BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Postal Museum -- Exhibit (MIA Galleries 1): Moving the Mail

DC -- Natl Postal Museum -- Exhibit (MIA Galleries 1): Moving the Mail:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. MOVING_150525_01.JPG: Mail By Rail: Sorting mail on moving trains was one of the postal service's greatest innovations. After the Civil War, officials sought faster and more efficient ways to handle the increasing postal volumes. Clerks were placed on board railcars to sort and process mail while trains raced toward their destinations. This method for processing railway mail grew to be a mainstay of postal operations, but it came to and end in 1977 and three decades of declining railroad traffic.
2. MOVING_150525_08.JPG: "Few... are so widely traveled as Owney, the pet and mascot of the railway mail service." -- Los Angeles Times, March 15, 1896 Owney: Mascot of the Railway Mail Service: In his day, Owney (about 1888-1897) was the most famous dog in America, celebrated for traveling the length and breadth of the country on mail trains. His career began when he followed some mailbags onto a train in Albany, New York, and after that, he never stopped moving. Clerks working on Railway Mail Service cars loved having Owney on board and adopted him as their mascot. Reporters began to write about Owney, and by the early 1890s he appeared in headlines from the San Francisco Call to the New York Times. At that time, most of the nation's mail was sorted and moved on trains. Railway accidents were common and the clerks' jobs dangerous. Clerks considered Owney a good luck charm because they believed that he had never been in a train wreck. To mark Owney's trips on their trains, the clerks began adding medals and tags to his collar.
3. MOVING_150525_13.JPG: Owney's Tags: "Owney... now wears a big bunch [of tags]. When he jogs along, they jingle like the bells on a junk wagon." -- Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 4, 1894 As Owney traveled the country, mail clerks and others added medals and tags to his collar. These trinkets showed the many different places and people Owney visited. Some tags were made just for him. Over the years, Owney received hundreds of tags. From time to time, postal employees would remove his new tags and set them aside to make room for more. After Owney's death, many of the tags were sent to the Post Office Department in Washington, DC. They are now kept in the National Postal Museum.
4. MOVING_150525_19.JPG: From top left, clockwise: Postal Clerks' Convention, 1892 -- Baltimore Maryland Badge-style, 1893 -- Detroit, Michigan Alamo Commemorative coin -- San Antonio, Texas "Presented to His Dogship," 1892 -- Baltimore, Maryland Railway baggage tag -- Naugatuck, Connecticut
5. MOVING_150525_22.JPG: Owney's Travels Lines = Railway Lines Empty circles = Places that Owney visited Circles with "A" through "E" -- Tags on display here
6. MOVING_150525_26.JPG: Owney's Travels: From the late 1800s through the mid-1900s, trains carrying people, cargo, and mail covered most of the United States. Railway mail clerks worked long, hard hours in train cars, sorting and processing the bulk of the nation's mail. Owney traveled with his clerk friends on many of the trains, receiving tags form [sic] clerks, businesses, and individuals along the way.
7. MOVING_150525_28.JPG: (A) Hotel Chilburg -- Tacoma, Washington (B) Railway Post Office -- Albuquerque, New Mexico (C) Railway Mail Office, 1892 -- Boston, Massachusetts (D) Compliments of Wilson Parker -- Jackson, Mississippi (E) Dog License, 1894 -- Davenport, Iowa
8. MOVING_150525_32.JPG: First in Everything Office Supt. Railway Mail Service Boston, Mass. April 27th 1892
9. MOVING_150525_35.JPG: Owney Detroit, Mich. Beautiful city of the straits. Nov. 11, 1893
10. MOVING_150525_43.JPG: "Owney acknowledges no master save about 100,000 United States postal clerks throughout the length and breadth of this land." -- Washington Post, December 27, 1895 Owney: As a pup, Owney followed his owner to work at the post office in Albany, New York. When his master left that job, Owney stayed behind, following mailbags onto train cars. Soon he had thousands of friends among America's Railway Mail Service clerks. So many people added tags to Owney's collar that Postmaster General John Wanamaker had a harness made to help him carry the weight. After Owney died in 1897, his mail clerk friends raised money to preserve their mascot.
11. MOVING_150525_56.JPG: By the early 1900s, railroads were critical to postal operations. The Post Office Department ordered that new post offices in large cities be built as near as possible to the principal railroad station. This building opened in 1914 as the Washington DC city post office. It was connected to Union Station by a bridge used for moving the mail.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Description of Subject Matter: Moving the Mail
July 30, 1993 – Permanent
Level 1: Mail in America Galleries
Faced with the challenge of moving the mail quickly, the postal service looked to trains, automobiles, airplanes, and buses to deliver the mail, all of which are the focus of the museum's 90-foot-high Atrium gallery.
* Mail by Rail: After the Civil War, postal officials began to take advantage of railway trains for moving and sorting the mail. Sorting the mail while it was being carried between towns was a revolutionary approach to mail delivery, involving generations of devoted postal employees who worked as railway mail clerks.
* Owney: Mascot of the Railway Mail Service Owney was a stray mutt who wandered into the Albany, New York, post office in 1888. He began to ride with the bags on trains across the state—and then the country. In 1895 Owney traveled with mailbags on steamships to Asia and across Europe before returning to Albany. He was beloved by Railway Mail Service clerks, who adopted him as their unofficial mascot.
* Networking a Nation: Star Route Service: Some of the most ambitious movers of the mail were not railway mail clerks, aviators, or even postal employees, but were Star Route contractors. Star Routes were established in 1845 when the Postal Service began hiring contractors to use the most appropriate and efficient methods of transportation to carry the mail. The name "Star Routes" came about because postal clerks became weary of writing "Celerity, Certainty, and Security" over and over again in the contract books and began using "***" instead. These routes have been covered by all modes of transportation from stagecoaches, trucks, and planes to less conventional means, such as dog sleds, showshoes, and bare feet. "Star Routes" were renamed "Highway Contract Routes" in 1970, but are still known by their original name today. On view are a 1850s Concord-style stagecoach and a full-size semi truck cab-cutaway.
* On the Road: Motorizing the Mail: This section discusses the evolution of mail vehicles starting with the first tests in 1899 to the present. With the introduction of Parcel Post Service in 1913, these vehicles brought millions of packages into the mail stream for the first time. Despite numerous challenges over the years, motorized mail has undergone numerous improvements to dramatically increase efficiency in delivering the mail. In the early 1980s, after years of study and testing, another generation of postal trucks was introduced—nicknamed Long Life Vehicles—which quickly became familiar sights in American neighborhoods. On view are a 1931 Model A Ford Parcel Post truck and a contemporary Long Life Vehicle mail truck.
* Airmail Service in America: Airmail service was the base from which America's commercial aviation industry developed. This section of the exhibition examines this critical role of the postal service and features the airmail service established in 1918 between New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., through the remarkable pioneering flights of pilots Torrey Webb, James Edgerton, H. Paul Culver, and George Boyle. On view are a 1911 Wiseman-Cooke biplane, a 1919 de Havilland DH-4B, and a 1936 Stinson Reliant SR-10.
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2015 photos: I retired from the US Census Bureau in god-forsaken Suitland, Maryland on my 58th birthday in May. Yee ha! Trips this year: a quick trip to Florida. two Civil War Trust conferences (Raleigh, NC and Richmond, VA), and my 10th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Los Angeles). Ego Strokes: Carolyn Cerbin used a Kevin Costner photo in her USA Today article. Miss DC pictures were used a few times in the Washington Post. Equipment this year: I mostly used my Fuji XS-1 camera but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Number of photos taken this year: just over 550,000.
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Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].