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The Customs House and Post Office is located at 110 Green Street. This building has the distinction of being the oldest continuously owned and operating Post Office in the United States, operating from the original building. It was also the first in the nation to be named a “Great American Post Office” by the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. The interior has changed little, and the second floor still has its original rooms with four white marble fireplaces. The physical layout of the post office is basically the same as it was when first constructed over one hundred fifty years ago.

It was built after the thriving mining and river port town had outgrown its Main Street facility which had been established in 1826. By this time there were approximately 7,500 people living in the community, and a larger post office was desperately needed.

The movement for the new post office was initiated by Galena Congressman Elihu B. Washburne (You will learn about this influential man on the East Side Tour during the Washburne narrative.) The plan was subsequently authorized and appropriated by an act of Congress on August 18, 1856.

A plot of land was chosen near the center of the city. It was easily accessible to local residents, to the railroad, and also to the river steamers. Construction began in 1857, when the highest quality limestone in the western country was shipped up river by the tow-boat Tigress from Nauvoo, Illinois. This limestone purchased by the Government was used to construct the exterior of the building.

Ely Parker, a full blooded Seneca Indian, was the Superintendent of Construction of Government Buildings. He was sent to Galena in 1857 to engineer both the U. S. Custom House and the U. S. Marine Hospital. It took Ely Parker two years to build this 5,947 square foot Italianate style post office at the cost of $61,372.44. You can learn about the prominence of Ely Parker in the “Generals” section.

When the Custom-House –Ground Breaking ceremony was held, a cannon was fired to draw people to the ceremony, and Schreiner’s band was in attendance. (You will see Schriener’s House on Franklin Street on the West Side Tour.) Capt. Hezekiah Gear made a celebratory speech and turned the first shovel of dirt. Elihu Washburne and Ely Parker were called upon to make speeches, which were loudly applauded. Afterwards a celebration was held in the dining room of the DeSoto House.

When the foundation for the building was laid, Parker noticed seventy pound lead pigs (bars) stacked on the dock to be shipped. He ingeniously borrowed them to use to settle the foundation before the building was finished. The footings and foundation were laid in the fall, and pig lead, approximately the weight of the completed building, was placed on the foundation and left until the following spring when construction began. When he was finished, the pigs were sold and shipped down river. This procedure was intended to cause settlement and firm the ground under the building. As predicted in the Weekly Northwestern Gazette on August 9, 1859, “The building is so substantial that it is predicted it will last one thousand years with only two forces capable of destroying it, one being an earthquake and the other a mob.”

Remarkably, many years later when the Customs House was sandblasted, workers remarked there were no structural cracks! Thanks to Parker’s resourcefulness!

The cornerstone of the building was laid April 15, 1858, by the Free Masons. The exercises were conducted by Capt. Gear, Ely Parker, and F. E. Geiger, the contractor. In conformity with the ancient custom of the Masons, a box was placed in the corner stone containing the names of the principal officers of the present lodge in Galena, the mechanics employed on the works, principal U.S. officers at the time, along with several coins and copies of the Galena newspapers, where doubtless they will remain safe until the fall of the building.

When the Customs House and Post Office opened, the interior was clearly fashioned by a grandiose vision of Supervising Architect, Mr. Ammi B. Young.

The main entrance to the new Post office was on Commerce Street. The entrance hall and vestibules of the Post Office were paved with the highest quality two inch marble, or German tile, laid in diagonal patterns. The rest of the flooring of the building was composed of small segmental arches of hard burned brick. The main entrance led into a public vestibule eleven feet deep and extending sixty feet along the entire length of the building. Midway was the general letter delivery, so arranged that several clerks could operate at the same time. The Lobby was separated from the General Delivery by a partition of boxes. Eight hundred glass boxes and one hundred lock drawers were fitted up for the use of the public. The lock drawers were very convenient as the holders could obtain their mail at any time, whether the office was open or closed. There was also a Ladies Delivery Entrance on Commerce Street.

The mail room office was 14 ½ feet by 60 feet. Located in the rear was the Postmaster’s Room, 13 X 23 feet and a small vestibule 8 x 23 feet with its own separate entrance onto Green Street which was another entrance into the Post Office.

