When we last left the post office, I told you all about various kinds of machinery the USPS uses to move mail around. Today I’m going to tell you about the time they thought they could automate nearly every function inside the standard post office — and no, it wasn’t anytime recently.
By 1953, the post office badly needed modernization. When Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield was appointed that year, he found the system essentially in shambles. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, the USPS had done absolutely no spending beyond the necessary, with little to no investment in the future. But Summerfield was an ideas man, and he had the notion to build a totally automated post office. One of them would be located in Providence, Rhode Island and be known as Project Turnkey — as in a turnkey operation. The other would be located in Oakland, California, and serve as a gateway to the Pacific.
The Post Office of Tomorrow
Commemorative stamp issued October 20, 1960. Image via Smithsonian Postal Museum
Turnkey opened on October 20, 1960, and was quite a building. It was a one-story affair, 420′ long, 300′ wide, and 55′ high, but only had two supporting columns in order to maximize floor and equipment space.
Both a distribution center and a regular post office, the building was nestled amid several major transportation routes. Ideally, Project Turnkey would show the world its worth by first speeding mail around Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts.
The point of such an automated post office was to be a proving ground for new machinery, ..
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