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Mail was delivered to fur trader John Kinzie, one of Chicago's founding settlers, before an actual post office building was built in the early 1830s.
In 1966, Henry Wadsworth McGee was promoted to Postmaster and became the first African American postmaster of a large metropolitan post office in the United States.
The Eisenhower Expressway passes through the building, serving as a gateway to the city from the west side. Before that, railroad tracks ran under the building and served the mail delivery process.
A narrow, sound-proof and enclosed runway ran through the sorting and processing floor for an inspector to observe workers without being heard or seen. Slits in the floor allowed them to identify theft or misbehavior happening below. The runway was retained and refinished during the renovation.
At the time it was built, the Old Chicago Main Post Office Building was considered the "largest post office building in the world," totaling more than 2.8 million square feet.
The Old Chicago Post Office has a storied history
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