Cancelled!

The Blair Station Post Office and Annex delivered over to developers

The Blair Station Post Office (photo above, taken in 1997), located at 8045 Newell Street, operated  from 1949 to 1999.  The historic test site in 1957 of TRANSORMA, the building was razed in 2003, to build condos (below).  Both photos by Jerry A. McCoy.

In light of the fact that Silver Spring, Maryland is unincorporated and our community does not have a mayor, I make the following proclamation:

WHEREAS, historic preservation is an effective tool for managing growth, revitalizing neighborhoods, fostering local pride and maintaining community character while enhancing livability; and

WHEREAS, historic preservation is relevant for communities across the nation, both urban and rural, and for Americans of all ages, all walks of life and all ethnic backgrounds; and

WHEREAS, it is important to celebrate the role of history in our lives and the contributions made by dedicated individuals in helping to preserve the tangible aspects of the heritage that has shaped us as a people; and

WHEREAS, “Making Preservation Work!” is the theme for National Preservation Month 2007, cosponsored by the Silver Spring Historical Society and the National Trust for Historic Preservation

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Jerry A. McCoy, founder and president of the Silver Spring Historical Society, do proclaim May 2007, as National Preservation Month, and call upon the people of Silver Spring, Maryland to join their fellow citizens across the United States in recognizing and participating in this special observance.

Wow—do I feel empowered!

All kidding aside, every month is National Preservation Month for our society’s very small group of board members.  For the past nine years we have volunteered thousands of hours working to educate the public of the importance of preserving our community’s diverse and irreplaceable heritage.

Photo courtesy Silver Spring Post Office Technicians install the TRANSFORMA on January 24, 1957. Operators sat above the mail slots in the area yet to be assembled.

Our society has participated in some wonderful preservation and educational outreach projects over the years: the restoration of Silver Spring’s 1945 Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Station (listed on the National Register of Historic Places), the adaptive reuse of the 1946 Canada Dry Bottling Plant (a portion of which was incorporated into the Silverton Condominiums), and publication of the pictorial book, Historic Silver Spring (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2005).

For every success we have had though, there have been irretrievable losses—the 1998 demolition of the 1927 Maryland National Guard’s Silver Spring Armory on Wayne Avenue by owner Montgomery County (listed on the county’s own Master Plan for Historic Preservation), the 2003 demolition of the ca. 1935 Little Tavern Hamburger Shop on Georgia Avenue by owner Pyramid Atlantic (for “Phase Two” of a planned construction project that has yet come to fruition), and the 2003 demolition of the 1949 Blair Station Post Office and Annex in south Silver Spring by 8045 Newell Street, LLC (for construction of the Newell Street Lofts Condominiums).

It is the loss of this post office and annex that I’ve been thinking about lately due to the recent passing of the 50th anniversary of a historic event that occurred there, an event that would have been commemorative not only locally but nationally and, yes, internationally. 

The Blair Station post office was constructed in 1949 at 8045 Newell Street, occupying a corner lot at the intersection with Kennett Street.  Named after founding “father” Francis Preston Blair, whose 1845 mansion Silver Spring was still standing to the south, construction of this post office represented the tremendous growth that downtown Silver Spring experienced after World War II.  With growth continuing unabated for the next decade, a much-enlarged mail processing facility was constructed next door at 8045 Newell Street in 1954.  This annex was designed by Silver Spring architect Clifton B. White (1890-1962).

Courtesy Silver Spring Post Office. Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield (left) and Silver Spring Postmaster William E. Bowman pose with a “First Day Cover”, cancelled May 2, 1957 that was just routed through the TRANSORMA mail-sorting machine at the Blair Station Post Office.

Due to Silver Spring’s close proximity to the U.S. Post Office Dept. and its technicians in Washington, DC, the Blair Station Post Office was chosen in the fall of 1956 as the testing site for TRANSORMA, the first semi-automatic mail sorting machine to be tested in the United States.  Described by postal officials as potentially being “as history-making as the Pony Express, the train, and the plane in speeding up mail handling” (“New Gadget to Route Mail Faster Will Get Test Here,” Washington Post and Times Herald, September 21, 1956), the installation and operation of TRANSORMA marked the first time in the then 181-year history of the American postal system that letter mail was sorted by a machine.

The rather foreboding name of this machine was in reality an acronym for TRAnsport, SORting, Marchand, and Andriesen (its two original Dutch inventors). Weighing 31,000 lbs. and measuring 13 feet high by 50 ft. long, the machine filled nearly an entire room of the 1954 annex once assembly was completed early in 1957.  The machine was “manned” (and indeed they were all men) by five letter-feeding operators who sat in a row on a catwalk positioned above the machine.  One operator could process 3,000 outgoing/incoming letters per hour into 300 chutes or boxes that were positioned below at ground level.  Compare to 1,500 letters per hour placed into no more than 75 boxes that one man was capable of doing if done so by hand. 

