“An ornament to the city. That is what can truly be said of Winona’s government building now nearly completed. From turret to foundation it is a model of completeness, elegance and durability,” gushed the Winona Daily Republican as the finishing touches were put on the city’s new Post Office and Federal Building in October, 1891.
There was real excitement in the city about the new building at the corner of Fourth and Main streets.
The shining Whitewater stone structure towered 121 feet above the pavement, its intricate gables and towers echoing the elegant stonework of the 3-year-old county courthouse, only blocks away.
With financing shepherded through the federal bureaucracy by Winona’s native son, Secretary of the Treasury William Windom, the building was an imposing reminder of national power, and its presence affirmed the city’s importance as a center of industry, commerce and government.
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The post office occupied the building’s first floor, with the federal circuit courtroom and judges chambers on the floor above, used only a few days each year when the traveling federal court was in session in Winona.
Built at a cost of $115,700.64, the building stood 69 feet along Fourth Street and stretched 128½ feet along Main.
In the style of the time, stone carvings embellished the exterior, the most elaborate over the building’s main entrance.
“One is a winged wheel, symbolic of the present rapid flight of the United States mail across the country,” the Republican said.
“The other represents an eagle on a rest, surrounded in miniature by a ship and lighthouse and a train of cars coming out of a tunnel. This is supposed to be symbolic of commerce.”
“Any mere description of the appearance of the building would fail to convey an idea of its beauty,” the local newspaper claimed. “It is said to be one of the handsomest buildings at the cost ever erected by the United States government.”
Fifty-nine years later, the Daily Republican, now the Winona Daily News, had changed its tune.
“The present post office — an architectural monstrosity in our book — has long outlived its usefulness,” the paper editorialized.
Inspired by Sputnik, the atom and the Edsel, America at mid-century was in the mood for change.
Up and down the nation’s Main Streets the wrecking ball was clearing away Victorian brick and stone to make way for the modern look of aluminum and plate glass.
In Winona, banker S.J. Kryzsko took the lead in urging his hometown to adopt “the clean fresh look which is a potent factor in attracting retail customers for our merchants and payrolls for our labor force.
“Everywhere we travel we find constant change in city after city where they are tearing down the old outmoded buildings of another era and erecting instead the new modern buildings which are evidence of present day growth and progress,” Kryzsko wrote in 1956.
“Fashions change for the civic look as well as for women. What woman today would come out wearing the fashions of yesteryear?” he asked. “Would you like it if she did?”
In Kryzsko’s view, a view shared by an overwhelming majority of the city’s “movers and shakers,” no building in town was more out of fashion than the old post office.
An editorial in the Sept. 26, 1956,Winona Daily News ticked off a litany of the building’s shortcomings.
There was no parking.
Delivery trucks had to back onto Fourth Street.
The lobby was poorly laid out and congested.
Stairways to the entrance and to the second floor were an obstacle to the elderly and mothers with babies in carriages.
“Floors are buckling, ceiling lights are inadequate, ventilation is poor, and plumbing and heating dates back to the time of its installation in 1890,” the Daily News insisted.
There was little support among community leaders for spending money to correct the old building’s deficiencies.
“It would be like dumping it in the lake,” said city council president W.P. Theurer.
“All it’s good for is a roost for the pigeons,” said Winona Mayor Loyde Pfeiffer, “If any of you have cause to get to the post office real early, before the janitor gets a chance to clean up, you know just exactly what the pigeons think of the post office.”
John Quinlan, president of the Winona Improvement Committee, succinctly summed up the overriding majority opinion. “The post office doesn’t have sufficient historical value or architectural beauty to let it stand in the way of our progress.”
There was one voice, virtually alone, arguing with loud persistence against “destroying the present building and erecting the new factory-type efficiency structure that we are almost certain to get.” Dr. Lewis Younger,Winona physician and president of the Winona County Historical Society, led a lonely campaign to preserve the old post office. “We feel that the Winona Post Office building is an historic landmark beloved by our people. It is a living tribute to the heritage of our city. With proper maintenance, it should last for the next five hundred years. It will be more cherished as the years go by and as the history of this area matures,” Younger wrote.
But progress would not be denied.
The final approval of the post office project was announced July 18, 1960, and condemnation proceedings were begun to evict Princess Wenonah, her turtles and her pelicans from Central Park to make room for the new post office building.
When objections were raised to taking park land, the Daily News responded in its editorial columns: “It is obvious a small group of short-sighted individuals are attempting to block this worthwhile improvement. We have hundreds and hundreds of acres of wonderful parklands elsewhere, the downtown business district needs modernizing, and an unsightly hazard would be removed.”
On June 3, 1963, the flag was first raised over the new U.S. Post Office on Fifth Street between Main and Center.
The old building was sold to 1st National Bank, was razed, and what is now the county office building went up in its place.
At the same time that plans were laid to level the post office, pressure was also building to replace the county courthouse with a clean, new modern structure.
That effort failed, and now the county is considering buying the Wells Fargo building on the site of the old post office to house county government offices while the old courthouse is repaired and refurbished, action inspired in part by a public opinion adamant that the courthouse building be preserved.
Over four decades after he made the argument, Younger’s position appears to have prevailed.
“He who lives only in the present remains forever a child,” Younger wrote.
“The day is past when great care and money could be spent on extensive ornamentation and fine handwork that characterizes this building. After it is gone, no tears of regret will bring it back.”
