Signed, sealed, delivered…
As the county seat and largest town, the City of Payette has historically served as the social and commercial center of Payette County. But despite that significance, no purpose-built federal facility served the city until construction of a new post office in 1937.
Constructed during the Great Depression, federal investment in the Payette Post Office was just a small part of a nationwide effort to bring jobs, infrastructure improvements, and economic development opportunities to American communities. New Deal projects across the State of Idaho resulted in the construction of hundreds of buildings, thousands of miles of roadway and other infrastructure, and unknown numbers of other federally funded, coordinated, or constructed miscellaneous projects.
The post office is a single-story brick building with minimalistic (or stripped) classical details and was built to standardized plans developed by the U.S. Postal Service. Three bas-relief panels on the façade depict an airplane, ship, and train – three modern modes of mail transport. The local newspaper described the $81,000 building as “a modern post office building…which would do credit to a city many times the size [of Payette]…and is of a most artistic design.”
Source: Idaho SHPO
The building was listed in the National Register in 1989 as part of the multiple property listing for “Historic U.S. Post Offices in Idaho 1900-1941”
View the nomination here: https://history.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Payette_Main_Post_Office_89000134.pdf