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Overview

The Mediterranean Revival Style design of this post office harmonized well with other, later constituent parts of the Pasadena Civic Center erected in the 1920s and early 1930s, including the City Hall, Public Library and Civic Auditorium.

Building History

The Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department, Oscar Wenderoth (1871-1938). designed Pasadena's Main Post Office, completed in 1916. It had a Mediterranean Revival Style character, felt to be appropriate to Southern California's climate and the region's Spanish-American settlers.

In 1923, citizens of Pasadena passed a $3.5 bond issue to pay for a new civic center plan, devised by the firm of Bennett, Parsons and Frost. The firm included the existing Pasadena Post Office in this new civic center plan as a contributing building.

The US Postal Service rechristened the building, the “First Lieutenant Oliver Goodall Post Office Building” in 2012, to honor a pioneering African-American, World War II pilot trained at the Tuskegee Institute, who resided in nearby Altadena, CA, between 1961 and 2010.

Alteration

The Pasadena architectural firm of Marston and Maybury designed an addition to the post office in 1938.

PCAD id: 6578