, and his wife, Crown Princess Ingrid, who had traveled far from a continent filled with anxiety and uncertainty over the rising perilous threat of Adolf Hitler and fascism.
The dedication of the Rhinebeck post office was an event that FDR had long been anticipating because he had played a key role in its design and creation.
In the mid-1930s, Congress made an appropriation for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to construct five post offices in Dutchess County. After work was
underway on the Poughkeepsie post office, James Farley presumed that FDR would want the next post office erected in his hometown of Hyde Park. However, the president knew that Rhinebeck was twice the size of Hyde Park, and their demand for a post office was greater.
To make way for the new structure, the government acquired the P.E. Cookingham store and the Rhinebeck Town Hall, and then, they demolished both buildings so that the post office would be placed beside the historic Beekman Arms and Delamater Inn.
From the onset, FDR had a keen interest in the plans for this building, and he stipulated that this be no ordinary post office. The president complained that too many of the modern post offices looked similar, and he found this “sameness” to be dull and hackneyed.
A curious and zealous historian, especially when it came to his Dutch heritage, and being a novice architect, FDR requested that the Dutch Colonial-style building be a replicate of the famed local home built by Hendrick Kip.
Constructed in 1700, the Kip-Beekman-Heermance House, as it came to be known, had tragically been destroyed by a fire in 1910, the same year FDR was elected to the New York State Senate.
In the spring of 1938, the post office’s chosen architect, R. Stanley Brown, met with Arthur Suckley, an owner of the property on which the historic home’s ruins stood. The two men came to the agreement that the government would pay Suckley for stone removed from the site to be used for constructing the new post office.
One month later, a large amount of shrubbery was stripped on the property of the destroyed home so that FDR could drive up to the site to meet with Brown and view preliminary sketches of the building. The president had such a keen eye for detail that he requested a 10-inch bulls-eye window be included in the upper level of the post office, just as it was at the Kip-Beekman-Heermance House.
A substantial portion of the original stone from the house was incorporated into the front of the post office. In the lobby, the original cornerstone from the house was placed visibly on display. In addition, the Suckley family donated a pane of glass rescued from the residence by John Jacob Astor during the catastrophic fire.
The Federal Art Project was established during the Great Depression to provide artists with work by including creative murals inside every WPA building. FDR asked that each artist chosen to produce murals for buildings in Dutchess County depict the history of the town in which the building was located.
After great consideration and deliberation, local artist Olin Dows (1904-1981), who had attended Vassar College and later was appointed head of the Treasury Relief Art program, was chosen to paint twelve murals showcasing the illustrious history of Rhinebeck in the lobby of the post office.
In his speech at the opening ceremony, FDR regaled the audience with his memories of riding down the Albany Post Road as a boy, staring intently at the old stone homes built by early settlers in prior centuries.
Then, he transitioned into telling of how his appreciation for the history of Dutchess County’s “river towns” evolved as he grew into adulthood, and finally, FDR spoke of his fondness for the eminent stone architecture native to the Hudson Valley.
The president said “we are seeking to follow the type of architecture which is good in the sense that it does not of necessity follow the whims of the moment but
seeks an artistry that ought to be good… for all time to come.”
The Rhinebeck post office remains a revered landmark in this charming town nestled on the Hudson River. However, in recent years, it has not been without some controversy.
In 2020, there was intense conversation regarding the fact that African Americans were portrayed in strictly subservient roles in Olin Dows’ murals. The Town of Rhinebeck commissioned Dr. Myra Young Armstead, a professor at nearby Bard College, to conduct a thorough study on the murals.
Armstead reported that “the murals correctly — yet disturbingly — reflect the racialized social hierarchy from the past in the town and region,” and she concluded that it “is a critically important feature of history that needs to be preserved.”
The murals still exist in their original form, and this post office, deeply entrenched in local history, continues to be, as FDR hoped at the time of its dedication, “admired for its beauty by the many thousands who pass this way.”
Photos, from above: The Rhinebeck Post Office today; the Post Office shown in a historic postcard; Kipsbergen, the Kip-Beekman-Hermance House before it was destroyed by fire; detail from Olin Dows’ mural in the Rhinebeck Post Office; and FDR speaking at the Post Office dedication in 1939.
