Post offices as beloved relics

They come in marking moments with birthday cards, love letters, and wedding presents. They come for passport applications and money orders. They come to return unwanted items and pick up shiny new ones. And on ordinary days, customers come inside the Main Street post office in Manayunk to mail bills or buy stamps.

In this hilly but walkable community, the tall redbrick building stands as an aging relic amid the bistros, coffee shops, and salons. Almost at odds with its trendy surroundings, it is now threatened with closure in the digital age.

In the last five years, with the steady click of a mouse, U.S. mail volume has dropped 20 percent, or 43 billion items. Add to that the expansion of postal services at grocery stores and other retail chains, and customer visits at post offices throughout the country have fallen by 200 million a year and sales by $2 billion, according to the U.S. Postal Service.

Facing a $8.5 billion loss last fiscal year, the independent government agency recently put out a list of 3,653 locations it is considering closing, 10 percent of its post offices. Campaigns against the shutdowns erupted in small towns, and last week, workers at the Bronx mail processing plant rallied in protest.

Of those being considered, 203 are in Pennsylvania and 14 in Philadelphia: 30th Street Station, West Market, West Park, Kingsessing, Overbrook, the Castle, Fairmount, Spring Garden, Schuylkill, the historic "B. Free Franklin" in Old City, East Falls, East Germantown, Roxborough, and Manayunk.

"It can't close," said Cathy Crescenzo, standing outside the Main Street post office one morning with a load of checks, policies, and renewals under her arm. A clerk at a nearby insurance company, Crescenzo begins her work days with pickups.

"It's those damn computers and phones," she said. "It's modernization."

Factored into the list of possible closures were insufficient workload or customer demand and the availability of nearby alternatives, said USPS spokeswoman Cathy Yarosky.

A study to determine which offices the USPS will shutter is under way, Yarosky said, a process that will include public meetings or surveys allowing loyalists to plead their case. Determinations will not be made before December, with closures unlikely until 2012.