1915 New Braunfels Post Office
New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The old post office of New Braunfels was built during the full-scale 20th century transformation of the United States Postal System. Programs like the United States Postal Savings System, parcel post, airmail, and improved rural delivery services expanded the reach and popularity of the postal system for letters and packages. In 1915, president Woodrow Wilson signed an act to fund the construction of a postal office building in New Braunfels. Prior to this, the postal service had its headquarters in various homes and businesses. The new building was dedicated in 1915, with the names on the cornerstone of William G. McAdoo, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury responsible for post offices, and James A. Wetmore, supervising architect. Many contractors were involved in construction, with Round Rock limestone and D’hanis and Acme brick companies as suppliers for much of the exterior materials. During the Great Depression and World War II, the office also sold war bonds and handled food stamps and ration books. In the 1960s, the office was remodeled and an addition to the north side was constructed. The location of the New Braunfels Post Office was eventually moved to Seguin Avenue in 1985. For 70 years, the New Braunfels community was supported and served through this post office building. In 2007-08, the building was completely renovated to house McAdoo’s Seafood Company, named for the former Secretary of the Treasury. (2015)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Funded by an act President Woodrow Wilson signed in 1915, this post office rose during the sweeping early-20th-century modernization of the U.S. Postal System — parcel post, airmail, savings, and expanded rural delivery. Built of Round Rock limestone and regional brick, it served New Braunfels for seventy years, selling war bonds and handling ration books during the Great Depression and World War II. After the post office moved in 1985, the building was renovated to house a restaurant named for Treasury Secretary William G. McAdoo.
Why it matters
The building embodies the era when a modernizing federal postal system planted civic landmarks in towns across America.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the opening decades of the twentieth century, the United States Post Office was one of the most visible arms of the federal government in ordinary American life. It was quietly transforming. Rural Free Delivery brought mail to farmhouse gates; Parcel Post, launched in 1913, let Americans send packages cheaply and helped turn mail-order catalogs into a national shopping habit; the Postal Savings System let people bank at the post office; and airmail was beginning to shrink the distances between cities. To handle all this, the government built — town by town — a new generation of dedicated post office buildings.
New Braunfels received its building in this wave. Before 1915, the local mail had been handled out of a rotating series of homes and businesses, as it was in countless American towns. A purpose-built federal post office was a marker of arrival: proof that a community was substantial and permanent enough to warrant its own civic landmark bearing the eagle and the flag.
The building rose during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson and the sweeping Progressive-era confidence that government could be organized, modern, and efficient. Its stone and brick were meant to say exactly that — that the mail, and the nation behind it, were here to stay.
People & events
In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed the act that funded a post office building for New Braunfels, and the new structure was dedicated that same year. Its cornerstone carried the names that federal buildings of the era typically bore: William G. McAdoo, the Secretary of the Treasury whose department then oversaw post office construction, and James A. Wetmore, the supervising architect whose office produced the plans for scores of such buildings nationwide.
The building was very much a product of its region. Its exterior drew on Round Rock limestone and brick from the D'Hanis and Acme companies, materials quarried and fired in Texas and assembled by an array of local contractors. It was a federal building, but it was built of Texas.
For seventy years it served the community through the full sweep of the century's upheavals. During the Great Depression and the Second World War, its counters sold war bonds and handled the food stamps and ration books that governed daily life on the home front. It was remodeled in the 1960s and given an addition on its north side. In 1985 the postal operation moved to a new home on Seguin Avenue, and in 2007–08 the old building was thoroughly renovated to house a seafood restaurant named, with a wink to the cornerstone, for Secretary McAdoo.
Its place in the American story
Across America, the early-twentieth-century federal post office is one of the most democratic pieces of architecture we have. Whether in a great city or a small town, these buildings were designed to project the same qualities — solidity, dignity, permanence — so that a citizen anywhere in the country would recognize the presence of the national government and feel some ownership of it. The one in New Braunfels is a local example of a genuinely national program.
The post office also embodies an era when the mail was the internet of its day. Parcel Post and Rural Free Delivery knit a vast country together, letting a farm family order goods from a distant city and a soldier's letter reach home. The building where that mail was sorted was, in a real sense, a node in the first great American network.
Its second life matters too. The renovation of a beloved civic building into a restaurant is a quietly common American story — the reuse of sturdy old public architecture that a community refuses to lose. That the new tenant took McAdoo's name shows how a town can hold onto its history even as a building changes hands.
If you visit
Look first at the stone. Round Rock limestone and regional brick give the building the grounded, unshowy dignity that federal architects of the 1910s prized, and if you can find the cornerstone you'll see the names that connect this Texas corner to Washington.
Try to read the building in layers. The core is 1915; the addition to the north is a product of the 1960s; and the interior now belongs to its restaurant era. Part of the pleasure of a building like this is watching a single structure carry a century of different uses without losing its bones.
It makes a natural stop on a walk through New Braunfels's historic center, where civic buildings, old commercial blocks, and the town's German heritage sit close together. Come hungry to the idea if you like — the building that once weighed your grandparents' parcels and sold war bonds now welcomes visitors through the same handsome doors.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Woodrow Wilson
- · William G. McAdoo
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Old Schmitz Hotel
New Braunfels, TX
The oldest part of this building rose around 1851 from local cedar and limestone, and in 1858 German immigrant Jacob Schmitz bought it as the new home of his Guadalupe Hotel. The traveling writer Frederick Law Olmsted praised the inn's Old World atmosphere as he passed through the German settlements of central Texas. A third story was added in 1873 and the hotel took Schmitz's name, though its original facade has since been much changed.
International & Great Northern Railroad in New Braunfels
New Braunfels, TX
New Braunfels residents lobbied for years to draw a railroad, and by 1880 the International & Great Northern rolled its first trains through a new depot. The line transformed the local economy, opening markets for goods and sparking tourism—Helen Gould, daughter of financier Jay Gould, prompted a spur into what became Landa Park. Successive depots culminated in the 1907 station that now houses the New Braunfels Railroad Museum.
Junction of Two Important Rivers, the Guadalupe and the Comal
New Braunfels, TX
The meeting of the Guadalupe and Comal rivers was claimed for the King of Spain by Gov. Martín de Alarcón on May 8, 1718, and long served priests and soldiers traveling to East Texas. In 1845 a ferry run here by Adolph von Wedemeyer helped German immigrants settle Central Texas, and by the 1860s the spot held a brick kiln and tannery.
Landa Park
New Braunfels, TX
Joseph Landa bought this land around the Comal Springs—the largest springs in the American Southwest—in 1859 and harnessed the Comal River to power gristmills, textile factories, an ice plant, and a brewery, even a Civil War saltpeter works. His son Harry opened Landa's Park as a tourist resort in 1898, and excursion trains soon brought crowds for picnics, dancing, and steamboat rides. After financial troubles closed it, New Braunfels citizens voted overwhelmingly to buy the park in 1936, and WPA crews added lasting improvements.