Green Street opened to a 5 ½ foot wide decorative wrought and cast iron stairway which was graced by a solid mahogany handrail, as seen on your screen. The staircase led up to the Custom House, which occupied the second story of the building. At the top of the staircase were massive twelve foot high solid oak doors, and a ceiling-high oak arch which divided into three rooms. In one of the pictures on your screen, you can compare the twelve foot doors to the average sized door propped against the wall. The main room was 26¾ feet deep and 56 feet wide and fitted with mahogany counters and other necessary appendages. On one side of the main room was the Collector’s Office, and on the other side were the offices of the Inspector and Port Surveyor.

During the Pre-Civil War period of 1859, the second floor Customs House was also used for social gatherings.

The cellar, or foundation story of the post office, was occupied by hot-air furnaces and storage space. The bottom of the cellar was paved with brick and accessible from the first story by means of an iron stairway. In addition to its hot-air furnaces, the building was supplied with fireplaces; and each room had ventilating flues leading to the roof, which was covered with corrugated sheet iron.

In 1845, Galena was the wealthiest city in Illinois. North of St. Louis it was the most important “commercial port” on the Mississippi trade route, being a major port of entry for European and other foreign goods. When the U. S. Customs Officer was transferred from St. Louis to Galena, all commercial steamboats had to veer off the Mississippi River and travel three miles up the tributary, Galena River, to check through U. S. Customs.

However by 1895, river travel had greatly diminished, and the Custom House was no longer necessary. Thus the second floor of the Post Office became Galena’s first library, The Galena Public Library and Reading Room.

Pictured is the Post Office and Customs House in 1897. The last four pictures on your screen are of an earlier post office. It was established in 1840 at 301 South Commerce Street, on the corner of South Commerce and Green Street. The photo was taken several hours after the crest of the flood that occurred on September 14, 1914. The current post office was built across the street.

If you would like to learn more about Galena’s first library, located in the Customs House, please continue reading. Otherwise, this concludes the Post Office/Custom’s House narrative.

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The idea behind the Galena Public Library came about in 1892, when prominent Galena citizen and local banker, Benjamin Franklin Felt, presented a petition to the City Council to fund a free public library. Unfortunately, the council voted against the library, pointing out state laws wouldn’t allow sufficient funding for such a facility.

Undaunted, Felt pressed ahead with his idea. He offered to pay for the library’s location as well as its operating cost for two years. He would also donate 1,200 books to the library’s collection. After the initial two-year period, Felt stipulated that the City of Galena would take over the library, taxing each household forty cents per year. The public was in strong support of this proposal, and the City Council voted 7-3 to accept Felt’s offer. The proposal which the council accepted was unusual in that Felt had stipulated that four of the nine library board trustees must be female. This drew national newspaper attention, with the Women’s Journal noting, “This was the first time women have been made directors in any public library in Illinois.” The Chicago Evening Post responded, “They could not find one woman on a public school or private library aboard in Illinois.”

Benjamin Felt’s daughter, Anna, was one of the four that served on the board. She might have been the influence behind her father’s stipulation since she was a strong supporter of women serving in public places. According to her father, Anna was responsible for everything having to do with the library except paying the bills. In 1894, the year the library was founded, Anna Felt was thirty-five years old and a graduate of Wells College in Aurora, N.Y.

The first meeting of the board took place at Benjamin Felt’s home on October 8, 1894. At this meeting, terms of office were drawn, three board members were chosen to form a Rules and Regulations Committee, and a request was sent to Washington, D.C. to house the library in the upstairs rooms of the Galena Post Office, known then as the Federal Building or the Customs House.

The Committee on Rules reported that the official name of the facility would be, “The Galena Public Library and Reading Room.” It was also stated that

no “anarchistic, atheistic or immoral” book would be tolerated
that all “well behaved persons over ten years of age shall be entitled to the free use of the Reading Room”
that “no person having a contagious disease be allowed in the library”
that “perfect quiet must be maintained in the Reading Room”

The Sec. of the Treasury, J. G. Carlisle, signed a document appropriating two rooms on the second floor of the U. S. Customs Building for a library and reading room. The rooms were large, airy and best of all, vacant.

