The U.S. Post Office in Beacon, New York, is located on Main Street (New York State Route 52 Business). It serves the ZIP Code 12508, covering the entire city of Beacon and some of the neighboring areas of the Town of Fishkill. It is a stone structure in the Dutch Colonial Revival architectural style built in the mid-1930s. In 1988 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places along with many other older post offices in the state.
While its style was not uncommon for post offices of the era, its fieldstone exterior is. Only a few other New Deal post offices in the state, most of them also in Dutchess County towns along the Hudson River, used it. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's preferred that new post offices in his native region echo the architectural preferences of his Dutch ancestors who had been among the earliest settlers of the Hudson Valley, and the success of the Beacon post office may have encouraged him in that respect.
It was also the only federal building in New York designed by architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood, who lived in Idaho and primarily worked on buildings in the national parks of the West, closer to his home. Inside the building, Charles Rosen painted a map of the Hudson Valley on the lobby walls, in addition to some murals depicting historic events in the area. Both interior and exterior remain largely as originally constructed.
Building
The post office is located on the south side of Main about east of Beacon's Lower Main Street commercial area. It is at the corner of Main and Veterans Street, a short distance east of where Eliza Street intersects across the street. The neighborhood is heavily developed and urban. On both sides of the street are similar large commercial and institutional structures, most one or two stories tall. To the east is a smaller group of three-story attached brick buildings, with the Howland Cultural Center, an early work of Richard Morris Hunt also listed on the Register, two blocks east at the corner of Main and Tioronda Avenue, which runs alongside Fishkill Creek.
Behind the buildings on both sides of the streets are parking lots. To the southeast another Register-listed property, the 1709 stone Madam Brett Homestead, sits in the middle of a large woodlot on a block east of Teller Avenue. Otherwise the adjacent neighborhoods are residential.
The building itself has a minimal setback from both Main and Veterans streets. A group of coniferous trees screens the northwest corner; a white birch tree rises from the east side of the north (front) facade. Along the northeast corner is a driveway to the parking lot in the rear, with a small guardrail of metal set in fieldstone separating it from Veterans Street.
Exterior
It is a five-by-six-bay one-story rectangular building faced in uncoursed rough fieldstone. A three-bay wide middle section flanked by projecting one-by-three-bay wings. The two sections create a cross-gabled roof topped with slate and centered around a cupola. On the southwest and southeast corners the roofs are flat.
Three short steps lead up to the main entrance, with paneled wooden double doors flanked by decorative lanterns and topped with an 18-light transom set in a lintel with keystone. On either side are triple-hung eight-light sash windows with a similar treatment. The windows on the wings are six-over-six double-hung sash, also with gently keystoned lintels, except for the third bay from the south end, set with a four-pane casement window. At the south end is a covered platform with elevated loading dock.
On the north facade a denticulated cornice sets off the top of the first story of the middle section. It continues around the pedimented gable end, filled with a stucco tympanum. Within is a cast pewter eagle; below the words "United States Post Office Beacon New York" are spelled out in affixed metal letters in the entablature.
A molded wooden cornice is located along the roofline of the wings. Their gable ends are also stucco, but with a single louvered lunette in the center. The cornice continues along the south end of the main block, where it is topped with a parapet where the roof is flat. Brick chimneys rise from both flat sections.
The cupola has three stages. Its lower level is a square pedestal with molded cornice. Above it is a section with arched windows and pilasters. The third stage is an octagonal section with louvered vents. The roof of the cupola is a curved cone of lead-covered copper topped by a round finial that supports a weathervane.