Collection of Jerry A. McCoy. First Day Cover" addressed to Walter H. Wheeler, Jr., president of Pitney-Bowes, Inc., the company that sold and serviced TRANSORMA in the U.S..

After testing of the equipment had been completed, May 2, 1957 was chosen as the day for Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield to personally inspect TRANSORMA and to unveil it to the national press.  Summerfield sat down at one of the letter-feeding machines to cancel “First Day of Issue” commemorative envelopes imprinted with a cachet the read, “This souvenir cover is one of the first 1000 letters to be sorted by the TRANSORMA automatic mail sorting machine on its first day of regular operation in the U.S. Postal Service.”

On May 6, 1957 the New York Times published an article about the event, “Mail Sorter Wins U.S. Praise Test—Summerfield Labels Dutch Machine a ‘Breakthrough’—Code Numbers Used.”  

The code numbers, or separation codes as they were officially called, consisted of 399 one, two, and three-digit numbers that the operators had to memorize.  These codes corresponded to both local businesses as well as cities, both in and out of Maryland.

Letters would shoot past the operator sitting at the TRANSORMA letter-feeding machine at the rate of 50 per minute.  A keyboard before the operator contained three buttons operated by the left hand and eighteen buttons operated by the right, allowing the numbers 1 through 399 to be punched in.  These numbers would be imprinted on the address side of the envelope, which would then be automatically routed into appropriate boxes positioned below the operator.

Say you had deposited a letter at the Silver Spring post office addressed to your friend in Cleveland, Ohio.  When that envelope appeared before the operator, he would have 1.2 seconds to simultaneously punch three buttons  - 100, 60, and 1 – “161,” the code for Cleveland.  A deposit envelope mailed to Suburban Trust Co., located at 8252 Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, would be imprinted with “64” once the operator simultaneously pushed buttons 60 and 4.

Talk about pressure on the job!

Courtesy Silver Spring Post Office. Diagram of the TRANSORMA keyboard upon which operators had 1.2 seconds to read an envelope's address and simultaneously key in one of 399 codes to cancel it.

Due to TRANSORMA’s success as a precursor to the automation of mail processing in the United States, the Blair Station Post Office and Annex was deemed in a study commissioned by the Montgomery County government to be eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.  But the rapid forces of development that were building in south Silver Spring in the early 2000s, combined with political pressures and perhaps the simple convergence of plain bad luck, all conspired against saving the building.  After a three year battle waged by the Silver Spring Historical Society, in which we were reduced to requesting that only the facade of the Blair Station Post Office be preserved to serve as an entry way into the public plaza that would replace it, our request was refused and the entire structure was razed in 2003.

Today the 8045 Newell Street Lofts Condominiums occupy the site.  Incorporated into the plaza that replaced the corner post office is a raised circular brick planter featuring bi-lingual signage that briefly relates the history of TRANSORMA and Blair’s Silver Spring mansion.  Seven undulating lines of dark brick pavers set into the lighter colored brick sidewalk, positioned to one side of the planter, allude to a postal cancellation when viewed from above.  On the west side of the plaza is a 30 ft.-long abstract “art glass wall” titled TRANSORMA/TRANSFORMA by artist Heidi Lippman.

Earlier I had stated that interest in the history of TRANSORMA was both national as well as international in scope.  As a philatelist (stamp collector) I remember the first time I attended a stamp show and told the stamp dealer where I was from.  “Oh, that’s where TRANSORMA was located—envelopes cancelled by that machine are really rare,” he exclaimed. 

On other occasions I have received both snail mail and email from European stamp collectors, where interest in TRANSORMA is large due to its origin in the Netherlands.  All have asked where the Blair Station Post Office is located so they could come and see it.  I remember thinking how sadly ironic it is that there are people who would travel partway around the globe to see and honor a historic structure that stood in our own backyard and yet those who live here could not muster the political will to protect it.

Thus is the continuing challenge for the Silver Spring Historical Society, as well as historical societies across the United States, in “Making Preservation Work!”  I hope you will consider joining our society to help us preserve our community’s continuously endangered heritage.

If you can share any memories, photographs, or memorabilia relating to the Blair Post Office and Annex, please contact the Silver Spring Historical Society at P.O. Box 1160, Silver Spring, MD 20910-1160, email sshistory@yahoo.com, or phone (301) 537-1253.  The society’s web site is www.sshistory.org.

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