Happy birthday to the U.S. postal system! The United States Post Office, the forerunner of today’s United States Postal Service, was established by the Second Continental Congress on this date, July 26, in 1775. The former postmaster of Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), served as its first postmaster general.
We’re observing the date with this undated photograph of a postal service delivery vehicle from our Raymond Loewy collection of photographs and audiovisual materials (Accession 2004.255).
Loewy, an industrial designer, was tasked with doing design work for the USPS in 1970, when the Postal Reorganization Act transformed the United States Postal Service into an independent agency of the federal government. It was during this period that the USPS adopted Loewy’s design of the now classic logo of the silhouetted eagle over the letters "U.S. Mail".
The Hagley Library’s Raymond Loewy collection of photographs and audiovisual materials (Accession 2004.255) and our Raymond Loewy archive (Accession 2251) have been partially digitized to create the Raymond Loewy Collections in our Digital Archive. Click here to visit it online now.