DUANE
Get the App
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, if you're rolling through Baytown and you happen to glance over at the old post office building, you might just feel like you're looking at something that's been holding its breath for a long time, waiting for someone to notice it. And here's the thing.
It has been. This structure went up in 1936 and 1937, built as the Goose Creek Post Office, and from the moment it opened its doors it was the main postal facility for the whole area. Not just a building.
The place where people came for news, for letters, for word from somewhere else. For almost fifty years, that was its job, and it did it without complaint. Now, the man who designed it was architect Louis A.
Simon, and he gave it what's called an early international style. Clean lines, a certain quiet confidence in the way it stands. But here's where the story gets a little more interesting than your average government building.
Inside, there is a fresco mural. Not a painting hung on a nail. A fresco, worked right into the building itself, commissioned as part of the Federal Arts Program of the Works Progress Administration.
Somebody stood in that room and made something permanent. Then 1985 came along, and the post office moved out. After almost fifty years, the building had to become something new.
And what did it become? The home of the Baytown Historical Museum. Which means the building that once carried everybody else's stories is now, itself, the story.
What the marker says
Built in 1936-37 as the Goose Creek Post Office, this structure served as the area's main postal facility for almost fifty years. Designed by architect Louis a. Simon, the early international style building features an interior fresco mural commissioned as part of the Federal Arts Program of the Works Progress Administration. After the post office moved from this building in 1985, it became the home of the Baytown Historical Museum. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1988