The Smithsonian National Postal Museum, a Hidden Gem

The Smithsonian National Postal Museum

Almost eight years ago, I was privileged to be invited to co-chair the Advisory Council of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. I joined my co-chair John Nolan, a retired Deputy Postmaster General, with whom I co-chaired an industrywide Mailing Industry Task Force between 2001 and 2005. Today, John and I work closely with Elliot Gruber, the National Postal Museum's Director, a great leader, who has brought decades of experience and accomplishment to bear in transforming multiple historical museums,

The Smithsonian National Postal Museum is both blessed and disadvantaged in its location. To its benefit, it is conveniently located across the street from Washington DC's Union Station, a historic building, called the Postal Square Building designed by architect Daniel Burnham, that once housed the general post office of our nation's capital. For visitors who arrive and depart by train, it is an easy stopover and it costs nothing to visit.

The disadvantage is that it is not located near all the other Smithsonian museums situated on the Mall between Capitol Hill and the White House. The building architecture is majestic inside, but the building has other tenants, which constrains the Museum's ability to expand and show more than a tiny part of its collection.

Visitors rate the Museum on TripAdvisor 4.5 out of 5. Reviews use phrases such as a "hidden gem," "surprisingly interesting and informative," and, referring to its uncrowdedness, "since it's not on the Mall, you're not going to be standing in behind some junior high school tour group." These comments are absolutely correct, and, because of the great work Elliot Gruber and his small, but exceptionally capable, team do, the National Postal Museum keeps improving the visitor experience.

However, having just finished a full day semi-annual Advisory Council meeting, I gained two significant, non-obvious insights. Every museum, but especially the National Postal Museum, has a small portion of its assets available for viewing and in-person interaction for visitors. Over 99% of the National Postal Museum's assets are stored outside of the space we would enter as visitors. The staff and the limited outside resources the National Postal Museum can afford to showcase are digitizing these stored assets and making them available for online viewing.

Online access is a vital tool for research, education, and accessibility for the history that the US Postal Service has touched. The digitization project is at its earliest stages and is one that all the Smithsonian museums are undertaking, in order to make their rich histories available for more people around the world. On Monday, March 20, 2023, Dan Piazza, the chief Curator of Philately (the collection and study of stamps) for the National Postal Museum and also its leader of exhibitions, shared a treasure trove of correspondence between the US and French diplomats in the decades after the American Revolution. The French, through Marquis de Lafayette and other French leaders, were major supporters of the Revolution. The history contained in these letters is far more nuanced than what we would learn in any history book, novel, or academic paper on that period.

I am passionate about getting the facts right as they are used to reconstruct history. The magic of the National Postal Museum's assets is that, compared with the archives of Presidents and other government officials or academic and business leaders, it captures far more of the historical experience of ordinary people. Their perspectives are often quite different from the narratives handed down to us from high-level leaders. At our meeting last September, the staff shared Civil War letters from an Indiana family that had saved correspondence between a Union soldier and his widow. The detailed accounts from the front lines reminded us that real people have their lives deeply disrupted by every war or other violent conflict. The Civil War was unusually bloody and sad in what it did to people on both sides.

One of the more interesting bits of history that Dan Piazza shared with us in past meetings was triggered by our curiosity about why the National Postal Museum would have been selected as a lead Smithsonian museum for a baseball exhibit. Dan explained that, prior to 1969, the US Post Office, as it was then called, was a federal government cabinet agency with line-item budget approval and tight oversight by Congress. Moreover, it was a thinly-disguised propaganda arm of the administration. Not surprisingly, Postmaster Generals were often individuals who had played leadership roles in Presidential election campaigns, and were trusted confidants of the President.

Today, the US Postal Service is no longer a cabinet department, but an independent establishment of the federal government. It is directly governed by a Board of Governors, each of which members serve for staggered nine-year terms and are recommended, as much as possible, to be bipartisan relative to political party affiliation. The Postal Service is regulated by a Postal Regulatory Commission, which was created. by the 2006 postal reform legislation. Relative to its stamp issuances, it has been highly responsive to citizen input and now has a Citizen Advisory Committee from which it receives guidance. The Postal Service of the post-1969 period has a governance structure far more professionalized and non-partisan than the US Post Office that operated until 1969. It also receives very limited Congressional appropriations, predominantly to replace the revenues lost from special rate programs mandated by Congress. Like its predecessor, the Postal Service has as one of its core missions that of "binding the nation together."

Until the late 1930's, baseball was a sport that operated in a highly decentralized manner over nearly a century with rules that evolved gradually from British sports like cricket and rounders. But President Franklin Roosevelt, through Postmaster General James Farley, looked for a way to unify a deeply divided country in the 1930's. Using the issuance of postage stamps and the propaganda capabilities of the US Post Office, the federal government engaged in an active campaign to rewrite the narrative to promote one that emphasized baseball's predominantly American origins and enable the narrative to help unify America culturally. The National Baseball Hall of Fame was created by private funding in Cooperstown, NY and the myth that it was invented by General Abner Doubleday in 1939 was actively marketed by the Roosevelt administration and its allies. The goal was to have a centennial celebration in 1939 at which the Hall of Fame would open. The signage in the exhibit area and online refers to baseball as "America's Home Run" (emphasis added) This was a clear example of how an "official" rewriting of history diverged significantly from the reality.

The National Postal Museum and the other Smithsonian museums and their much larger asset bases, especially those that will get digitized, are vital to our understanding of our history. When the Postal Service was created in 1775 by the Continental Congress and Benjamin Franklin became its first Postmaster General, it was clear that our Founding Fathers shared the view that a well-functioning postal system was vital to the nation. One of its missions, which is prominently displayed in one exhibit area, was to "bind the nation together."

When I co-chaired our Mailing Industry Task Force, we also enabled our elected officials to understand that the postal system was critical to commerce and was foundational to the development of many other industries. Delta Airlines, which started out in the crop dusting business, suspended operations in 1930. It was only able to start and grow passenger service in the Mississippi Delta when it received an air mail route from the US Post Office in 1934. A visitor would be prompted to think about the role the Postal Service played in the airline industry when confronted a 1930's era airplane hanging from the Museum ceiling.

To anyone reading this, I would make three recommendations:

• If you get to Washington DC, stop in and visit the National Postal Museum. If you are bringing your family to DC, it is a wonderful way to finish a day in which you may have visited one other museum on the Mall. It is open 10am -5:30 pm every day except Christmas. You will not want to miss the Bill Gross Stamp Gallery on the street-level floor of the Museum.
• Check out the web site. There is so much to learn from it.

• Consider a donation either to the Museum or to any one of many specific projects or activities.