When the doors of the library swung open on January 3, 1895 (on Felt’s 74th birthday), 1,522 books were displayed; 1,167 were donated by Felt, 106 by James Scott and 249 by others. That evening one of the largest audiences ever in attendance in Turner Hall showed up to celebrate the opening of the library. Then on October 25, four large cases of books from a Chicago publishing house arrived in Galena.

The first librarian hired was Julia Jones, who served in that capacity until 1903. The library was open daily, but the Reading Room was available only on Sundays. The original card ledger separated men and women onto separate pages. Trustee President, David Sheehan, was the first to sign for a card; librarian Julia Jones the second; and founder Benjamin F. Felt the third.

The first book to be checked out was House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the early days, the library did not have open shelving, and the public was not allowed to go into the bookshelves. The common practice was to purchase a catalog of books for ten cents, and after selecting a book from those available, the librarian would retrieve it for the customer. This practice continued until 1899.

In the beginning, the two rooms on the west side of the upper floor were used to house the library. However, within weeks of the library’s opening, those rooms became overcrowded, and in February the library was moved to the larger rooms on the east side of the building.

Librarian Jones’s report for the first five months of the library’s operation revealed that the library housed 2,386 books, had lost none of them, had issued 1,148 cards, and had hosted 20,243 visitors. Along with the books, there were five daily newspapers, nineteen weeklies, and twenty-eight monthlies available to library patrons.

The trustees ordered that the 94th page of each book be stamped with the words “Public Library, Galena, Il” in recognition of the library’s founding in in 1894.

Herman H. Kohlsaat, a Galena citizen who became a wealthy Chicago newspaper owner, was responsible for the library’s acquisition of one of its most prized possessions, the famous Thomas Nast oil painting entitled Peace in Union, which is now housed in the Galena/Jo Daviess County Historical Society and Museum building. Kohlsaat paid Nast $10,000 for the painting which portrays Lee’s surrender to General Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Kohlsaat also put up $500 for the frame, and at a ceremony at Turner Hall in 1895, he and Nast presented the painting to the City of Galena.

The Public Library grew rapidly, and space for the books and Reading Room became incredibly crowded. By 1906, the Library Board of Directors began searching for a new home for the library. In 1908, the library was moved to its new location at 601 South Bench Street. More information regarding the library will be provided on the Bench Street Tour.

March 13, 1929

This photo was taken several hours after the crest of the flood, that occurred on September 14, 1914, in Galena, Illinois.

This building at 301 S Commerce Street was an early Post Office, established in 1840. It is on the corner of South Commerce and Green Streets. The current Post Office was built in the late 1850s across the street. The photos below show the intersection today and the proximity of this building with the Post Office and the DeSoto House.

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A view of South Commerce Street, looking south, in about 1865.

Unlike Galena, most of the buildings you see in this photo have been long torn down. In the middle of the photo you can see the Custom House, built in 1858, and a few year later it became the Galena Post Office.

The Galena River is off to the left, and everyone of those buildings, that you see near the river on the east side, have been torn down. You can also see the double span bridge that was located where the current-day Route 20 bridge is today, and just beyond that bridge, you can see the larger railroad bridge. Darius Hunkins of Galena, built one, or both, of those bridges.

This area of Galena, near the river, is the area that has changed a great deal from the earlier years in Galena's history.

(This photo is from a glass negative.

Photo and information courtesy Terry Miller)

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Tim Doser shared the following information:

According to a Galena Gazette article, the ICRR freight house was built shortly after the ICRR arrived in Galena. It was reduced in size at some point. It once had an elevator attached to the west end. Packets exchanged freight here with the RR. The warehouse was demolished in 1942 and replaced with a much smaller freight building directly across from the passenger depot. The above picture that Terry posted shows a much better view of it (photo below). The rail line between the building and the river was the CB&Q RR. Note that at the time these tracks intersected with Decatur St. (Hwy 20) at ground level.

Thank you to Terry and Tim for sharing these incredible photos and their expertise!

01. Blacksmith Shop

02. Ryan Packing House

03. Site of Hoskins Lumber Yard

04. Site of Lawrence Hotel

05. Market House

06. Fritz Building

07. Customs House & Post Office