JUNE 2005

Historic Downtown

Tucson’s Downtown Post Offices

Restored Walsh Courthouse was Longtime Post Office

by Ken Scoville

ith the recent renovations to the James A. Walsh Courthouse and the National Register-listed building’s reopening as the home of Tucson’s U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the timing seems right to remind our readers that the structure was first used partly as a post office, and discuss the evolution of Tucson’s post offices up until its construction in 1930.

The completion of the new federal building and post office at the corner of Scott and Broadway in September 1930 became the third monumental building constructed at the start of that decade that would define Tucson as a city. Newspaper articles in the Star and Citizen during the summer of 1929 spoke glowingly of this “modern edifice” along with the Consolidated National Bank (now Bank One Tower) and Pioneer Hotel high-rises. (The Fox Theatre also opened that year.) This new U.S. post office and court house was constructed of granite and cream-colored brick with mission tile on the roof. The post office occupied the first floor, all court facilities were located on the third floor, and the second and fourth floors provided approximately 40 offices for government officials. The building costs were estimated at $550,000 but the land was donated to the government in 1915 as an enticement for the appropriation of funds for a new post office. Citizens had purchased the site and after years of lobbying, the first spade of soil was turned on August 12, 1929, by then Tucson postmaster Mrs. Allie Dickerman.

The new main post office became operational in the fall of 1930 and brought a sense of permanence to the postal traditions of the Old Pueblo. From Tucson’s beginning as an American outpost in the 1850s, the Post Office Department in Washington, D.C., recognized the existence of Tucson, but the actual canceling stamp imprinting Tucson did not arrive until years later. Elias Brevoort was the first postmaster for Tucson, appointed on December 4, 1856, but he never made it to Tucson. He used the Tucson cancel at Fort Buchanan, about 45 miles southeast of Tucson. Authorized mail service for the Old Pueblo began in July 1857 to serve the communication needs of approximately 800 rugged individualists residing here; stagecoach and mail service arrived in December 1857. Just after Arizona became a Territory in 1863, President Lincoln appointed another postmaster, Reverend Hiram Walter Reed, who never worked in Tucson either and spent his time in Prescott, then the Territorial capital, where he used the cancellation for Tucson. Mark Aldrich was the first true postmaster of Tucson in 1857 but never used the Tucson cancel. On July 13, 1865, Tucson finally received and used its cancel and Mark Aldrich was again appointed postmaster for a short time. By November 1, D.H. Stickney had been appointed on a permanent basis. Given the minimal salary, the position of postmaster saw a great deal of turnover and dictated other employment to supplement one’s income.


1. a 1950s-era postcard of the main post office	2. contemporary view of the James A. Walsh Courthouse

The post office locations were as variable as the individual holding the title postmaster of Tucson. The record is uncertain but locations before the turn of the century included: the Lord and Williams department store at Congress and Main, a location at Maiden Lane and Congress, and the Arizona Star building on North Church. The move to the Church Street location in 1889 was the first relocation dictated by population growth. At the turn of the century the post office was at Stone and Pennington, with a dance hall on the second floor. Postal employees at that time remembered clicking heels above them during evening hours. By 1917 the post office location responded to the eastward growth of the town by locating on the southwest corner of Broadway and Sixth Avenue in the Ronstadt Building.

Urban growth in the 1920s forced another relocation of the post office, this time on the north side of the railroad tracks at the southeast corner of 4th Avenue and 8th Street. Congress Street merchants were concerned not only by the loss of the post office to the 4th Avenue area, but by competition from 4th Avenue businesses made more accessible by the completed 4th Avenue “subway” (underpass). On the evening of January 21, 1928, these new upstarts on the avenue featured a celebration with music and dancing, prizes from the merchants, and a tour of the sparkling new post office. Keynote speakers spoke of the connection of the postal services to the splendid growth of the Tucson region and also of the need for a major federal building.

The Walsh Courthouse, named in 1986 for federal Judge James A. Walsh, was the federal building spoken about at the celebration in January 1928; it was operational by late 1930. The next 40 years would see the race for postal services to keep up with the growth of Tucson with substations springing up like shopping centers. The building at Broadway and Scott ceased its postal functions in 1972, when the Cherrybell facility, constructed in October of that year, became the central location for mail sorting and delivery along with traditional services. A new postal station for downtown would rise at 141 South Sixth Avenue in 1986, without general delivery services, amid controversies that general delivery attracted transients.

The final recognition of Tucson’s landmark post office and federal courthouse came in 1983 with entry into the National Register of Historic Places for the architectural design and significance to the history of Tucson. In the late 1980s, the federal government intended to expand Walsh to the north, on what has become known as the Thrifty Block. But in a few years, the feds concluded that the Thrifty site was too small, and eventually acquired the site to the west at Congress and Granada, where the Evo DeConcini Federal Courthouse was constructred. In 2000, the Walsh Courthouse closed for renovations, which included the removal of a “skywalk” connecting it across Broadway to an annex building on the south side of the street. U.S. Bankruptcy Court, led by presiding Judge James Marlar, returned the Walsh Courthouse to active public service in February 2005.