Old U.S. Post Office

120 East Fifth Avenue

While best known as the current location of the Arkansas City Public Library, the corner of Fifth Avenue and A Street has a long, storied place in the annals of the town’s history.

In May 1914,  Arkansas City Postmaster C.N. Hunt was ordered by federal officials to vacate the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and A Street for the construction of a new post office. Celebrated Western photographer George B. Cornish arranged to move his photographic studio from the site to a new location a few blocks away.

The 1 1/2-story brick building was completed in 1915. Hundreds of residents attended the dedication ceremony of the new, $75,000 federal building on November 23, 1915.

It was built in the Italian Renaissance style, featuring an Ashlar stone foundation and symmetrical façade with arcade and Corinthian stone columns that frame a recessed center bay.

The post office operated at this location for 52 years.

It moved to the northeast corner of Washington Avenue and A Street in December 1967. The Arkansas City Public Library moved into the former post office building in November 1980.

Ark City’s first post office was established in 1870, the year the town was founded.

It was in a log cabin store operated by the Norton brothers, at the northeast corner of B Street and Central Avenue.

The cabin was moved later to Paris Park, as a memento of the town’s pioneer days, before it was washed away in the flood of 1923. The post office moved several more times, always to the homes or businesses of the postmasters.

When Cyrus M. Scott was appointed postmaster in April 1875, the post office was moved to the Traveler building of that day — Scott was the first editor of the newspaper — about where the Burford Theatre now stands. Scott lived above the post office. When the stagecoach with the mail appeared, he would blow a horn because its arrival was more or less indefinite.

Later, in 1907, the post office was moved to a more permanent site, the I.O.O.F. building at 201 W. Fifth Ave., where it remained until 1915.