On this day in 1906, the city's postal workers were calling for a bit more room. The desire for a bigger post office was enough to draw Canada's post office inspector, A.W. Cairns, to tour the city.
Edmonton's population was rising at a dizzying pace, and the city's post office didn't have a dedicated home, bouncing instead between various other buildings. According to the city's postmaster, the facilities were too small and crowded for the growing city.
Cairns's tour must have been convincing, as the federal government offered funding to build a dedicated post office. The result was an impressive stone-and-steel building on the corner of McDougall and Rice streets (now known as 101 Avenue and 100 Street), befitting Edmonton's growing importance. The white stone on the building's façade was shipped in from Manitoba. The domed clocktower on top of the four-storey post office made it the tallest building in Edmonton until the Legislature Building was constructed.
The new post office opened with surprisingly little fanfare in 1910. Then, after it had remained vacant and dark for nearly a year, the public woke up one November morning to find that staff had moved over and the office was open for business.
The post office served the city for more than half a century. Two new wings were added to the building in 1929. Eventually, the old building couldn't keep up with the new technological changes in mail delivery. In 1966, the post office moved to a new modern building on 104 Avenue, behind the CN Tower. The old building sat vacant for several years in limbo as both the city and the federal government debated over what to do with it. It fell into disrepair and, in 1972, was demolished to make way for the Westin Hotel.
While the building itself was lost, the clocktower was carefully taken apart and saved. The stonework was then preserved in a local cemetery. The clock itself was installed into a new tower that now stands on the site of the old building.
The city's main post office moved again recently to make room for the Royal Alberta Museum. (And, in what now seems to be tradition, the clock from that building was preserved as part of the RAM.) Now, Edmonton's main post office faces the reverse problem to the crowding it dealt with more than a century ago, with the Crown corporation suffering staff shortages across the country.
This is based on a clipping found on Vintage Edmonton, a daily look at Edmonton's history from armchair archivist @revRecluse — follow @VintageEdmonton for daily ephemera via Twitter.