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Post office is choice piece of Clearwater real estate

Clearwater Post Office

With all the talk about the current economic stimulus package, we should note that a very similar effort took place in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression. The Roosevelt Administration gets the credit (or blame) for all of the federal spending that took place back then to try to get the economy moving again, but less well known is that federal stimulus spending took place during the previous Hoover administration, as well.

An example of that was the so-called Elliot bill, which greatly increased the amount of federal spending for local building programs.  Up to that time, much of the federal spending on building construction was focused on buildings constructed inside Washington, DC. The Elliot bill bumped up federal spending for building projects from $315 million to $415 million, and most of that extra  money was aimed at building projects beyond Washington.

One of them turned out to be the new post office building in Clearwater, Florida. In 1931, Clearwater officials received a letter from Washington saying that $150,000 in federal funds had been earmarked for a new Clearwater Post Office.

That was a very big deal at the time. Clearwater’s population had been exploding, and one institution that was really feeling the pinch was the local post office.  The original post office on Cleveland street was really cramped, and when the new Scranton Arcade building was completed the post office was moved into that building. But even that wasn’t adequate — Clearwater was definitely going to need a new post office facility if it was to keep up with the increasing population demands.

So construction got under way right across the street from the Scranton Arcade. A local architect , Theodore Skinner, was hired to design the new building, and a Florida construction company, Walt & Sinclair of Palm Beach, was hired to do the work. The work went swiftly and the new building, made of limestone quarried in the Florida Keys, was dedicated on Oct. 9, 1933.

Then, as now, the federal dollars were meant to stimulate local economic growth. Local architects, designers, builders and materials were specified. The Clearwater Post office is a great exampleof Mediterrean Revival architecture. It was placed on the National Registerof Historic Places in the 1980s.

Tags: architecture, Clearwater, Post Office, real estate