John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse

The John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Cram and Ferguson, and built between 1931 and 1933 in Boston, MA.

John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse is also known, or has been known as, United States Post Office, Courthouse, and Federal Building, or Federal Building.

Its precise street address is 5 Post Office Square, Boston, MA. You can also find it on the map here.

The John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse is a structure of significant importance both for the city of Boston and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Art Deco style. Because of that, the John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse was officially included in the National Register of Historic Places on April 8^th 2011, and was also included in the Boston Register of Historic Places in 1998.

Cram and Ferguson was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design. But there was also one other architect involved, as far as we know. We are talking about James A. Wetmore.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but at the very least we know that there was one other part involved, that was Franklin M. Hull in charge of Structural Engineering.

The John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse was completed in 1933, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

The John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse uses a frame structure made of steel columns and reinforced concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features dark New England granite combined with gray New Hampshire granite and Chelmsfor granite in a similar colour. Indiana limestone was used to clad the central toweers's upper five stories, with a rhytmic stone patter emphasizing the building's height. Last but not least, decorative terracotta panels embellish the facade.