Tuesday Treasures

Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme.


April 2018 - Toronto ON

The Royal York still has this working mail box on its lower level.

Canada Post Corporation,originally known as Royal Mail Canada (the operating name of the Post Office Department of the Canadian government founded in 1867), rebranding was done to the “Canada Post” name in the late 1960s, even though it had not yet been separated from the government. On October 16, 1981, the Canada Post Corporation Act came into effect. This abolished the Post Office Department and created the present day Crown corporation which provides postal service.

Source - Wikipedia

In Ontario, the first Toronto Post Office is still in operation. The site of the Air Canada Centre was once the Canada Post Delivery Building.

Click here to visit the Toronto Post Office.

Inside ACC Air Canada Centre formerly Toronto Postal Delivery Building.

In the early 1990s, the former Postal Delivery Building in Toronto was earmarked for demolition but somewhere along the line the south and east walls were retained and incorporated into the Air Canada Centre, the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs Ice Hockey team, Toronto Raptors Basketball team and Toronto Rock Lacrosse team.

The Postal Delivery Building was commissioned by the Public Works Department in 1938 and the design by Charles Brommall Dolphin was completed between 1939 and 1941.

With the development of the sports centre around the older building, the original footprint has been respected and maintained to some extent. A display on the wall inside the new centre provides a history of the building including some elements that had to be removed when the rest of the building had been demolished.

On display is the metalwork from above the original employees entrance which incorporates a dolphin in reference to the architect.

The new building was not intended to be a public Post Office, but was used as a warehouse for the sorting and distribution of mail.
The ground floor with its high ceiling served as a terminal for postal vans and railway mail carts. Twin truck doors on the east end of the Lake Shore Boulevard facade were marked with aluminum "ENTRANCE" lettering, while the twin "EXIT" doors were located at the west end of the facade.
Unsorted mail was lifted by conveyor belt to the top floor of the building where it began the route back down through the building by gravity-fed mail chutes, being sorted by size and geography, until deposited once again on the trucking docks of the first floor for pickup and distribution by postal van.

The best part of the building is the series of reliefs at street level depicting the history of human communication.

Dog Sled

Speech

Voyageurs

Mail Carrier - love how they wrap around a corner

Railway

Schooner

Steamboat

1930s Canada Royal Mail Van - preserved inside

The new Postal Delivery Building and Postal Station "A" were connected by a tunnel running beneath the railway tracks - the same "Blue Route" passage that now connects the Air Canada Centre to Union Station.