By Richard Magat

Jul. 8, 2015:  Despite the passage of years, my legs still tremble when I recall standing in line at the Bronxville Post Office for what seemed like forever.

Neither I nor other suffering customers could prevail on the authorities to add clerks. In my new digs, in upper Manhattan, several steps from Central Park, I decided to make a comparison.

Situated on a busy street in Spanish Harlem, the building lacks the suburban contours of the Bronxville Post Office, but the main difference is the policy toward customers. At the entrance stood a woman who was ready to give advice. She told me that the branch was rated by the waiting time customers stood on line. I noted there were three on line at the time despite the fact that this branch covers a far greater number than Bronxville's.   

However, with steps, benches, and greenery, Bronxville's exterior is more welcoming. I do recall, though, that one of my favorite neighbors, the late Prof. Burton Pollin, an authority on Edgar Allan Poe, frequently beseeched the Bronxville postmaster to improve the upkeep of the greenery. (He and his wife, Alice, founders of the Bronxville Beautification Committee, promoted the fountain at the traffic circle opposite Lawrence Hospital.)

One of the few disagreements I ever had with Professor Pollin concerned the design of US postage stamps. He claimed they were bland compared to those of many foreign countries. The truth is quite the opposite. Any examination of USA Philatelic, a quarterly catalogue of the US Postal Service, discloses thousands of artistic and historical issues from sports, to birds, to pioneers, and more.

Given the current turmoil in race relations, it is worth noting one of the oddities of the Bronxville Post Office--a mural commemorating the arrival in 1846 of the first mail in Bronxville, painted in 1939 by the noted Ashcan School artist John Sloan. It was financed by the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program to offset some of the effects of the Depression. The mural shows a black stable boy tethering a coach full of white people. The mural aroused no controversy, but residents of many Southern communities resented stereotypes of rural people portrayed as hicks and hayseeds.