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St. Paul, Minnesota, 1905. "Post Office, Fifth and Market Streets." The postal palace last glimpsed here. 8x10 inch glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. View full size.
Somewhere along the line they put a clock up in the clockless clock tower.
Perhaps, Holmes, it was a man with a limp?
[Actually we see both legs here, alternating L and R. - Dave]
To think, this building was nearly razed, before being saved by more conscientious citizens back in the '70s.
I recall paying a visit to F. Scott Fitzgerald (in statue form) just across West Fifth Street, and being struck by this magnificent building as a backdrop: This Side of Fifth.
This building is much greater as an events center than it was as a federal courthouse. American courthouse designs vary between those that are ugly on the outside but highly functional on the inside, and those (like this one) that look great but don't work well on the inside. There is a massive skylight and atrium inside this one, which consumes most of the space useful for courtrooms. The actual courtrooms were small, narrow, and unremarkable, on the perimeter of mezzanines upstairs, akin to the hotel rooms in an eighties-style Embassy Suites. The post office's backoffice operations occupied much of the atrium floor, making the views down from the mezzanines depressing.
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