Mineola Post Office
Mineola, Wood County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Postal service in Mineola dates to 1873, when an "unofficial" post office opened in a local drugstore. The first U. S. post office in the area was granted in 1875. This building was constructed in 1937, at a time when numerous public works projects included such federal buildings. It originally included a Works Progress Administration mural, "The Horse and Buggy Give Way to Modern Methods of Mail Transportation" by California artist Bernard Zakheim, which was deemed beyond repair during renovations in 1972. The Mineola Post Office building is an excellent example of a Depression-era postal facility. It exhibits the standard plan design of many Moderne post offices of the time, including symmetrical facade, simplified entablature and horizontal lines. It was an official U. S. post office until 1998. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1999
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1937 as part of the wave of New Deal public-works construction, the Mineola Post Office is a fine example of the streamlined Moderne style favored for Depression-era federal buildings, with its symmetrical facade and clean horizontal lines. It once housed a Works Progress Administration mural celebrating the shift "from the horse and buggy to modern methods of mail transportation," though the artwork was lost to a 1972 renovation. The building served the town until 1998 and was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark the following year.
Why it matters
Depression-era post offices brought federal architecture, public art, and jobs to small towns across America, making the New Deal a tangible daily presence far from Washington.
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Related people
- · Bernard Zakheim
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Thomas Breen Family
Mineola, TX
Irish immigrant Thomas Breen followed the Texas & Pacific Railroad to Mineola when it reached town in May 1873 and stayed on as its first ticket agent. He married Irish-born Lucy Wilson, opened a hardware store in the 1880s, and served for years as postmaster and later city alderman. Several of his twelve children carried on in civic life, and the Breen home long served as a meeting place for the town's early Catholic residents.
Mineola
Mineola, TX
Mineola was born of the railroad in 1873, when the Texas & Pacific building west and the Houston & Great Northern building north converged and gave the new town its depot. Rail lines brought immigrant families, made Mineola a shipping hub for agricultural Wood County, and spurred newspapers, churches, schools, and banks. Even after a devastating 1888 downtown fire, the town rebounded, and its bond with the rails endured until Amtrak revived passenger service in 1996.
Railroads in Mineola
Mineola, TX
Mineola owes its very existence to a railroad race: in the summer of 1873 the Houston and Great Northern and the Texas and Pacific drove crews day and night toward a single crossing point, arriving so close together that the two lines could see each other and still argue over who won. The junction town incorporated in 1877, gained a third railroad in 1881, and became a bustling shipping point for watermelons, sweet potatoes and cotton. When the T&P moved its terminal here in 1929, some 200 rail jobs helped carry Mineola through the Great Depression while neighboring towns struggled.
Mineola Fire Department
Mineola, TX
When the Texas & Pacific and International & Great Northern railroads met at Mineola in the 1870s, the booming junction town faced a constant menace: fire, which once consumed eighteen downtown buildings in a single night. Residents answered with brick construction, a fire gong at the city well, and in 1907 a volunteer fire company that grew into an official department by 1924. Paid firefighters arrived in 1954, capping decades of hard-won progress against the flames.