Then & Now: Jefferson Post Office, Princeton Street, Holden

Mike Elfland, Worcester Telegram & Gazette
·2 min read
The wooden Jefferson Post Office in Holden was replaced by a brick structure in 1964.
The wooden Jefferson Post Office in Holden was replaced by a brick structure in 1964.

The post office in what would become the Jefferson section of Holden was once housed in the mill of Martin V.B. Jefferson. His woolen goods operation was in a complex off Princeton Street.

Jefferson Park is the name of the lot where the post office once stood.
Jefferson Park is the name of the lot where the post office once stood.

In 1873, a post office was built at Princeton Street and Fairview Avenue, shown in this week's Then photo, from 1964. For many years, the same block, between Fairview Avenue and Quinapoxet Street, was home to Harrington's Market.

By then, the village of Holden was known as Jefferson, with the mill owner carrying enough influence to scrap the area's earlier label, Drydenville. (Artemas Dryden was in the carding machine industry.)

By the 1950s, postal officials (and workers) were lobbying for another upgrade. Rita Nygard, the Holden postmaster, told a reporter that the "cramped" quarters and limited parking made it hard to deliver an efficient operation.

Eventually, the U.S. Post Office Department, as it was called at the time, eyed a square of land about 50 yards from the existing post office. A deal was made with Robert W. Barr, owner of the parcel at Princeton and Quinapoxet streets.

In August 1961, U.S. Rep. Harold D. Donahue announced that Jefferson had been approved for a new post office.

It would be two years before construction would begin on a Colonial-style brick building, at the time a familiar design for new post offices.

These days, the post office holds the same look it had when it opened in August 1964. It retains a village feel, its small lobby and wall of postal boxes a reminder of yesteryear.

Meantime, the adjacent block that once held Harrington's Market and the wooden post office is home to Jefferson Park, a grass-filled spot with a tree-blocked sign and a single bench, a good place to sort through that day's mail.

Thank you to Chuck Skillings, curator of the Holden Historical Society, for assistance with this story.

Last week Then & Now: Old Hotel Worcester, Washington Square, Worcester

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Then & Now: Jefferson Post Office, Princeton Street, Holden