History of The Westhampton Beach Post Office

The first recorded mail collection point in the area was actually on the back porch of a local home. A cabinet served as the post office on the porch of the Foster Homestead on East Main Street.  It was a convenient place for townsfolk to fetch their mail and pass the time of day with neighbors.  A similar cabinet served the Apaucuck-Tanner’s Neck area and was located on the porch of the Jagger home on the corner of South Country Road and Tanner’s Neck Lane.

From 1765, when a post road had been established, the mail was carried by horseback and these porch postal cabinets were used. This continued until the American Revolution, when mail transport by horseback was replaced by a newly-established stagecoach route, although the porch postal cabinets continued to be used to hold and distribute mail.

The first Official Post Office was in West Hampton Centre – at The Bishop and Raynor Store – a General Store and Post Office, located on the south side of Main Street at the southwest corner of its intersection with Beach Lane.  Letters were left in the care of Charles E. Raynor, who was the first postmaster – appointed July 5, 1862.  In 1886 Ernest H. Bishop took over as postmaster, and in 1889 the job was handed back to Charles Raynor.

December 22, 1890 saw a change in the name of the post office to West Hampton Beach (three separate words).  Another General Store located on the north side of Main Street was used as the Post Office in 1905.  That store later became Brown’s Department Store and later yet, Sexton’s Department Store – which was later remodeled into a number of retail establishments.

Eight different men and one woman, Mabel B. Williams, held the post over the next 39 years, with Mabel holding the post for only one year in 1913.

The third Post Office was located in the easily-recognized Grimshaw Building on the north side of Main Street. The photo of Mabel below was taken Easter Sunday, 1914 in front of that Post Office. That office is currently 90 Main Street and, as of 2013, was the home of Botticelli Portrait Artists.

The Post Office moved once again, to a building constructed for this purpose on the north side of Main Street. This Post Office was built around 1914 and used until 1941, when the current Post Office building was dedicated. This fourth Post Office is depicted in the postcard shown below. It was located two buildings west of the north corner of Main Street and Mill Road and later became the popular Post Stop Cafe. On August 1, 1932 the name of the Post Office was once again changed – this time to Westhampton Beach – as it remains today.

Mabel B. Williams took up the position of postmistress of the Westhampton Beach Post Office again in 1933, when the fourth Post Office building was in use, and held that post for 11 years. She was postmistress when the Works Project Administration (WPA), established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, constructed a new larger building with room for future growth.  The building, an example of Colonial Revival architecture, was designed by Louis A. Simons. It was constructed in 1940 by the Mutual Construction Co. and was dedicated on February 22, 1941.  About a year later, Sol Wilson completed his mural “Outdoor Sports”, which remains today as a fine example of the artistic work supported by the WPA.

According to Isabelle Hymam, Professor Emerita, Department of Art History, New York University, Wilson was born in 1892 in Vilno, Russia (now Lithuania) and came to the United States with his family in 1901. He studied at the Cooper Union Art School and The National Academy of Design with well-known painters George Bellows and Robert Henri. He later taught art at The American Artist School and at The Art Student League in New York City. Today his paintings can be found in the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian and The Westhampton Beach Post Office!

In 1991, the Westhampton Beach Post Office celebrated its 50th Anniversary with the help of the newly-formed Westhampton Beach Historical Society.